Transforming Organizational Conflict Into Enterprise Growth
Occasional conflict is really a fact of organizational life. There are a variety of reasons why it arises, a few of which are normal and natural. However, left unaddressed and unmanaged, conflict increases business risk and financial loss as well as reduce work performance quality. In circumstances of prolonged tension, employees’ vision becomes myopic as well as their look at the organization’s future (and their own future with the organization) becomes blurred. Shortsighted making decisions and reactive defensive behaviors damage the company’s ability to achieve long-term goals.
Wonderful these harmful ramifications of something that inevitably happens in every organization, it behooves leaders to identify all current intrinsic environmental and behavioral factors that contribute to the periodic occurrence of disharmony. Only when you thoroughly and understand fully the systemic causes of disputes throughout your organization can you craft thorough, complete and enduring resolutions to conflicts that will simultaneously strengthen the connection bonds among all affected personnel. As we’ll discover later in the following paragraphs, conflict, well managed, can actually increase employees’ need to collaborate and strengthen their resolve for interact to attain departmental and company goals.
Examining the causes of conflict isn’t the primary purpose of this short article. Generally people know what can cause conflict in their lives as well as in their jobs. Rather, I’ll focus on how to redirect time and that conflict siphons from legitimate business activity into solid enterprise growth.
Leadership’s Role
Although it would appear to do this, conflict does not create energy. Rather, it diverts existing energy and subverts efforts to focus that energy on accomplishing organizational objectives. When human energy becomes diffused through conflict it goes “off target” and into activities which are frequently subversive and injurious to the continued viability of the organization. This leads to “process loss” in that the intended outcomes of processes aren’t achieved because of the unavailability from the energy that is needed to achieve them.
The main task of leadership is to manage people’s time to realize the organization’s intentions. By developing an unambiguous approach to human energy management and conflict resolution and prevention, leaders will be equipped to reclaim sidetracked energy and recapture any process loss resulting from occasional or chronic conflict.
Energy Flow
For those who have conflict, the usual attending emotions are anger and fear exacerbated by an involuntary rush of adrenaline and other hormones throughout your body. If the discord is thought to become particularly hostile or threatening (which is often the situation even in innocuous and benign situations), you have an outburst of one’s in preparation to complete one of two things: fight or flee. This redirects the energy you would well be expending on enterprise-related endeavors toward self-preservation. This appears to be a “hard-wired” instinct for all people, one that occurs without conscious choice or control. Such a quick redirection of the flow of energy often overwhelms the reasoning process and heightens some of the physical senses while diminishing others. For example, the concept of vision narrows considerably to focus on the perceived threat because the hearing diminishes specific and acute. Prepared using what it takes to do something with overwhelming force to accomplish a vital objective, the option of what is the best action to take is unfortunately not a definite one. When clarity of thought is most needed it is least available.
It doesn’t mean, however, that whenever conflict occurs only bad decisions will be made. But good decisions are deliberately made and consider all pertinent immediate data as well as potential consequences of both intended and unintended outcomes. This takes some time. It requires focused energy and a All over understanding of your environment. During conflict time and energy it requires to create good decisions for the organization is diverted toward self-preservation thereby helping the likelihood that less than desirable decisions for the company will be made. Any company that can cause specific and well-thought-out conflict risk management policies and procedures can in fact turn conflict into a strategic competitive advantage by channeling human energy in any discordant situation to flow toward improving work relationships.
The Dangers of Unresolved Conflict
The danger of occasional conflict is that it will not be resolved inside a timely and thorough manner. In this instance, the actual sources and factors from the conflict linger and fester. As with anything negative that’s hidden or ignored, these contributors to conflict grow in perceived significance and power to adversely affect how one lives and works.
Unresolved conflict, regardless of how initially inconsequential the conflict can happen to be, will ultimately degrade the liveliness from the organization. At best, people will emotionlessly go through the motions of labor and, at worst, they will actively try to undermine the enterprise. Either way, the caliber of work and business outcomes with time declines to depths that gradually helps make the organization’s expereince of living untenable.
