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TYPICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT CONFLICT

CONFLICTS HAPPEN. This is especially true in today’s flatter organizations, where managers depend on relationships more than position to get work done. When people have compatible goals, a predictable structure, and harmonious relationships, there are fewer conflicts. Inevitably, though, no matter how harmonious the group or how structured the organization, conflicts occur. Effective leaders know that conflicts can’t be avoided and they learn to understand and resolve them. And the first step toward understanding is to realize the typical features of and questions about conflict.

WHAT COUNTS AS A CONFLICT?

For most people, the word conflict conjures up images of uncomfortable, serious interpersonal interaction. However, a broader and more practical way to think of conflict is that it occurs when any two or more people (or groups, organizations, or countries) have fundamental differences in how they see things and what those things mean to them. When differences exist, conflict is possible. People will often go to great lengths to avoid it. They see it as such a negative circumstance that they don’t want to admit they are in the middle of one. Unfortunately, that view rules out the idea that conflict, productively addressed, can foster creativity, clarify viewpoints, lead to productive collaborations, and enhance relationships. It can, of course, be dysfunctional and harmful. In this book, we will explore ways to resolve those situations. We will also examine practical and proven techniques for productively resolving conflict.

LEVELS OF CONFLICT

There are three levels at which we can examine conflicts:

Some people consider group or team conflict as a separate level. However, in my experience I have found that dealing with group or team conflict is best approached by seeing those situations as a series of interpersonal conflicts, often affected by organizational factors.

INTERNAL CONFLICT IS CONFLICT WITHIN YOU. You may be familiar with the cartoon depicting a person with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, each giving opposite advice. Internal conflict operates much like that:

“Should I read that article for work tonight or should I just watch that TV show I enjoy so much?”

“Should I have that second piece of cake?”

“Should I give feedback to my boss about what I saw in the last team meeting or should I wait and hope that someone else tells her about it?”

These internal conversations are often like conflicts between you and other people, except both voices belong to you. But internal conflict can be more serious than deciding whether to exercise or watch TV or to speak up or stay silent. It can involve psychological variables that a person finds difficult to address alone. If you can take an objective stance toward your inner conversations, you can analyze them using the methods explained in this book. However, given the sometimes complicated psychological aspects that might accompany internal conflict, the lessons cited here do not specifically address that level of conflict.

INTERPERSONAL CONFLICT IS THE MOST COMMON LEVEL OF CONFLICT. Most of the time, conflicts are at the interpersonal level—essentially, two people not getting along. Much of this book uses examples from this level to analyze conflicts and to strategize how to manage them. In my experience, teaching people to start from the interpersonal level provides them with fundamental tools they can use to address the other two levels: internal and organizational.

ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT IS THE THIRD LEVEL. The fact that you manage and lead in an organization—whether it’s a business, community, or some other form—doesn’t automatically make all of your conflicts organizational ones. However, for many leaders, the organization is a factor in so many of their conflicts that it pays to dedicate some of your time to a method for adding this level of conflict to your analysis and strategy toolbox.

TYPES OF CONFLICT

In addition to the three levels from which we can examine conflict, there are three types of conflict:

Let’s look at misattributed and displaced conflicts first. That will help explain what I call real conflict. Misattributed conflict occurs when you are in conflict with the wrong person. For example, one day at work you have a disagreement with a colleague. When you come home you and your significant other get into an argument. Or you’re mad because someone cut you off as you drove to work this morning, so you take it out on the kid waiting on you at the coffee shop.

Displaced conflict is conflict with the right person but about the wrong issue. For example, your son comes home from school with another bad report card and you fuss at him about his messy room. Or an employee is not meeting the sales quotas you had set and you grill her about last month’s expense report.

We get into these situations all the time, but they are not real conflicts because they don’t require conflict-resolution skills as a remedy. Self-awareness and the willingness to apologize are all that we need to mend misattributed or displaced conflicts. In fact, because these situations aren’t actually conflicts, they are impossible to resolve. If you’re upset over the disagreement you had with your colleague about the approach your team is taking on a project and your complaint with your significant other is a disagreement about what to do this weekend, no amount of discussion about your weekend plans will resolve the disagreement between you and your colleague. When you recognize that you are in a misattributed or displaced conflict, the best thing you can do is recognize it, acknowledge it, apologize if necessary, and back out of the situation.

