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From NetSpeed Leader Volume 20, December 2004
Conflict is a common element of interpersonal relations, including those in the workplace. When avoided, ignored, or only partially resolved, conflict has long- and short-term negative effects on team performance. As just about everyone has experienced, the very existence of conflict can be discouraging, daunting, and stressful. But when conflict is managed and resolved constructively, it can actually improve overall work performance.
Transforming team conflict sounds like a tall order, but there are first steps that launch us well on the road to resolution: acknowledging the value of conflict, increasing conflict competence, and giving conflict situations a neutral name.
Acknowledge the Value of Conflict
A conflict-free team may be a happy team, but it’s not likely to be a creative one. If there’s no conflict, there must be no opposite styles of communicating, no intense differences of opinion, no serious raising of the bar, no extraordinary efforts to hit tough targets, and no significant change. How can anything innovative come from a situation that dull?
On the other hand, when team members have experienced conflict and resolved it together, they can freely express a mix of ideas, accept divergent views, and then choose the best of them to achieve team goals. They can solve problems creatively, recognize conflict when it occurs, and make it work.
Team appraisal: Does your team regard conflict as a natural aspect of working together?
Action step: When people have been burned in conflict situations that have been resolved destructively rather than constructively, they may not see conflict as a part of the natural creative working of teams. Share your own stories of conflicts that have led to success. Once your team experiences a successfully resolved conflict, they will have their own stories to build from.
Increasing Your Team’s Conflict Competence
Some teams have attributes and skills that help them resolve conflicts constructively. Developing these is a first step in preparing to transform team conflicts.
Open minds. Team members with open minds work to stay open to the other party’s point of view. They see conflict resolution as a process of developing a deeper understanding of what the other person needs.
Team appraisal: How often do your team members approach conflict with the desire to find mutually satisfying solutions?
Clear ground rules. When teams have clear, agreed-upon ground rules, they can avoid blaming, name calling, and other behaviors that increase conflict.
Team appraisal: Does your team have clear and accepted ground rules for communication? If so, how consistently do they observe them?
Commitment to listening. When team members listen to others respectfully, they find that others are more willing to listen to them. Listening to one another’s story is the first step in finding common ground to settle the dispute.
Team appraisal: How skilled is your team at listening to one another respectfully? Do team members listen without interrupting or criticizing?
Focus on solutions. When team members freely generate and explore solutions, they gain the chance to discover satisfying solutions. To be able to do so, members must acknowledge that their own initial opinions may not lead to the best resolution of the conflict.
Team appraisal: How easy is it for team members to let go of their preconceived ideas or solutions?
Commitment to agreements. When team members are committed to mutually satisfying agreements, the resolution of the conflict has a real likelihood of being lasting and effective.
Team appraisal: How committed are team members to reaching and respecting agreements that satisfy the interests of all involved?
Action step: Instilling teams with the attributes above doesn’t happen overnight. But if you provide leadership that models them, and if you help your teams resolve conflicts based on those attributes, team members will quickly see the benefits of incorporating them into team behaviors.
Give Each Conflict a Neutral Name
An early step in managing and resolving a conflict is naming it. When a conflict is named with neutral, descriptive language, it has already begun its transformation.
For example, Tim describes a situation this way: "Raye is not a good supervisor. She keeps interrupting when I am dealing with customers. She treats me like an idiot."
Raye describes the same situation this way: "Tim can’t take feedback. I have to tiptoe around him and can’t even offer a suggestion without him losing it."
A neutral name for the conflict is this: a conflict about how feedback is given and received. When the conflict is named without expressions such as "not good," "interrupting," "idiot," "can't," and “losing it,” it is easier to move toward common ground.
Team appraisal: Do team members know the difference between blaming language and neutral language?
Action step: Consistently reframe team conflicts using neutral language. Team members will eventually follow your lead and use neutral names themselves.
Conflict is not an unnatural situation that always leads to struggle, grief, discomfort, and wasted resources. Once transformed, it is a natural process with real value for individuals, teams, and the organization.
Note: This article is based on the NetSpeed Leadership module Transforming Team Conflict. In the module, participants experience interactive exercises, case studies, practice scenarios, and action planning that help them resolve team conflicts.
Contact us for more information about Transforming Team Conflict at your company.
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