We all experience some degree of conflict at work. The nature of this conflict ranges from the subtle “ruffle of the feathers” we experience during a meeting when a certain person expresses themselves, to more dramatic interactions resulting in raised voices and hurt feelings.
After all, conflict is natural when a group spends eight hours a day working together. These work teams become your “work family” and no families are exempt from conflict.
Even though workplace conflict is natural (and will always be present in some form), any conflict that isn’t navigated well can diminish productivity, creativity, and eventually lead to high turnover, all of which negatively affects your bottom line.
Instead, we can (and should) focus on managing and resolving conflict when it arises, starting with leadership.
What Is Conflict?
Conflict resolution experts and authors Wilmot and Hocker define conflict as “a felt struggle between two or more interdependent individuals over perceived incompatible differences in beliefs, values, and goals, or over differences in desires for esteem, control, and connectedness.”
In other words, two or more people aren’t getting along. It just doesn’t sound fun!
And in truth, most people spend their energy actively avoiding conflict. Conflict feels destabilizing and threatening to what humans thrive on: stable social connection.
When conflict remains unresolved, our connection to those around is threatened. And to make matters worse, conflict is often perceived as a threat to the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which triggers our fight, flight, or freeze response. This takes our thinking brain temporarily “offline,” resulting in us saying or doing things that often harm both personal and professional relationships.
Teaching workplace teams how to navigate conflict in ways that restore and strengthen relationships—instead of tearing them down—is an important part of building conflict resilience. And part of building this capacity is teaching team members to regard conflict not as a negative event, but instead as an opportunity.
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), A.J. Garcia reframes conflict as a messenger “signaling unmet needs, unexpressed feelings, or differing perspectives.” This paradigm shift can help socialize productive conflict management and can help embed the idea that conflict navigated well can point the way toward more effective communication, problem solving, and higher team excellence.
Add this productive perspective to a work environment that uses common conflict navigation language and common protocols designed to strengthen team bonds, and you will likely avoid many of the harmful effects of unresolved conflict in your team.
Leader Conflict Resolution Skills: You Must Begin at “Home”
While it’s admirable to want to jump in, transforming the skills of everyone on your team right away, leaders must first look to themselves so that they’re prepared to lead others.
Self Awareness
Implementing conflict resolution strategies in the workplace usually requires a “top down” approach. This means that, as a leader, not only do you have to build capacity to navigate conflict well, but also you must become “deeply at home” with the discomfort that often accompanies navigating conflict and your personal triggers that, unmanaged, can cause or inflame conflict.
You must also become aware of your own “growth opportunities”, which do not usually become apparent until you are challenged in a particular conflict scenario and fail to manage it well.
These kinds of failures are the fertilizer for our growing self awareness and growing capacities. This is the key to emotional intelligence!
Vulnerability
Dare to Lead author Brené Brown points to the ability to be vulnerable as a foundational leadership skill. But it’s not a comfortable experience. As humans, we generally move toward pleasure and away from discomfort, so “leaning into” the discomfort of vulnerability runs counter to our instincts.
Vulnerability as a leader in the workplace can look like providing space for all voices to be heard and valued. And when all voices are given a platform, those voices may offer perspectives that cause conflict within you because they may implicate your proficiencies as a leader.
It can feel downright threatening to your identity to receive negative feedback. And we know what happens to our nervous system when it perceives a threat (see above explanation). Yet effective conflict resolution requires first that we bravely face this discomfort.
In her book, Leading with Dignity, author, international mediator, and Harvard professor Donna Hicks tells us that we have an innate resistance to feedback because “the fight to preserve self is fierce.” And yet, without feedback from others, we don’t grow because our blind spots are not illuminated.
Ability to Create Psychological Safety
I turn to Harvard Business scholar and professor Amy Edmondson for the crucial characteristics of psychological safety.
As a leader, you must be able to cultivate a culture where mistakes can be productively discussed, where people can be candid without fear of repercussion, where your team can offer out-of-the-box ideas without fear of being put down or shut down.
In short, you must be able to cultivate a culture upon which psychological safety is the bedrock.
When you have a culture that supports all these things, it doesn’t mean hard things are not discussed or that we say “yes” to every idea that is expressed. Neither does it mean that we don’t demand excellence. Instead, it means that we have built a container where those discussions are navigated productively, with candor, civility, and compassion.
However, you will not be able to create this culture without understanding your own capacities and triggers. Growing this type of culture will feel like trying to grow a palm tree in Chicago unless you do the work of discovering and working through your “narratives” around mistakes, candor, or negative feedback.
Learn How To Handle Conflict
These capacities are not built with a two-hour, two-day, or even two-week training. Those training opportunities can be a starting point to your journey. But make no mistake, this is a journey, and one that the longer you are on, the more you will realize how much you need to grow.
This is a path devoted to learning about yourself so you can transform your team into skilled conflict navigators themselves.
So, buckle up for the ride! It’s sure to be entertaining, illuminating, and if you are willing, humorous—so long as you don’t take yourself too seriously.