Displaced conflict is conflict with the right person but about the wrong issue.

WHY DON’T PEOPLE MANAGE CONFLICT BETTER?

People deal with conflicts day in and day out: at work and outside of work, in group settings, and in personal interactions. Since they have so much experience with conflict, shouldn’t they be better at handling it? You would think so, but there are many reasons why they aren’t. For example, in some cases they refuse to see minor disagreements as conflicts, so they let them go—and grow. Or they might misinterpret a small disagreement as a big conflict and overreact to the situation. One thing that would make people better at dealing with conflict is a better way to determine which of the myriad conflicts they face is worth the time, energy, and potential outcomes to engage. Managing and resolving conflict is hard work. It needs to be worth the effort. People also have to be realistic about the likelihood of success—as they define it in a particular situation—before they engage. And once they choose to engage, there are still other obstacles to resolution.

THE REACTION RUT

One reason that people mismanage many conflicts is that they rely on one or two reactions to conflict situations. They respond to all of those unique situations with a limited number of behaviors. They don’t think about how they’re going to react to a conflict; they just act. They are in a reaction rut.

The problem with having such a limited set of reactions is that, because they guide you, your approaches also become limited. For most people, the approaches they stick to work—sometimes. When one of those few approaches works, it reinforces their trust in it, and consequently they grow dependent on it. In conflict situations where your favorite approaches are not the best response, you fall victim to your previous successes. Choosing your approach to a conflict should be a conscious decision. Your choice should not come at the whim of your immediate reaction. This takes self-discipline and skill. In a section below I will address options for developing more flexibility in your approach to conflict.

THE PERILS OF DELAY

Another reason for ineffective conflict management is that many people delay dealing with a conflict until they have no choice but to do so. In most cases, not quickly addressing a conflict only makes it more difficult to resolve later. In addition, a delay can often raise the emotional level and threaten an objective approach. Becoming emotionally upset reduces your self-control. The last thing you want when you’re involved in a conflict is to be out of control. That’s not to say emotion doesn’t or can’t occur. Our emotions are wired in—it’s not a choice to leave them out. What is needed is an awareness of your emotional response as a natural reaction to conflict but not one you can rely on to guide your approach to it. Claiming that you’re an emotional person is a poor excuse for being ineffective.

If you are becoming frustrated, angry, or defensive, it is often best to appropriately share that emotion. For example, you might say, “I’m sorry, Pat, but I’m starting to become a bit frustrated. Perhaps I’m not making my perspective clear enough. Let me give you some additional facts that have led me to this feeling.”

WINNER TAKE ALL

A third reason for difficulty in managing conflict is that at some point in the interaction people can lose sight of consensus as the goal and will substitute competition—they want their side to prevail. Their ego pushes logic and generosity out the window. Many political debates and management-labor disputes serve as examples of ego-driven, unproductive conflict interactions. The sports world also offers many examples in which egos got the best of both sides and both sides lost millions of dollars as a result of trying to “show the other side who’s boss.” The result? Creating a lose-lose scenario.

For example, consider the mass resignation of Major League Baseball (MLB) umpires in 1999. Entering that season, the Major League Umpires Association was dealing with disagreements with MLB over a variety of issues. Unable to strike because a collective-bargaining agreement was in place at the time, fifty-four umpires formally resigned in an attempt to force negotiations with MLB for a new labor agreement. But you can’t take a win-lose approach to conflict if you don’t have enough leverage. And the resigned umpires, who thought they would shut down MLB and the owners would lose a fortune, didn’t have that leverage. The league simply hired new umpires from the minor leagues. So the umpires lost not only their jobs but also face and prestige. And the league took a hit because it ended up with some umpires of slightly lesser quality. This goes to show that you can’t go full-out with a “win-lose” approach to conflict unless you have all the cards in your hand.

