Conflict resolution may be one of the least enjoyable functions of leadership, but it is among the most important. Leaders must create and maintain an environment that is conducive to productivity, engagement, and career satisfaction—and workplace conflict is the natural enemy of these objectives.
Simply put, those who cannot surgically remove conflict from the workplace cannot lead.
Workplace conflict is toxic to you as a leader and cancerous to your business. Not only does it negatively impact those directly involved, but it affects the performance and morale of those working most closely with the parties involved. Even slight personality differences can adversely affect team dynamics. And ordinary disputes can grow into malignant behaviors, including bullying, harassment, sabotage, and blackmail, if left untreated.
These five steps will help you prevent and treat workplace conflict, by rooting out the underlying emotional and communication causes:
- Prevent conflict with clearly defined behavioral policies. Your printed policies, given to every employee, should establish a framework for tolerable behaviors in foreseeable scenarios. It should also establish clear job descriptions so that people know what is expected of them, and should outline your plan for handling the inevitable conflicts that do arise.
- Proactively meet with the adversaries together. As soon as you get wind of a festering communication breakdown or disagreement between your subordinates, bring them into a meeting room and intervene. Your decisiveness will send a clear signal that both parties will be held responsible for working toward a resolution. Next, allow each person a few minutes to summarize their perspective without being interrupted or attacked.
- Have each participant suggest actions they would like the adversary to take. After hearing the summaries, you may have an inclination as to who is the primary cause of the conflict. Put that aside and let each participant suggest a course of action for the other person to remedy the problem.
- Explore the suggested actions. Ask each participant how the suggestions will lead to the desired effects, and how they will help to promote the common goal of using conflict to create an even stronger working environment and team. Strengthen the suggestions with your own ideas, so that you gain a consensus that the game plan will be effective. In the process, it can alleviate some of the pressure in the room to ask what workplace conditions can be changed to prevent incidences like this from affecting other employees in the future.
- Gain commitment. You may even want to do this in writing. Require each person to commit to making the agreed upon changes, and to treating each other with respect. Then plan a follow-up meeting to hold the parties accountable to the changes and to the positive outcomes you have mutually agreed upon.
Following this plan turns a potentially destructive conflict into a team-building exercise. In fact, when we talk to the managers we know and admire, most have seen more than their fair share of workplace conflicts. It’s these resolution skills that have made the difference and garnered them respect as a leader, throughout their organizations.