When occasional conflict is left unresolved it becomes a chronic supply of future disharmony. When it flares up again its negative impact on the operating environment gets to be more acute and destructive because of the remembrance of past similar conflicts and the intervening growth of negative emotions and resentments surrounding those previous experiences.
These submerged negative emotions constitute a lot of the fuel for that “fires” that managers often complain about. They lament that much of their own time and energy is diverted away from the important issues they need to deal with to be able to grow the company. Consequently (and also to mix the metaphor), they frequently seem like they’re in over their heads treading water or worse, drowning. Discontent and malaise would be the prevailing perspectives informing the job environment and managing the time and effort of disgruntled employees does, indeed, take a whole lot of a leader’s time and energy. The momentum of the organization slows and finally halts because of the dissipation and diffusion of human energy. When energy flows everywhere, it cannot move a business in a specific direction.
Following is a listing of the results of unresolved conflict in a organization that can lead to its slow but sure decline:
o Conflict spreads by feeding on negativity which means that nobody sees it as “their” problem; resolution is considered to be somebody else’s problem
o Chronic conflict becomes acute and urgent; this increases business risk, financial losses and can speed movement toward litigation
o Conflict erodes performance leading to process breakdowns and unintended outcomes
o Conflict distorts focus leading to lack of connection with the realities from the external and internal environments producing a muddled look at the marketplace
o Conflict dilutes enterprise resources resulting in wasted time, energy and funds
o Conflict fights change resulting in overt and covert resistance, resentment and revenge; beneficial and necessary change is thwarted or perhaps is effected past too far
o Conflict attacks quality and service through “foot dragging” and retaliatory activities; this results in loss of customers and edge against your competitors
The fast Resolution Solution
To resolve conflicts quickly there must be an unambiguous resolution process in place along with a clear knowledge of the skills involved in participating successfully inside it. This method needs to be crafted to serve the long-term economic interests of the business in its efforts to attain strategic objectives and goals and not simply to ameliorate interpersonal strife brought on by misunderstandings or injured feelings.
This is when many conflict resolution processes go awry: they focus exclusively around the personal issues and emotions from the parties involved and do not look at the systemic cultural sources that trigger and sustain conflict. Examples of the latter could include inequities in workload distribution inside the same department and differences in management supervision approaches and practices among different departments. Further to the point, the possible lack of a clear communication process that holds both speaker and hearer responsible for the timeliness, thoroughness, accuracy and consistency of intentional messages, both verbal and written, may be the primary cause of a principal supply of conflict: misunderstanding. Until these kinds of fundamental elements of organizational culture are honestly scrutinized and then any shortcomings corrected, regardless of how well conflict seems to be initially resolved it will reignite later without warning.
Any effective resolution to organizational conflict must have an unmitigated study of the organization’s structure, policies, procedures and processes and must accomplish three ends:
o Lessen the risks of failure to achieve objectives and goals
o Prevent loss of financial investment, asset value and human capital
o Recover negatively impacted performance to ensure that business outputs are measurably improved
Furthermore, all personnel will need to be been trained in simple yet effective relationship development skills to allow them to confidently engage others with whom they are incompatible to:
o identify the primary issue(s) in the center of the dispute
o establish agreement that there is a better method to maintain relationship which “anyone who angers you conquers you”
o enter a simple resolution procedure that they and all sorts of employees have experienced a hand in creating and commit to stay in until a mutually satisfactory resolution is achieved
This simple conflict resolution process involves the following:
1. Initiating non-judgmental dialogue with a co-worker
2. Investing in participating in the procedure, cooperating using the rules of engagement because they are defined by the process and also to listening the whole time
3. Stating the problem in terms that remove the other’s defensiveness
4. Removing environmental obstacles and challenges in the meeting time and place that typically cause communication efforts to fail (i.e., no uninterrupted privacy, noisiness, too close to meal time, etc.)
5 Agreeing to approach the problem less “me-against-you” but as “us-against-the-problem”
6. Acknowledging naturally occurring conciliatory gestures, such as admission of misunderstanding as well as culpability, apologizing, expressing responsibility for that consequences of one’s behavior, etc.
