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Leading Through Conflict
By Jay E. Gary
The
legacy of the unsinkable Titanic, who struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage, has
never ceased to capture our imagination. How could the most advanced cruise
liner of its day not steer around an iceberg?
Today organizational leaders face a comparable
obstacle—mismanaged conflict. Like the icebergs of the
Practically every leader has a survivor story of ramming
into submerged conflict. Beyond the internal conflict between co-workers, or an
employee and a porcupine boss, conflict can also arise between entrepreneurs
and investors, management and labor, field operations and headquarters, or
corporations and communities.
Mismanaged conflict is distracting, emotionally draining and
stressful. It directly impacts the organizational bottom line. Interpersonal
and inter-organizational conflict may well be the most overlooked problem in
leadership today.
According to “The Dana Measure of the Financial Cost of
Organizational Conflict,” conflict can waste time, lower job motivation, incite
sabotage, degrade decision making, and all around increase absenteeism, health
costs and restructuring costs. It further reports, "Unmanaged employee
conflict is perhaps the largest reducible cost in organizations today — and
probably the least recognized. It is estimated that over 65% of performance
problems result from strained relationships between employees —not from
deficits in individual employees’ skill or motivation" (Dana Mediation
Institute, 2001, p. 1).
If conflict is inevitable, how do we deal with it? If we
can’t go around it, can we lead through it? Can we turn what appears to be our
greatest stumbling block into our greatest stepping stone?
Conflict resolution in the behavioral sciences has a rich
history. It began in the 1940s with social psychologist Kurt Lewin using T-groups to understand group dynamics of
competitiveness. Researchers in the 1960s applied these studies to the
workplace. The 1970s saw alternatives to litigation arise, namely mediation or
"alternative dispute resolution." The 1990s produced self-help
training on managing differences. Only now can leaders begin to talk
intelligently about the strategic management of conflict across the entire
organizational context (Dana, 2001).
Here are five things
leaders can do to work back from the big picture and strategically manage
conflict in their organizations:
1.
Assess the level of conflict in your organization.
No doctor would launch into a
quadruple-by-pass heart surgery before accessing the condition of their patient’s
arteries. Likewise, to strategically manage conflict you should benchmark the
problem using organizational diagnostic tools. You should estimate its
submerged costs in lost opportunities and assess the hidden forms by which it
attacks the organization.
Blake and Mouton (as cited in Bass, 1990) see organizational
conflict expressed in five ways, depending on the range of assertive to
unassertive behavior and whether workers are detached or engaged from their
co-workers. Leaders who are self-concerned and unassertive withdraw from
conflict. Leaders who are self-concerned and assertive coerce others to
suppress conflict. Leaders who are other-concerned and unassertive accommodate
themselves to conflict. Those in-between these four coping skills use compromise.
Bass summarizes, “For Blake and Mouton (1964), ideal leaders are both assertive
and concerned about others. They deal with conflict by
integrating conflicting ideas through collaborative problem solving” (p. 303).
One tool leaders can use to assess conflict is produced by Teleometrics. This psychological research firm offers a
self-scoring “Conflict Management Survey,” which is suitable for HRD diagnosis
and actual team use. The survey addresses interpersonal, group, and intergroup conflict. It also has a companion instrument for
co-worker feedback. The survey either reinforces existing worker preferences or
calls attention to areas where change is needed. In either case, the assessment
helps workers better understand their behavior in conflict situations. It even
provides a validated norm, so respondents can statistically compare their
conflict management behaviors to others (Teleometrics,
2004).
2. Make
differences management a core competency in your workplace.
Conflict resolution should be a
communication skill that is daily at work in your informal organization.
Workers should be trained to recognize the difference between mere differences
of opinion and real conflict.
Conflict, properly understood,
is “a condition between people who are task interdependent, and where one or
both feel angry, and find fault with the other, and use behaviors that cause a
business problem” (Dana, 1998, p. 8).
Walton and McKersie (as cited in
Bass, 1990) found that workplace conflict could best be managed when both
parties acted early to convert it from a win-lose conflict to a problem solving
issue where both could emerge as winners.
Dana (2001) defines this
everyday conflict resolution among workers as self-mediation. Self-mediation is
for any worker who wants more authentic relationships and recognizes their
responsibility to diffuse potential power-plays or walk-aways.
This is where workers are trained to use dialogue to shift the ‘me-against-you’
standoff to an ‘us-against-the-problem’ opportunity. It is the leader’s job to
empower the workforce to take that initiative and resolve conflict through
negotiation.
3.
Upgrade your manager’s conflict resolution skills.
Thomas and Schmidt (as cited in Dana Mediation Institute,
2001) found that 30% of a typical manager’s time was spent in resolving
conflict within their division, department or team.
Managerial skills of mediation can
include (a) identifying the problem, (b) holding preparatory meetings,
(c) reaching agreement on rules & outcomes, (d) holding the three-way
meeting between conflicting parties, and (e) setting up follow-up timelines (Dana, 1996).
Managers
need to learn how to turn conflict into constructive change and team growth.
Burns (1978) revolutionized the study of organizations with his
transformational leadership theory. He proposed that leadership was a moral
exchange between leaders and followers that lifted both toward higher values.
