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Fifteen Tips for Making Workplace Conflict Easier to Deal With
- Create a concrete process, don't leave it to chance.
Develop a set of steps for resolving conflict that you can use
well and that are effective for you. By using these consistently, you will use your time efficiently and effectively, set
expectations for your team, and avoid the appearance of favoritism.
- Learn from other people's conflicts by practicing.
Think about conflicts you have had, and how your perspective
changed as you learned more about the other person's point of view. Observe conflicts between other people. Learn to see
how the same event can be viewed multiple ways, and you will gain perspective that will help you solve conflicts more
quickly.
- Deal with conflict when it arises.
Resolve conflict quickly, and avoid the problems that conflict causes in the workplace: time in dealing with unhappy team members, missed deadlines, absenteeism, poor quality of work, and ineffective teamwork. To calculate the cost of conflict to your team, go to What is Conflict Costing Your Company?
- Blame yourself.
No, really. Just for a second. Imagine, for a moment, that you are contributing to the problem. If
it's true, change your own behavior and reduce your stress from conflict. Then forgive yourself and move on.
- Make time to recharge your batteries.
Dealing with difficult people, and conflicts, drains your energy. Find things
you can do every day that renew your mental resources.
- Reward yourself for dealing with difficult people.
You get grief from all sides – your team, your managers, the
higher ups, the clients. When you have to have a difficult conversation with someone, or a conversation with a difficult
person, decide on a reward you will give yourself when the conversation is over. Then give it to yourself, even if the
conversation wasn't as difficult as you thought it would be.
- Create your own mental space and perspective.
Avoid neural flooding with techniques that allow you to see other
people's actions towards you as not personal. For example, imagine the other person as a localized natural disaster, such
as a tornado or thunderstorm, that is only around that person and from which you are completely safe.
- Don't be the "pointy haired manager" from Dilbert.
If someone is afraid of you, they will be harder to work with.
The team member who seems like a problem may be unhappy, or scared of speaking up.
- Build productivity, not rapport.
You may never get along with some people. Find a way to work with them, and don't
worry if you never find them likeable.
- Imagine that you're fine, it's your environment that's the problem.
Promoting effective conflict resolution within
the entire organization will make conflicts within your team easier to deal with. Talk to upper management about the time
and money that can be saved by dealing with conflict efficiently. For more information on how to calculate the costs of
conflict in an organization, go to Measuring Conflict: Both The
Hidden Costs and the Benefits of Conflict Management Interventions, and Conflict Management Toolbox
- Clean your desk.
Take care of the things in your working environment that distract and annoy you – the flickering
light, the stack of papers you keep knocking over, the empty cans of Mountain Dew. Eliminate the drain on your energy
that these distractions make. For more ideas long these lines, to to
Five Steps to Higher Creativity: Engaging the Human Spirit
- Learn a foreign language.
If you have a hard time understanding your team members, do a quick Web search for basic
information about their job. Eliminate bafflement and frustration by speaking their language.
- Learn how to be a kung fu fighter.
Take a martial arts class or a self-defense class, read books about how to deal
with difficult people, talk to people you know who are good at it. Gain confidence by knowing you can handle yourself in
a fight, physical or verbal. For more information on verbal self-defense techniques, go to
How Verbal Self-Defense Works
- Get a dog.
Or a cat. Studies show that your heart rate and blood pressure decrease when you're petting your pet.
- Call in a referee.
Get a trained mediator in to help the people in conflict fix the problem and stop distracting
you.
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