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| Picture courtesy from www.freedigitalphotos.ne |
“The gem cannot be
polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.” Chinese Proverb
Imagine we are sitting at
a nice al fresco café and as you are sip your hot coffee, I asked you to describe what is a 'healthy working
relationship'
What do you think you might say? What are the factors and components you would consider important for a relationship between colleagues to be engaging and productive? Does having a healthy working relationship mean you need to be in agreement all the time?
Would you say that a healthy working
relationship is one where everyone feels comfortable in raising conflicts, make sense of the conflicts and respond resourcefully in a timely
fashion and thereafter document and share their learning with the rest? Emm... Now wouldn't that be spectacular.
In this post I would like to begin an exploration in
Organisational Conflicts.
As HR practitioners and solution partners there are many
things we can do to help our Organisations become more graceful in dancing
with Conflicts instead of locking horns and creating a ruckus.
“You know if you look around your Department and there are no
conflicts, it only means two things; The company has either exists in
Shangri-La or people have thrown in the towel and don’t really care about
anything anymore.” These were the words of a wise Manager at a French
Pharmaceutical company I had the opportunity to work with some years ago. When put
talented and people from a diverse background in terms of culture, age,
education, experience, gender in an environment there will be differences
in opinions and that in turn is grounds for conflicts.
Sometime ago when
I was doing a project for the National Institute of Education in Singapore I
was walking along a long corridor when a simple poster struck me with Awe. It
read “ Harmony ≠ Uniformity” Oh how true! Many Leaders and managers, especially in my experience of the asian context, want to achieve
harmony the simpler way which is the “can we all just go this agree and those
of you don’t, just pretend like you do... ” approach. It’s nauseating and a vastly
unhealthy way to handle differences. The massive side effect of this is that ordinary folks in the company start to wonder what I am actually fighting for anyways?
As HR Partners its time for us to roll up our sleeves and be
candid about Conflicts in the Organisation. Be bold in talking about what they are and how we can all play a part in developing our personal emotional intelligence and having a more civil yet robust approach to conflict resolutions.
Unresolved conflicts are like
wounds that turn septic have the potential to poison the entire biology of your
Organisation. That I think most of us who have been in the working world already know. The glaring evidence is people walking out of the business because they are tired of fighting.
On the upswing when you do manage to educate your leaders and
their teams about conflicts and especially their own predominant style you are
going to foster real meaningful relationship instead of a mechanical soullessness.
So what can you do ?
1.
Help your Organisation have a deeper
appreciation of what are conflicts and how individual personality types and bias shapes the
direction a conflict takes. There are many wonderful instruments and training
programs that help you do that. (For example, even a simple training on helping
them identify the five styles of conflicts Competing, Avoiding, Collaborating,
Accomodating and Compromising has a huge effect on teams)
2.
Encourage people to be brave and positive about conflicts.
Generally speaking there are going to be three main areas people are going to
have conflicts in
a.
Core Product/Service : vision, direction,
purpose, price, value
b.
Operational Matters: logistics, costs, manpower,
workloads
c.
Customer Experience : Speed, satisfaction, care,
technology outreach
3.
Educate people (Especially the leaders) to do self reflections and
practice ethical conflict practices such as not talking about a person when
they are not present at the table (this was inspired by Jack Welch ). Separating their personal wounds from the conflict to prevent projections and transference. This I assure you will fosters greater trust amongst everyone in the team. In fact when people in the Organisation are more professional about conflicts they open up to newer possibilities and innovation. At the end of the day though conflicts can be disruptive, we can stop it from being destructive.
I love the look on people's faces when they get a peer review or a survey result about themselves. The room will be filled with this transformative energy. If you listened carefully, you can actually hear clicking noises. Its the sound of people making that connection between their history, behaviors consequences and new better choices that can make.
Workshops and programs designed to work on conflicts will always be vibrant, revitalizing and progressive for teams and Organisations. To inspire you to take on conflicts in your organization more productively let me share a quote from Buckminister Fuller, “If you want
to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them.
Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
So teach them new conflict resolution tools and if there is going to be friction let it be only those that help polish your Organisation and team to Brilliance!