He called for leaders to operate at a higher value level than their followers, helping
them resolve the inconsistencies between their stated values and actual
behavior.
By realigning values and reorganizing institutions where
necessary, Burns considered leader-guided conflict as a fertilizer that grows
and governs change. So rather than use power to censor contrasting viewpoints,
leaders need to properly manage conflict to let diversity nourish innovation in
organizations.
4.
Fortify the formal system that your organization uses to resolve conflicts.
Building on assessment, self-mediation and managerial
mediation, leaders need to draw upon professional mediation when needed. Often
the call to fortify the system comes from Board policy, but gets
institutionalized through organization-wide grievance procedures,
"alternative dispute resolution" mechanisms, and legal counsel.
Mediation is the process where a
trained outside third-party uses persuasion and negotiation to help two parties
reach their own settlement. If the mediation is unsuccessful, the parties may
proceed to arbitration. This means having one or more arbitrators hear the case
and reach a binding decision.
Mediation and arbitration are great alternatives to
litigation, but the two parties must agree ahead of time to settle any
differences that might arise through this out of court procedure. The
non-profit American Arbitration Association offers industry specific guidelines
and rules for arbitration related to a full range of business disputes
involving employment, consumer, technology, health care, or trade. They administer
more than 200,000 cases a year and settle 80,000.
Here is an example of an arbitration clause in one of their
commercial contracts:
Any controversy or claim arising out of or
relating to this contract, or the breach thereof, shall be settled by arbitration
administered by the American Arbitration Association in accordance with its
Commercial [or other] Arbitration Rules [including the Optional Rules for
Emergency Measures of Protection], and judgment on the award rendered by the
arbitrator(s) may be entered in any court having jurisdiction thereof (American
Arbitration Association, 2004).
Alternative dispute clauses are becoming more
common, not only in external organizational contracts, but also in internal
manuals and procedures. They not only reinforce healthy communications through
personnel policies, but also prevent costly litigation expenses.
5.
Create a spirituality that under girds work.
The final step in strategically managing conflict is to view
your organization as a spiritual organism that provides its members with
meaning and community. Today’s organizations are increasingly being transformed
from hierarchical, top-down bureaucracies into diverse, bottom-up partnerships.
As a result, knowledge workers are looking to their jobs to fulfill their
highest aspirations.
Rather than just reducing conflict, learning organizations
are focusing on increasing convergence. They see their mission as helping their
workers achieve balance and fulfillment in all areas of their life: physical,
mental, emotional and spiritual. Fry refers to this more holistic leadership as
“spiritual leadership.” This entails:
1. creating a
vision wherein organizational members experience a sense of calling in that
their life has meaning and makes a difference;
2. establishing a
social/organizational culture based on altruistic love whereby leaders and
followers have genuine care, concern, and appreciation for both self and
others, thereby producing a sense of membership and feeling understood and
appreciated (Fry, 2003, p. 695).
This new networked and aligned organization
thrives on challenges and is committed to offering services and products that
exceed expectations. In short, the call to strategically manage conflict must
transform even itself and build intrinsically motivated and empowered teams.
Conclusion
The day is gone when industrial
empires could lead through coercive management. Today’s information age has
created less hierarchical organizations, with greater demand for functional
integration. Adding to this, economic pressures have created more joint
ventures, strategic alliances and virtual corporations. The potential for role
conflict among managers has been heightened as organizations operate more
laterally.
This new context requires
managers not only to negotiate with their workers, but also to empower their
staff to negotiate their differences with coworkers. The reality, however, is that few mid-size corporations take a strategic approach
to managing organizational conflict.
Fortunately,
advances in applied behavioral sciences have given us a whole spectrum of
conflict resolution and team building tools. These extend from the entry-level
worker all the way up to shareholders. Leaders can now use validated research
to design a comprehensive conflict management system that addresses both their
informal and formal organization.
The call of leadership today is to recognize that conflict
need not lead to employee turnover, financial loss or organizational breakdown.
If conflict is strategically managed, greater levels of creativity can emerge
from chaos to create more effective business solutions. Properly managed then,
the next time you encounter organizational conflict, rather than steer around
it you will be able to say to your helmsman, “Full steam ahead!”
American Arbitration
Association. (2004). Drafting Dispute
Resolution Clauses - A Practical Guide. Retrieved
Bass, B. M. (1990). Bass
& Stogdill's handbook of leadership (3rd ed.).
Burns, J. M. (1978). Leadership.
Dana, D. (1996). Managing differences: How to build better relationships
at work and at home.
Dana, D. (1998). Managing Workplace Conflict, a certification PowerPoint demo.
Retrieved
Dana, D. (2001). Conflict resolution: Mediation tools for
everyday worklife.
Dana Mediation Institute.
(2001). The Dana Measure of the Financial Cost of
Organizational Conflict. Retrieved
Fry, L. W. (2003, December). Toward a theory of spiritual leadership. The Leadership Quarterly (
Teleometrics
International. (2004). Conflict Management Survey, Retrieved
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About the author:
Jay Gary is president of
PeakFutures, a foresight consulting group in Colorado
Springs,