Getting angry seldom helps in achieving someone’s goals. I would say in a business context and during the organizational conflict, this is even more amplified, and if not managed correctly you can hit a wall and simply will not be able to get your own targets achieved. Conflict management is a crucial skill and difficult to master, especially during a situation where your emotions come up.
In this article, I would like to discuss strategies and tactics that help me handle conflicts better. This is a wide topic as you could cover many aspects of life, here I will focus mainly on conflicts in the context of work and business.
Content-wise I will differentiate in handling conflict that you maybe have to manage between others and how to better handle conflict situations in case you are directly affected and the tactics to react better under emotional pressure.
Before discussing how to handle conflict it is important to understand the potential causes.
Conflict causes
In a business environment the most common reasons for conflict are:
- Communication or lack thereof. Communication is one of the top factors causing conflicts. It is not always easy to see what the root cause is but it is often either a gap in communication, bad communication (wrong formulated or angry sounding mail, or something said in a way that angered someone else), or a simple misunderstanding
- Unclear responsibilities. Unclear responsibilities can lead to duplication of effort or dropped tasks which naturally creates conflicts during projects or daily work
- Relationships. In the business world, just as in the real world, you have different personality types and characters. Often conflict situations are simply observed due to interpersonal issues.
- Resource scarcity. Money, Resources, and time are always limited. Fighting for getting resources is another common conflict source.
- Conflicting goals. Even if a company has one common strategy or clear target there might be units with different goals ⇒ Example: the Development team wants to continuously introduce new features vs. the operations team that wants a stable landscape with as few changes as possible.
- Task conflict. This is s a conflict related to disagreement on what should be done or the nature of the task between team members or teams.
- Process conflict. A process conflict is a lack of agreement on how work should be completed or different processes in teams is another root cause for challenges in collaboration.
Now that you are able to identify the underlying reasons for conflict let’s discuss what you can do to handle the situation.
Handling conflict – outside in
No matter your role in a company if you work as part of a team or cross teams you will sooner or later encounter a situation where there is friction between individuals or teams. Often it is in your interest to resolve it to get the next steps done.
The good thing in this situation is that you are not loaded already with emotion which usually makes it easier to mediate between the parties.
The steps that I take to tackle such conflicts are:
- Understand the problem and the source of the conflict. Ask questions till you understand the situation completely. In most cases, the issue is bad or lack of communication on a certain level. In others maybe one of the above-mentioned ones. Try to understand the history, when the conflict popped up, and what the individuals try to achieve. I put this as the first step but it might be required to have several iterations after a group or individual discussion, check past emails and minutes, and so on. Do your due diligence so that you can decide fairly.
- Talk to them as a group. Give everyone an equal amount of time to talk and be heard.
- Talk to them individually. Sometimes the conflict gets already resolved in the group discussion or at least becomes clear, however in many cases you need to talk to the affected individuals in a safe environment where they can be open and honest with you.
- Identify ways to achieve a common target A common objective is important for managing conflict and resolving it. Think about what both parties want and what they have in common. Remember usually people want to do the right thing, they might simply have a different understanding. Now that you understand the problem and talk to the parties, set up a meeting and discuss together how to move forward. Be open, communicate, discuss and brainstorm together until all options are exhausted. Those discussions can be uncomfortable, you need to stay unemotional and moderate or even decide in some cases as the unbiased party.
- Agree on the responsibilities and next steps. Once the objectives and the causing issues have been discussed align clearly who will do what and who takes responsibility for the next actions. Document the discussions and agreements.
- Keep an eye on it and decide on strategies to avoid future issues. Just because you have been able to come to an agreement does not mean that all tension is gone. Observe the collaboration and think about what can be done to prevent further strain on the relationships. (For example, introduce regular syncs or updates via email → communication as always is key)
To sum it up to handle conflict you can follow this blueprint:
- Understand the issue by
- talking to the parties as a group
- individually
- investigating mails, minutes, and past decisions
- Identify the common objectives
- if no common project goal can be identified you will find it on company level
- Bring parties together and discuss, brainstorm how to move forward with the common objectives
- Document discussion and responsibilities
- Keep an eye on it and think about conflict prevention
In some scenarios, you might need to involve other leads or managers or even HR depending on the problems. In most cases however you should be able to resolve via the above blueprint.
Don’t be afraid of conflict, managing it is a crucial skill and you can only get better with practice.
Yes, it is uncomfortable, but uncomfortable situations will let you grow.
Handling conflict – first person
Now let’s discuss how you can improve on handling conflict that you are directly involved in.
These kinds of conflicts are in my opinion the most challenging ones. Why? Because you need to master yourself and your emotions as well as overcome internal biases. The three key areas to watch out for are:
- bias towards your own work and skill
- your own emotions/ego
- time pressure or feeling the need to respond immediately to a situation
Emotions and how to deal with them
It is crucial to understand that emotions, especially anger make you more stupid than you actually are. The more emotional you become the less likely you will be able to steer the situation in a good outcome for you and likely the business.
