Conflict Management – Key Guidelines for Managers

Conflict Management in Office Workspace is a critical challenge for many managers – including me. Conflict is when two or more values, perspectives and opinions are contradictory in nature and haven't been aligned or agreed about yet, including:

1. Within yourself when you're not living according to your values;
2. When your values and perspectives are threatened; or
3. Discomfort from fear of the unknown or from lack of fulfillment.

Conflict is inevitable and often good, for example, good teams always go through a "form, storm, norm and perform" period. Getting the most out of diversity means often-contradictory values, perspectives and opinions.

"Conflict is not the same as discomfort. The conflict isn't the problem - it is when conflict is poorly managed that is the problem."

Conflict becomes a severe problem when it:
1. Hampers productivity.
2. Lowers morale.
3. Causes more and continued conflicts.

In my experiences, the primary managerial actions that cause Workplace conflicts are Poor communications and leadership problems.

Poor communication makes the following causes.
a. Employees experience continuing surprises, they aren't informed of new decisions, programs, etc.
b. Employees don't understand reasons for decisions, they aren't involved in decision-making.
c. As a result, employees trust the "rumor mill" more than management.

Leadership problems including inconsistent, missing, too-strong or uninformed leadership (at any level in the organization), evidenced by:
a. Avoiding conflict, "passing the buck" with little follow-through on decisions.
b. Employees see the same continued issues in the workplace.
c. Supervisors don't understand the jobs of their subordinates.

Fine, these all happens with most of the situations – but how to manage it. My mentor suggested few Key Managerial Actions / Structures to Minimize Conflicts. I am listing them below.
1. Regularly review job descriptions.
2. Intentionally build relationships with all subordinates and discuss about accomplishments, plans, challenges and issues.
3. Develop procedures for routine tasks and include the employees' input - review with employees, and distribute it. If required provide training.
4. Regularly hold management meetings, for example, every month, to communicate new initiatives and status of current programs.
5. Consider an anonymous suggestion box in which employees can provide suggestions.

More few ways for Conflict Management – from the people I discussed about this challenge. Actually, there is no one best way to deal with conflict. It depends on the current situation.
1. Avoid it. Pretend it is not there or ignore it.
2. Accommodate it. Give in to others, sometimes to the extent that you compromise yourself.
3. Competing. Work to get your way, rather than clarifying and addressing the issue. Competitors love accommodators.
4. Compromising. Mutual give-and-take
5. Collaborating. Focus on working together.

The case by case challenges can give us more lessons – learning it solves many issues, and makes us good managers in future.