Keeping the Peace

You have observed a conflict between some of your team members and you realize you are the right person to help them reach a resolution. How do you KNOW this? You have carefully considered the situation, perhaps using “Can You SHOULD You Help Resolve the Conflicts Around You?” as your guide.

Your next move is all abut the HOW, as-in HOW to move forward. The optimal scenario is that you are able to prepare in advance. Today we are going to look at the first few steps to take to help you prepare. Next time we will talk about some additional steps to consider and in the future we will discuss what to do when you do not have time to prepare for a conflict.

1) Consider the conflict and identify if you have a vested interest in the outcome. (Of course you have a vested interest in the outcome because you want the conflict to be resolved, right?) What I mean is do you already know what you want the solution to be? If you do—well, okay, that makes you human—be honest with yourself and about your bias because it’s going to impact how you facilitate. You also need to consider whether or not you need to tell the other parties involved about your preference. If you are in a leadership position and you facilitate a resolution, then the parties work together and come up with some other solution.  Are you going to override their decision? Because if you are, then you really don’t need much of a facilitator resolution session. What you need is to take charge and make a decision, like this:

“Okay, you know what, Mr. A and Mr. B, I see you’re having a dispute or a conflict over this approach to doing the work and here’s how it’s going to be done. Thank you.”

2) Do you need a formal conflict resolution session with an agenda and ground rules or can you call together a couple of people for a more informal discussion over coffee or lunch? It really depends on the parties involved and the volatility of the situation.

3) Let people know what is happening and why. If you go with an informal session, you still want to give people a heads up. You don’t want to do something like this:

Two people arrive at the same coffee shop at the same time and they didn’t know they were going to be together and then it turns out YOU orchestrated the whole thing.

Tell them in advance and identify your role in the situation and say, “I’d like us to sit down for coffee and discuss the conflict that seems to be in the air.”

In a formal situation, you advise people,”I am calling us together for a meeting to discuss this current issue that we are working on. And I am the facilitator.”

4) For your formal session, set ground rules. Ground rules could be:

• One person speaks at a time
• Nobody talks over the other person
• Speak for yourself
• No personal attacks
• Keep it about business

5) Establish or reestablish roles and responsibilities. A lot of conflicts are really ‘turf wars’ or perceptions that people are overstepping their bounds. Confirmation of roles and responsibilities can set the stage for quicker resolution and avoidance of future issues around these same areas.

6) Ask participants to honestly state what they want as an outcome. You cannot promise them their outcome will be achieved but you want it out on the table. What is their expectation? What do they want?

7) Remind everyone of the common goal. This might be the project goal or a reminder about making the customer happy or about the company goal. Remind everyone that we are all here working for a common good. Remind everyone of the damage that comes from unresolved conflict and of the benefit that comes to teams and individuals who walk into conflict and come out the other end as stronger, better professionals.

Now you are ready to dig deeper into the conflict, so stay tuned because  next time we will cover how to move forward and lead your team to proactively work together to find the right solution.

Maybe you’ve mastered conflict resolution and you like to help others. Maybe you are the one that others come to for help when they have a conflict or you work in an environment where conflict occurs regularly. But somehow you find yourself stepping in and helping to resolve the conflicts around you. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It depends.

It certainly makes more sense for you to be involved in healthy conflict as opposed to unhealthy conflict. And today we will focus on healthy conflict.

What is healthy conflict? In the course of working together, it is normal to have differences of opinions about how work should be completed or who should complete the work or what is the highest priority— or similar issues. When individuals can discuss these differences in a professional manner without making it personal, that is healthy. People might become animated or passionate during this kind of conversation; but it’s clear that they care. They care about the subject at hand. They are animated and passionate about an idea, but this passion does not involve trying to hurt someone emotionally or physically.

Unhealthy conflict; is personal and hurtful. It’s when there is a disagreement and perhaps this is expressed by insulting another person, making faces at them, making nasty comments to them or making nasty comments about them behind their backs. In extreme situations, it can include threats to your personal safety or even escalate to physical violence.
Unhealthy conflict interferes with people’s ability to do their work.

Healthy debate on workplace teams can lead to better strategy and decisions and should be encouraged. Most of us work with others and that means we are accountable to someone other than ourselves. Being accountable on a team can and should mean that others will challenge you to do a better job or to follow through on a commitment. That’s good. If on your team there is never any kind of conflict or disagreement – that is weird. This is a sign that people are hiding things, perhaps they are afraid to express their true opinions or to engage in conflict.