There have been many studies and scientific papers trying to understand the correlation of emotions to cognitive intelligence as well as emotional intelligence.
Let me cite the following: *“Emotion has a substantial influence on the cognitive processes in humans, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving.” (Psychology Paper –The Influences of Emotion on Learning and Memory)*
In short, emotions are pretty primal and trigger functions in our body such as fight or flight which leads to hormonal releases and effects on our body. The brain is of course heavily affected by this. In today’s business world it seldom helps to run away or use the coffee mug to beat down your co-worker so we need to find a different way to deal with this.
Now that being said, emotions are not bad per definition, I would even say it is good to have emotions in business life as it shows that you care. However, you need to deal with your emotions properly to handle or even avoid conflict. So how can you do this?
As with all things practice makes you better. You can get control of your emotions or at least control over how you respond to your emotions.
Steps to take control
- Recognize and be aware of your emotions. You can only react properly if you understand what is happening.
- Cool off / consciously
- Take a step back and don’t immediately react – let time work for you
- Think about it, is your ego the main driver for your emotion? Is there maybe some merit to the feedback?
- Detach. This is the most powerful tool. Try to detach yourself as if you watch from the outside. This is difficult to do and requires constant practice.
- Take measured action
- After cooling off, take action and try to be logical about it and keep your emotions down as much as possible
Those steps sound easy but they are not. Getting control of your emotions takes practice… You will not get it right every time, however, you will see improvements. Making conscious efforts to follow those practices considerably improved my responses to such challenges. Of course, I am far from perfect and need to keep practicing this.
Now let’s talk about some tactics on handling conflict that will help you handle typical situations better.
Conflict tactics
In this section, I want to give you some tactics that you can use right away in situations that are quite common in business. A big challenge is that we often feel that we need to respond immediately which is never a good choice when emotions are flying high.
Tactics that you should deploy during a conflict situation
- Take your time in replying. Especially in real-time scenarios, we feel the urge to respond immediately to challenges or accusations. Instead of following your instinct take a deep breath, take a sip of water or simply pause and think. give yourself the time. This can feel uncomfortable but it is time you can use to calm yourself and think about it.
- Keep your voice even and calm. This gives the impression that you are in control of your emotions and not overly emotional. The other party might not react well and get even more aggressive, but this is to your advantage.
- Set boundaries. Especially in business, it is not ok if there is a personal attack. Make it clear that you are willing to work on a solution to whatever problem is in the room but that you expect professional and less emotional behavior.
- Try to understand the other party / keep an open mind. Often times if there is conflict, it is not just one party that is responsible. Reflect on what you could have done better to avoid it… The other part to keep in mind, people are usually not bad, they want to do the right thing. Give them the benefit of the doubt.
- Do not try to justify yourself in a public setting. The need to justify yourself is strong when getting attacked. I strongly advise against this as it simply never looks good when you try it. Instead, respond in a manner that indicates you understand the problem and that you will investigate the facts and come back with a proposal.
- Don’t answer an email as long as you are still emotional. The biggest benefit of an email is that it is asynchronous, meaning you do not have to respond immediately. Use this and put some time distance between you receiving it and answering the email. In case I cannot calm my emotions I make a conscious effort to reply professionally and let a peer or another trustworthy colleague review my mail and give feedback on which sections might be too abrasive.
Conflict resolution
To resolve the conflict you basically have to follow similar steps as the ones I already mentioned for managing conflict from the outside in. The good news in this scenario is that you can influence big parts of the discussion and actions, namely yours! Take ownership and bring it to a good solution.
The steps I generally follow are:
- I try to really understand the real problem or complaint. It is not necessarily always visible despite someone voicing the issue. Review emails, communication, and meetings that happened and talk to the individual parties
- I think about what I could have done better or what I could have done to avoid the situation. In many cases I identify some learnings that I take away and those are usually things that I can take immediate action on, such as better or more transparent communication, getting other team members on board, and more…
- Identify the common objectives or common ground
- Set up a meeting to bring parties together and discuss, brainstorm how to move forward with the common objectives
- Document discussion and responsibilities
In some unfortunate cases, the conflict might be too difficult to resolve on your own or it might be something that is escalated on a level that is no longer professional. Should that be the case, it makes sense to get a third party, official mediation, or even HR involved. In those cases getting back to normal is extremely difficult and high effort.
The best conflict resolution is to not let it escalate in the first place, which is why I put a very high emphasis on good communication, clear emails, and well-documented meetings and decisions. This works pretty well to avoid many of the typical conflicts.
Do you have good tips on how to handle conflict? What works or did not work for you? Let me know in the comments!