In all the current literature addressing conflict in organizations, one observation is without refute: We are stuck with it. It is a part of the human condition. As long as people still populate offices, boardrooms, break rooms and meetings, conflict is certain to be present.
Acceptance of this reality is helpful because it tells us that the presence of conflict is not necessary an indicator of dysfunction. Even in the healthiest organizations people fight with each other and groups form around points of opposition to other groups. What is surprising to me is the number of organizations where leaders and managers do little or nothing to address conflict when they see it.
No One Really Likes Going Down this Road
There are hazards to leading in conflict resolution to be sure. Great managers have fallen into the trap of trying to fix interpersonal conflicts by stepping in as the dad or mom approaching employee B because employee A has complained to them about B, but refuses to go directly to B to try and work it out.
I’ve talked to dozens of managers and leaders who have stepped into that little slice of hell and vowed never to intervene again. I get it. But what we fail to assess on the backside of our bad experiences are the hidden costs of infighting and conflict that goes on without remedy or resolution.
Here are a couple to consider:
Riding the Toxic Bandwagon
As predictable as conflict is in organizations, there is an equally consistent tendency for angry/hurt individuals to pile up supporters for their offence or against their offender. Whether it is garnering sympathy for themselves or blame-bashing with whomever will lend them an ear, the toxicity that is present in the one will seldom stay confined to their personal experience
Early initiation by managers to sit down and address the conflict experienced by toxic people holds the potential of two important toxicity neutralizers: One, it gives the expression of empathy to the hurt/angry person to not just be heard, but heard by a person in a position of power. You will have to be careful to not in any way imply that you will lead the resolution task force for them. Your role is to hear them out and guide them onto a healthier pathway of resolving the conflict themselves, or gaining understanding and letting it go.
The other important toxicity neutralizer is platform stealing. One of the reasons hurt/angry people gain a voice among coworkers is the perception that they are leading a cause to fix the real problems of the organization. They take their personal complaint against a supervisor or coworker and blow it up to a problem that must be fixed for “all of us to live in peace and safety.” What gives this kind of complaint energy is the claim that they alone are pointing out the problems that no one else can or wants to see.
Visible conversations with bandwagon leaders helps to steal away part of that platform or at least to reduce the impact of their complaints on others. Behavioral specialists call this opportunistic interaction. It gives each party a means to influence the other. This will go some distance to help the person holding the complaint, but it also reduces their private campaign by demonstrating that they are being given the opportunity to address the problems they have within the organization with the people who have decision-making power.
Conflict Suppressors
On the opposite side of the spectrum to the bandwagon leaders are those to go deeply underground; sanitizing their workplace relationships, leaving only tasks and necessities. Some managers would prefer this kind of response over the other, but the negative implications on workplace culture and the trust factor among employees is significant. This kind of individual is expressing their unhappiness by disconnecting, and that disconnection has two consequences. The first is obvious: Nothing really gets resolved. The signs of infighting disappear, but the tensions and avoidance behavior persists. If the players on either side of this conflict are influencers, the cultural tone of the organization is altered.
The other consequence is found in the way that others, even those disconnected from the conflict, relate to the emotion-suppressing person. A University of Oregon study found that the perception of suppressed people is generally off-putting. The emotionally withdrawn person is seen as less secure and less agreeable so others tend to shy away from affiliating with them. The net result is ostracization. While withdrawal begins with an individual’s response to conflict, it elicits a secondary withdrawal of coworkers as their mistrust of the suppressed person grows.
Again, early initiative that brings empathy without the promise of triangulating intervention can keep people from burrowing underground and disconnecting altogether. Be prepared to do some coaching and guidance-giving with them as this is likely a life-pattern of behavior they’ve adopted in order to protect themselves.
Getting Better at Challenging Work
Like stepping out into a minefield; navigating people through infighting and conflict is a tedious and risky path, but the benefits to cultural health in your organization are well worth the effort. Managing conflict in organizations is an unavoidable part of a leader’s role that is requiring higher skills and a more sophisticated approach. Mastering these skills will help shift a very hard element of workplace management to something, perhaps never easy, but moving toward considerably better and more effective results. Learning how to lead well in this area and increasing your social-emotional intelligence skills will get you a long way down the path of conflict management success.