If one disagrees with or competes with another, there is a psychological tendency to develop negative attitudes toward the other person. Moreover, the tactics of competition, debate, and bargaining over substantive differences contain points of friction and are likely to result in feelings of being attacked, in perceptions that the other is unfair, and so on.
The following are examples of conflicted relationships in organisational settings:
1. Two managers needed to work together but continued to cancel each others ideas and blunt each others initiatives.
2. Members of a production divisional staff were engaged in a disruptive conflict, which resulted in ill-defined goals and poorly coordinated activities.
3. Two members of a production team continually had disagreements that frustrated the development of the teams self-management capabilities. In each case the conflict was continual, had become embedded in the relationships, and interfered with individual and joint performances.
Aspects of conflict
Conflict becomes manifest by tactics and resolution overtures. They include expression of feelings - of conflict (anger, attack, avoidance, rejection) and of conciliation (regret, sympathy, warmth, support). They also include both the competitive strategies intended to win the conflict, such as blocking, interrupting, deprecating others, forming alliances, outmaneuvering the adversary, and one-upmanship; and the cooperative strategies intended to end the conflict, such as concessions and search for integrative solutions. A paradoxical aspect of organisational groups is the situation where each group believes they have discovered or understood the nature of the other and believe it to be a permanent trait with no hope of change. Group members refuse to believe they are responsible for the behaviour of the others. They believe the others act as they do because of their moral deficits. Does this sound familiar?
What is the basis of organisational conflict? Experts believe it primarily stems when the vision or mission - the intent of the organisation, is not clear or not understood, and/or the roles and relationships needed to achieve that purpose are not clear or working well. Should we be concerned about organisational conflict? Yes. In my work with public and private sector managers and supervisors as well as with people in educational institutions, the issue that generates the most emotion and frustrated comments is conflict. I suspect that we generally do not look at conflict as an opportunity but tend to think about conflict as unpleasant, counter-productive and time-consuming. A typical reply I elicit from people when I ask if conflict is desirable in organisations is "Yes - but within limits". The problem is where to draw the line on limiting conflicts.
One can view conflict in a number of ways. One traditional view is of organisations which value orderliness, stability and the repression of any conflict that occurs. Common remedies would be to further elaborate job descriptions, authorities and responsibilities, separate conflicting members, to name a few. This view of organisation and conflict causes problems - because this only fits organisations that work in routine ways, where innovations and change are virtually eliminated. Trying to "structure away" conflict and disagreement in a dynamic environment requires tremendous amount of energy and will also suppress any positive outcomes that may come from disagreement, such as improved decision-makings and innovations. The other view is the functional view of organisational conflict which sees conflict as a productive force, one that can stimulate the members of the organisation to increase their knowledge and skills, and their contribution to organisational innovation and productivity. The successful organisation thus needs conflict so that diverging views can be put on the table and new ways of doing things can be created. The view suggests that conflict provide people with feedback about how things are going. After all, personality conflicts indicate to the managers what is not working in an organisation affording the opportunity to improve. Rather than trying to eliminate conflict, or suppress its symptoms, your task becomes managing conflict so that it enhances people and organisations, rather than destroy people and organisation.
Identifying conflict and avoiding pitfalls
Heres a symptom check for conflict in your organisation. You know you have more than a conflict situation in your organisation when: many conflicts run for years; people have given up on resolving and addressing conflict problems; there is a good deal of private bitching and complaining but very little attempt to fix the problem; staff show little interest in working to common goals, but spend more time and energy on protecting themselves. In such a situation, there is a tendency to blame the manager or formal leader for the mess. Though responsibility on managers is critical in conflict determination, the role of avoidance must be a shared responsibility.
To illustrate, some repressive strategies are explained here. These approaches are altogether undesirable, and should be avoided.
Non-action: This means doing nothing. This might be a smart thing to do, provided the decision is well thought out and based on proper analysis of the situation. But more often than not, the situation instead of "blowing away", blows straight back on the face. This generally results in conflict escalating, which the organisation represents as "we dont have conflict here". Everyone knows you have conflict, excepting you - as you keep denying it at your own cost.