Should you get involved? You might just have the natural inclination to step in and resolve conflicts whenever, wherever you see them. And people come to you specifically for this assistance. That does not mean you always should step in.

Conversely, some of you cannot stay far enough away from conflict. You want no part of it, not now, not ever. If you think somebody is even going to start any kind of conflict, you want to run from the room. Well, guess what? That’s not a viable approach either. There will be times when you need to step up and step in to help resolve conflicts.

Consider using these questions to decide if you should step in and put on your conflict resolution hat:

1) Are you in a leadership position? If the answer is yes, you should get involved. If the answer is no, skip to question 3. All of you have the opportunity to be a leader because leadership is not just about a role or a title. But in this situation, I’m really asking you, are you officially in a role of leadership?

2) If you are in a leadership position, do the parties involved report directly to you? Your answer to this question determines how you get involved.

If the parties involved are your direct reports or on your team, yes step in and work to resolve the conflict. If the parties are not your direct reports, are you the right person to help or should you refer it back to their management? If a conflict is occurring right in front of you and it clearly requires someone to step in right now. Then do it.

When you are in a leadership position, helping to resolve conflict is a critical part of your responsibility. Like it or not, conflict that is not resolved gracefully or not resolved at all, damages everyone. It festers and it undermines the work environment and it is bad for morale. As a leader, you have a responsibility for the environment and culture that
you’re giving to your teams, supporting your team in the best possible work environment and making sure that conflict is resolved appropriately and in a timely manner is a part of that.

3) Ask yourself, does this conflict require immediate resolution? If the answer is yes and you are the right person to assist, step in right now. (This assumes the leader is not present.) If resolution of the conflicts can be delayed, you might consider discussing it with the right member of your leadership team. Tell them what you observed and ask them if they would like you to be involved.

Some other points to consider: Not all situations require, the boss to step in. I’m not advocating keeping secrets from your management. But you DO know that your leadership does expect all of YOU to be able to solve some problems without them, right? So,
should they be involved? If it’s a major conflict, then they should be involved. If not, can you and the team work this out on your own?

Another factor to consider —are you directly involved in the conflict? Are you one of the parties directly involved in the conflict? If so you are already involved. Can you objectively facilitate the resolution or should you ask another unbiased resource to assist?

These are not hard and fast rules many situations you will need to make a judgment call. We are talking about situational leadership.
You are observing something and in the moment, you decide your strategy. You know your approach and based upon your comfort level with the conflict and the possible ways to resolve that conflict you decide how to move ahead.

Q) Margaret, I recently had my performance review and although it was a good review and I received a decent raise, I was really disappointed that I was not promoted to the next level. I was really expecting a promotion. My boss shared with me, that he was in favor of promoting me, but that his boss (our director) did not think I was ready. I have requested a meeting with our director to discuss this issue. My question to you is, how can I convince the director that I am worthy of promotion AND if I am not granted the promotion should I quit?

A) First let me tell you that I am sorry that you have been disappointed. I admire you for requesting a conversation with your director to learn his perspective about your qualifications for promotion. I would hope that your director will respect this type of initiative and that this will be a first step toward showing him that you are ready to move up.

Before you meet with the director, here are some things I ask you to ponder:

• What led you to believe that you were going to receive a promotion?
• Had you discussed the promotion and your qualifications for it with your boss?
• Are the qualifications for the promotion clear and can you clearly show that you meet or EXCEED the requirements? (In many cases it is not enough to meet the requirements; one must exceed the requirements or be obviously performing at the next level to earn a promotion.)
• Is your boss aware of and in favor of your meeting with the director to discuss your promotion? You don’t want to be perceived as going behind your bosses back.

When it is time for your meeting, be prepared to listen. When the meeting starts you will have to discern whether or not the director wants to drive the conversation or whether or not you should drive the conversation. In general, if after you come in and sit down (and perhaps after some small talk) if he does not start the conversation you should. No matter who drives the conversation you want to be calm and focused. You do not want to display anger or bitterness. It is OK to be passionate about the job and your belief in your abilities, just do not let that passion be mistaken for hostility.