THE LOST CAUSE

Finally, another reason behind our inability to better manage conflicts is our failure to get to the underlying cause(s) of them. As I noted earlier, the longer it takes you to address a conflict, the more difficult it is to resolve because emotions can cloud judgment. Further, the longer you take to address a conflict, the more likely it is that tangential issues will find their way into the debate. Managing a specific conflict is challenging enough; letting complications attach themselves to the core issue distracts both sides and increases the difficulty of resolution. In a section below we will look at the keys to clearly identifying the root causes of conflict.

SHOULD WE MANAGE OR RESOLVE CONFLICT?

Most of the time when we are faced with a conflict, we want to resolve it and get it behind us. That’s only natural. If the conflict is not likely to produce positive results, we certainly want to end it.

Many conflicts can be resolved with the knowledge and concepts discussed in this book (assuming you are willing to put the time and energy into the resolution process). However, other conflicts resist resolution. You may have said at one time or another, or someone may have said to you, “We agree to disagree.” That’s not resolution. It’s an acknowledgment of your differences (a good first step in itself). Some differences relate to fundamentally different value systems. Some relate to mutually exclusive goals that offer no clear path toward creating resolution.

There is no shortage of conflicts. We encounter so many contested situations during a day that we need a way to make conscious, rational decisions to help us create positive responses to them. For example, the next time you are in conflict with someone, ask yourself:

There are instances when you might not want to resolve a conflict but manage it. For example, conflict generates energy, which can spur innovation. Resolving the conflict can stop creative possibilities. The dialogue necessary to manage conflict can press the people involved to think of the situation they are in differently, to come up with different perspectives. In the best circumstances, conflict causes us to look at our intentions and actions through the eyes of another. Often, an objective third party can help in this setting by helping the proponents on both sides to better hear each other and to move from conflict to problem solving.

Under certain circumstances, you may have your own reasons for managing a conflict but not resolving it. For example, it may create a situation that enables you to continue on a certain path. You know that if the conflict gets resolved, you’ll have to change paths and you’re satisfied with the path you’re on right now. Or you might not want to resolve it because you don’t want to give up your perspective on the situation.

DO CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AFFECT CONFLICT AND ITS RESOLUTION?

In the global environment organizations operate in, it’s reasonable to ask if the concepts, approaches, and tools described in this book will work beyond the boundaries of North America (where I have spent much of my career). It has been my experience that they do. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t consider cultural differences, whether ethnic, geographic, race, religion, or other, and how they affect conflict situations and their resolution. At the same time, you should not assume that cultural differences are affecting any particular conflict. To believe that you know why someone behaves in a certain way or to predict how a person will handle a conflict based on your knowledge of his or her culture is not only prejudicial but is likely to lead you astray and render your resolution strategy useless or, at best, misdirect it.

Whether or not you suspect that cultural differences lie at the heart of a conflict, it’s vital that you remain as objective as possible in sizing up the situation. Cultural assumptions threaten that objectivity. Above all, focus on behaviors—assumptions, attributions, and generalities will not help you resolve a conflict.

WHEN CONFLICT IS RESOLVED, DO BOTH SIDES WIN?

Certainly, a win-win outcome, where all parties reach their preferred result in a way that is satisfactory, is often worth attempting. But there are many instances where a win-win outcome is not feasible and even some situations in which it is not desirable. After all, if it were always attainable, there would be little conflict in the first place. Understanding the likelihood of a win-win outcome and the preference for such a result are important initial judgments for you to make when determining the approach you will take toward a conflict.

Often, compromise can serve as an alternative. A compromise is sometimes referred to as a “watered down” win-win and is often a fallback position when the time, energy, or feasibility for a true win-win situation no longer exists. The result being sought is one where both parties give a little but gain enough to be able to live with the outcome.

In organizations, many of the conflicts that you encounter are actually win-lose situations. This is clearly the case when some rules or accepted practices are in effect and there is no room for optional behaviors or actions. If your point of view adheres to those rules and practices, and the person with whom you have a conflict has an opposing point of view, there isn’t room for a win-win outcome.

A win-lose conflict doesn’t necessarily call for taking a heavy-handed approach. Often the long-term result of a win-lose conflict handled well is that the losing party appreciates the persistence and directives that led to a successful outcome.