Administrative orbiting: Here all appeals for change or redress are always "under consideration". Where non-action does not even acknowledge the problem, administrative orbiting acknowledges the problem, but avoids dealing with it. The typical reply to this activity is "we are dealing with the problem"., but the problem never gets addressed. Stalling tactics include collecting more data, documenting performance, canceling meetings, to name a few.
Secrecy: Here, the notion is that if nobody knows what you are doing, there can be little conflict. This is absurd. By being secretive you may delay conflict and confrontation, but when it does surface, it will have far more negative emotions attached to it than would have been the case if things were more open.
Law and order: Some managers mistakenly believe that they can order people not to be in conflict. Using regulations and power, the person using the approach "leans on" people to repress the outward manifestation of conflict. The result? It just sends conflict scuttling to the underground, where it will grow and increase its destructive power. In short, the notion that conflict should be avoided is one of the major contributors to the growth of destructive conflict in the workplace
Strategies for handling conflict
Organisations want diversity, but diversity brings conflict. We dont want conflict because that slows us down both operationally and in terms of morale. So what do we do? The answer is a training and communication regimen aimed directly at putting these issues on the table and dealing with them. You could begin with a well developed, structural orientation. New employees need to understand that yours is a culture that encourages a strong generalist background in every employee, no matter how specialised their work role. For this, cross-training must be a structured on-going process for every single employee throughout their tenure with the organisation. The languages and practices of all organisational departments must be understood and appreciated. Employees need to understand whats going on beyond the boundaries of their own departments. Improvement issues should be an on-going part of your operating strategy. Social events should be structured to encourage employees to get to know and appreciate each other outside of the work environment. Many people, including management experts believe that the absence of conflict is not harmony, but apathy (Kathleen Eisenhardt et al).
Healthy conflict can quickly turn unproductive. A comment meant as a substantive remark can be interpreted as a personal attack. Because most executives pride themselves on being rational decision makers, they find it difficult even to acknowledge, let alone manage, this emotional, irrational dimension of their behaviour. According to Eisenhardt et al, the "challenge is to encourage members of management teams to argue without destroying their ability to work together". (An oft-repeated statement and I am sure many of you are wondering how to implement such a workplace system). They suggest the following:
One, to focus on the facts. More information is better - if the data are objective and up-to-date because it encourages people to focus on issues, not personalities. In the absence of good data, executives waste time in pointless debates over opinions. More opinion is better. There is a direct link between reliance on facts and low levels of interpersonal conflict. Facts, (such as sales, market shares, R|D expenses and competitors behaviour) depersonalise the discussion because they are not someones fantasies, guesses or self-serving desires. In the absence of facts, individuals motives are likely to become suspect. Building decisions on facts creates a culture that emphasises issues instead of personalities.
Second, multiply the alternatives. Sometimes one or two alternatives may not suffice. Deliberately developing multiple alternatives to promote debate - like introducing and shaping options may help in enhancing teamwork - such as combining elements of different options.
Third, framing strategic choices as collaboration rather than competitive exercises. This, in spite of the fact about executives share or stake in the companys performance, yet their personal ambitions may make them rivals for power. One solution to this is by creating a common goal which the team could rally. Such goals do not imply homogenous thinking, but they do require everyone to share a vision. Care needs to be taken where a team may respond to a particular instance of poor performance, thereby trying to pin the blame on one another. Hence, sharing a common goal would imply viewing a crisis not as a threat but as an opportunity to be fully prepared for an impending competitive battle.
Fourth, using humour too handle conflict - however construed the humour - can relieve tension and at the same time promote a collaborative atmosphere and can make teams business fun. Humour works as a defense mechanism to protect people from stressful and threatening situations that commonly arise in the course of making strategic decisions. Speakers can say in jest things that might otherwise give offense because the message is serious and not serious at the same time. The recipient is allowed to save face by receiving the serious message while appearing not to do so. The result is communication of difficult information in a more tactful and less personally threatening way.