7. Forming simple agreements that prevent recurrence of conflict by soliciting specific supportive behaviors and verbal encouragement from all anyone who has been affected by the conflict and, therefore, possess a stake in its resolution
Resolutions that leave this type of process quickly release arrested energy and allow it to be steered toward goal accomplishment. Ironically, the experience of conflict becomes a component in a shared history between colleagues that serves to bond them later on interactions. The tension, anxiety and stress that are relieved by means of mutually addressing and resolving conflict transform into a predisposition toward cooperative behavior. The lifting from the emotional weight brought on by conflict generates enthusiasm, creates a collaborative spirit and builds hopefulness for a better future in addition to a need to maintain an atmosphere by which these emotions and behaviors can thrive.
The Conflict Log
An important step in a quick resolution solution is to chronicle conflicts by documenting in a “conflict log” all manifestations of conflict within the organization. Each example is analyzed regarding date of occurrence, personal as well as structural causes, internal and external environmental contributors, all attempts at resolution, outcomes, duration of initial resolution, amendments to initial agreements and instances of reoccurrence and subsequent outcomes. This history and encyclopedia of conflict inside your organization will help to easily identify the patterns and sources that give rise to and fuel conflict between and among individuals and sections. When in disagreement, the parties involved can easily consult the log to assist them within their understanding and appreciation from the dynamics of the conflict in which they are currently engaged.
Create a Conflict Risk Management Strategy
A clearly defined and communicated conflict resolution process is only area of the organization’s overall conflict risk management strategy. A conflict risk management technique is simply a detailed plan that clearly states the environmental reasons for conflict, their current negative effect on the organization’s forward momentum toward accomplishing its goals, all specific deleterious effects on its finances and prospects for growth and a concisely written listing of all of the behaviors contributing both to conflict and it is resolution. It furthermore identifies the resulting good things about individuals and processes the resolutions of conflicts may have. However it goes one step further in that it details the methods in which the energy that is freed up by means of constructive resolution could be practically put on existing business processes and improvement efforts.
Any effective conflict risk management strategy must include:
1. Specific corrective actions which will concurrently take away the disruptive effects of conflict all facets of the operating environment
2. Identification of processes, procedures, policies and behavioral patterns that contribute to recurring conflicts
3. A detailed plan to eliminate these contributors to conflict in the operating environment
4. A list of proven methods and behaviors that quickly resolve conflict by identifying after which addressing the actual environmental and/or personal root causes
5. An itemized agreement template to be completed by those who work in conflict agreeing to alter their focus from “me-against-you” to “us-against-the-problem”
6. A summary of detailed scenarios by which processes are delineated to harness the liberated time and energy available these days for productive ends
When designing and implementing your conflict risk management strategy, you will need to measure the entire business environment to determine the relevant factors and forces at work within the dispute. In other words, you will need to approach conflict and its causes inside a holistic manner. Your objectives is to remove all contributing sources in your operating environment that feed the continuation and escalation of conflict while transforming the energy that is bound up by conflict into positive momentum toward productive business outcomes.
Managers will have to be equipped with conflict resolution skills which allow them to place organizational conflict resolution in to the larger context of strategic business issues that require their attention. Solutions need to be reality based and driven by project management disciplines that bring measurability and accountability for all relevant parties in each and every resolution.
Results of a highly effective Conflict Risk Management Strategy
o Conflict is everybody’s business
o Conflict is resolved quickly and conflict-related risk and loss is permanently removed
o Conflict can be used like a performance recovery tool
o Conflict sharpens focus on strategic business objectives and goals
o Conflict can be used to recognize and prevent waste through conservation and enhancement of assets
o Conflict can be used strategically to build collaboration, commitment and civility
o Conflict can be used to identify and design corrective actions
Simple conflict resolution skills for risk reduction, loss prevention and gratifaction recovery really are a vital facet of your conflict risk management strategy. These skills, together with the quick resolution solution process will make resolving differences between personnel a natural part of the daily operating environment in your organization. In a nutshell, it is a competitive edge that will drive enterprise growth.