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Chapter 5: Conflict Management as Art and Skill

Overview

"Expecting people to resolve their differences without giving them conflict-management skills is like giving a computer to someone who's never seen one before and saying, 'Have fun using this.'"

”Pat Parenty, senior vice president and general manager, Redken, U.S.A.

Imagine yourself in each of the following situations:

At work, one of your peers says to you, "I don't see how you can call yourself a team player, you always seem to be focused on your own agenda."
You've just joined a company as a department head. One of your new staff greets you by saying, "I've been here three years . I don't need you to tell me how to do my job."
You are representing Revlon at a trade show. Someone you've never met before comes up to your booth and says, "I don't care what you say, I think Max Factor does a better job of marketing than Revlon."

How would you respond to these challenges? There are a number of options. You could choose to be dismissive and simply blow off your adversaries, saying to yourself: "Zelda is having a bad hair day." "No sense arguing with Frank, he's a control freak." "This person is clueless about what we really do." Alternatively, you could dig in and mount a point-by-point counteroffensive, or you could take the high road and ask them to explain their statements. A fourth option is to play the diplomat and try to mollify them, saying that they are entitled to their point of view and that you are certain that they have good reasons for believing what they do. And there are other decisions to be made. You could use the same approach with all three, or you may choose to be selective and employ different strategies, depending on whether your challenger is a peer, a direct report, or a stranger.

The way in which you handle conflict-charged situations like these says a great deal about your personal conflict-management style, the conflict-resolution skills you possess, and those you need to acquire.

Skills Training: The Need for Self-Reflection

During an alignment, team members take an objective look at how, as a team, they handle conflict. They look into the collective mirrorat the results of their self-assessmentto become aware of the dysfunctional behaviors that they have been engaging in as a group , such as going underground , triangulating, deferring to the leader, avoiding decision making, or abdicating responsibility. They then develop protocols, or ground rules, that are designed to stop dysfunctional practices in their tracks. Becoming aligned around goals and roles are other important steps the group takes toward working, as a team, in a new way.

Much of the "fun" of conflict management begins with the discussion of business relationships. Let's face it: Concepts such as organization and team are abstract. It is easy for me to depersonalize when I am talking about my company or my department, but it is more difficult to do when I am talking about me. A moment of truth in conflict management occurs when the action shifts to the individual: when team members look, individually, into the mirror, then compare the way they see themselves as nonassertive, assertive, or aggressive with their colleagues' view of them. These actions get to the core of conflict managementthe interactions that occur between individuals within the social space of organizations.

This self-assessment beginsand only beginsduring the alignment session. It continues, in much greater depth, afterward.

We suggest approaching individual aspects of conflict management very strategically. First, use team alignment as a platform to resolve larger, organizational issues. Then, move on to developing individual conflict-management skills. Here, timing is everything. If you fold the skill-building portion into the team alignment, you risk team overload; if you wait too long, momentum fizzles. That is the reason that individual skill building should take place as soon as possible after the alignment session.

The following pages will focus on the specific skills each individual needs to acquire and the ways in which these skills facilitate conflict resolution.