Process Strategy and Skills for Conflict

Conflict is part of any work environment. The point that conflict exists isn’t the issue, but having an effective conflict resolution strategy to solve that conflict if it begins to impact the business is  key for any manager.  While conflict can be a creative fuel that helps teams compete and work more productively, without correct conflict management, it can easily blow up and bring everything to a halt.

Now, let’s go over the different conflict management styles and conflict resolution strategies  that you can try in your organisation.

What Is Conflict Resolution?

Conflict resolution can be stated as being the process that organisations and teams follow to solve disputes or conflict of interest that may arise between team members. Team leaders are usually in charge of conducting this process and finding the best course of action, which finds a middle ground for both parties. Resolving conflict is important for employees to feel like they are in a healthy workplace environment.

The 5 Conflict Management Styles

Most HR and business professionals use the five conflict management styles suggested in the Thomas Kilmann conflict resolution model.  These styles help them better understand how to manage different types of conflict situations. These five conflict management styles have different levels of assertiveness and cooperativeness.  In the Thomas Kilmann conflict resolution model, assertiveness is stated as being the extent to which you try to satisfy your own interests and cooperativeness is the extent to which you try to satisfy others’ concerns. Here are the 5 styles:

Accommodating: Accommodating conflict it’s the most cooperative approach which involves giving up on your concerns and satisfying the other party to avoid conflict. This can be a good approach when you’re facing low priority conflict in the workplace.

Avoiding   This conflict resolution style is self explanatory;  it consists of avoiding any conflict. While it may sound too passive, avoiding conflict can be the best choice in certain workplace situations.

Collaborating   This conflict style consists of seeing your concerns and those of the other party as equal. This means that, when resolving conflict, you will analyse each other’s interests to find a win-win solution.  It’s a more cooperative approach than a compromising conflict resolution, which is more assertive, even though it also finds the usual ground.

Competing   There are cases in the workplace where the best alternative to solve conflict is to constructively oppose the other party. This conflict management style is highly assertive and best suited for individuals with project leadership roles, as they have the authority to decide which is the best course of action.

Compromising  This style is the perfect balance between assertiveness and cooperativeness. It consists of finding a middle ground, which is seen as a solution that’s accepted by both parties but isn’t completely satisfactory for either of them.  This style is  a lot of the time used when there’s a strong conflict that needs to be solved and this middle ground is the only viable choice. In order to apply these conflict management styles, managers and business leaders need to develop certain skills to support their teams.

Conflict Resolution Skills

In order to solve conflict, you should build the following skills;

• Emotional intelligence;   As a conflict mediator, you must remain calm at all times and help others deal with their emotions.
• Leadership skills;   A good leader understands how to motivate his team and build a collaborative environment.
• Communication skills;   Effective communication with your team helps prevent conflict and facilitates the conflict resolution process.
• Interpersonal skills;   As a team leader, you need to be aware of how you interact with others and set an example.
• Project planning;   The better you plan your projects, the easier it’ll be for everybody on the team to understand their role, which reduces the chances of a conflict.
• Resource management;   Effective resource allocation helps everybody do their job.  Under allocation leads to burnout and other issues that may cause conflict in your team.

Conflict Resolution Process

There’s not a single conflict resolution process that works for all organisations or teams. However, most organisations follow a similar process.

Here are six simple conflict resolution steps you can follow as a mediator when solving a conflict;

Identify the Root Cause of the Conflict

Before anything,  it’s important to understand what the conflict is and then find the main causes of the problem. When dealing with conflict within team members, it’s important to hear what the parties have to say about the incident. You can use root cause analysis techniques for more complex conflict that involve lots of causes and adding factors.

Identify the Concerns of Both Parties

Once you’ve understood the overall nature of the conflict and its main causes, you will need to understand what the opposing parties want from this conflict resolution process, which will consist in finding a solution that’s accepted by both.

Identify Conflict Resolution Barriers

Before finding a solution, take time to identify the barriers that may slow down the conflict resolution process and try to remove them.

Choose a Conflict Resolution Style

Consider the previous steps to choose the conflict resolution style that best fits your particular case.  In some cases you may need to tell someone they’re wrong, find a partially satisfactory middle ground, or build a win-win solution that satisfies both parties. This analysis should be done on a case-by-case basis.

Find a Solution to the Problem

After implementing a conflict management style, you should have a viable solution that solves the conflict. Before implementing any solutions, make sure that the conflict participants agree on the solution and agree themselves to it.

Check If the Conflict Persists

The conflict resolution process shouldn’t finish once you solve the conflict by finding a solution.  It’s very important that you follow up with the team to make sure the conflict has been successfully solved.

By following some of the direction above, leaders can implement systems and processes within their business to make sure they work through any conflict that employees maybe experiencing. Provide training to your managers and leaders so that you are  covered both internally with employees, but you are also covered externally legally.