A fifth tactic for taming inter-personal conflict is to create a sense of fairness by balancing power within the management team. Research suggests that autocratic leaders often tend to generate high levels of inter-personal friction. Weak leaders also engender inter-personal conflict because the power vacuum at the top encourages managers to jockey for position.
Inter-personal conflict is lowest in balanced power structures, those in which the CEO is more powerful than the other members of the top management team, but the members do wield substantial power especially in their own well-defined areas of responsibility. In balanced power structure, all executives participate in strategic decisions.
Sixth, seek consensus with qualification. Balancing power is one tactic for building a sense of fairness. Finding an appropriate way to resolve conflict over issues is another and more crucial. Research has shown that the teams that managed conflict effectively used the same approach in resolving substantive conflict. It is a two-step process that is called consensus with qualification. It works like this: executives talk over an issue and try to reach consensus. If they can, the decision is made. If they cant, the most relevant senior manager makes the decision, guided by the input from the rest of the group.
K M Eisenhardt et al have suggested five approaches that help generate constructive disagreement within a team. They are:
1. Assemble a heterogeneous team, including diverse ages, genders, functional backgrounds and industry experience.
2. Meet together as a team regularly and often.
3. Encourage team members to assume rules beyond their obvious product, geographic or functional responsibilities.
4. Apply multiple mind-sets to any issue (e.g. role playing, war games, putting yourself in your competitors shoes). Actively manage conflict.
Creative abrasion
According to Dorothy Leonard and Susaan Straus (1997), conflict or creative abrasion, can be productive. According to them, managers have two responses to conflict: Firstly, managers who dislike conflict actively avoid the clash of ideas. They hire and reward people of a particular stripe, usually people like themselves. Their organisations fall victims to what they call comfortable clone syndrome: co-workers share similar interests and training; everyone thinks alike. The end result is that such a group will struggle to innovate, often in vain.
Secondly, managers who have employees with a variety of thinking styles frequently dont understand how to manage them. They overlook the fact that people with different styles often dont understand or respect one another, and that such differences can fuel personal differences.
The manager, successful at fostering innovation, figures out how to get different approaches to grate against one another in a productive process called creative abrasion. Such a manager understands that different people have different thinking styles: analytical or intuitive, conceptual or experiential, social or independent, logical or values driven.
According to Leonard and Straus (1997), cognitive differences (or varying approaches to perceiving and assimilating data, making decisions, solving problems and relating to other people) are preferences (not to be confused with skills or abilities). For instance, you may prefer to approach problems intuitively but in fact may be better trained to approach them analytically. The most widely recognised cognitive distinction is between left-brained and right-brained ways of thinking. An analytical, logical and sequential approach to problem framing and solving (left-brained thinking) clearly differs from an intuitive, value-based, and non-linear one (right-brained thinking).
The best way for managers to assess the thinking styles of the people they are responsible for is to use an established diagnostic instrument as an assessment tool; such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI). A well-treated tool is both more objective and more thorough than the impressions of even the most sensitive and observant of managers. The managerial challenge is to use the insights that these instruments offer to create new processes and encourage new barriers that will help innovation efforts succeed.
Leonard and Straus (1997), make some suggestions such as:
(a) Understand yourself - and identify your style;
(b) Forget the golden rule - regardless of how you personally would prefer to deliver the message, you will be more persuasive and better understood if you formulate messages to appeal to the particular thinking style of your listener.
(c) Create "whole-brained" teams - complete homogeneity in an organisations cognitive approach can be very efficient. But, no matter how brilliant the group of individuals, their contribution to innovative problem solving are enhanced by coming up against totally different perspectives.
(d) Manage the creative process - one, by classifying your companys goals in front of the group; two, making your operating guidelines explicit; and three, set up an agenda ahead of time that explicitly provides enough time for both divergent discussions to uncover imaginative alternatives and convergent discussion to select an option and plan its implementation.
Do you feel doing all this will take much time and energy? Perhaps you prefer to waste time negotiating day-to-day truces between individuals and groups? Perhaps youd rather just keep the status quo and muddle through. The choice is yours.
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