Be prepared to tell him exactly WHY you are qualified. This means you should be able to provide him with a list of specific, quantifiable accomplishments. Really listen to why he tells you he does not perceive you are ready for promotion. It is OK to counter what he says with examples of why you are qualified, but be careful not to turn the discussion into an angry debate.

If the meeting ends without you receiving the promotion, make sure that you understand exactly what you need to do in the next year to prove yourself promotion worthy. Be sure you take those actions and that your results are visible to both your boss and your director.

Should you quit if you are not granted the promotion? No. Do your best to hold your head up, do an even better job and move forward. If you really cannot move forward with your current employer, you should start looking for your next job. It is generally not a good idea for any of us to quit in haste or when we are upset. You have probably heard the saying, “It is easier to look for a job when you already have a job.”

If your meeting ends with you receiving the promotion – congratulations!

Wishing you ALL the best with your scenario and I hope you will let me know what happens.

My husband turned to me and said, “Everyone here is so nice and so relaxed and so happy”. I thought about it for a minute and replied, “Well if you can’t be happy here, where can YOU be happy?”

The HERE in “Well if you can’t be happy here…” was one of the most beautiful tropical islands in the world. My thought was how could a person be unhappy when they are in the middle of paradise? I would think you would have to be really miserable or a major jerk to become upset in a place like this.

For some reason this thought stayed with me and as I walked around, a few different perspectives flitted through my mind. The first is that, I suppose some people might get so caught up in the ‘I am in paradise and on vacation, everything should go perfectly’ mindset and that they might allow any issue or imperfection to really spoil their mood. Another mindset could be that of the person who is always discontented or is hesitant to admit something is good because they are afraid it will be taken away from them. This person either does not realize they are in paradise or will never admit that they are in paradise.

But for most of us, remaining happy and relaxed when we perceive ourselves to be in an ideal situation is pretty easy. Our environment is a strong influencer of our mood, but our mood is still determined by our mindset. I was relaxed and happy because I assumed that on this fabulous vacation I was going to be relaxed and happy. I was where I wanted to be. I had already made up my mind that I was going to be happy.

Why can’t we have this mindset ALL of the time? Why wait for vacation to find it easy to be happy and relaxed. It really is all about how we choose to look at things. And if we keep finding ourselves in situations where we think, ‘This is no paradise, this is hell on earth.’ Then WHY put ourselves in these situations. We must either change our mindset or change our situations or both.

So this year, I invite you to join me as we each make our own paradise.

Mary Carol had a difficult decision to make. Her team had an important and risky system upgrade to complete. The upgrade definitely needed to occur over a weekend. The schedule was tight and many of the team members felt that the upgrade should occur over an upcoming holiday weekend. This would give them extra time just in case the upgrade did not go smoothly. Other team members hated this idea and were rebelling against the idea of giving up a weekend plus a Monday holiday.

As the senior project manager, Mary Carol would make the final decision. Before she made the call, she decided to gather the team together. She did not believe that she could get the entire team to reach an agreement, but she did hope that by listening to everyone, it would make it easier for everyone once she announced her decision. She had not made a final decision yet, she wanted to attend the meeting with an open mind.

The meeting room was filled with tension. Each ‘side’ had plenty of reasons as to why the implementation should or should not be conducted over the holiday weekend. The discussion was going poorly, until; one of the team made this statement, “It is a shame to take the whole holiday weekend, when the extra time we need to allow for issues is only about four hours.”  Another team member quickly agreed. Members from both ‘sides’ of the conflict weighed in. The actual extra time needed was about four hours.  Another team member asked, “Why can’t we start the upgrade earlier on Friday? If we can have the system earlier, we don’t need to work into Monday morning.” Everyone agreed that this would be the ideal solution.  The department manager of the group who used the system was in attendance and stated that she would be more than happy to have her team  sign off early on Friday afternoon in order to support the upgrade. This made her life easier too; after all it was her team may have had to give up the Monday holiday in order to confirm that the upgrade had been successful.

Whether Mary Carol knew it or not, she was using the collaborating approach to conflict resolution.  Collaborating is an excellent approach to use when you want to find an approach that satisfies the concerns of both parties. Collaborating involves working together to understand each other’s needs and perspectives so that together you can find creative solutions. And that is exactly what Mary Carol’s team did; together they found a creative solution to their dilemma. By collaborating the team worked through the hard feelings that were beginning to form over who was right about when the implementation should occur and everyone became committed to the new approach.

The end result was a successful implementation and a stronger team.