How to turn workplace conflict into strategic advantage

In today’s business climate, the contrast between organizations that effectively manage workplace conflict and those that do not is stark. Organizations with neglected, ill-defined or immature approaches to conflict management experience a range of undesirable outcomes, from reduced productivity and poor decisions to information suppression and deadlock. At times, these escalate, causing stress and division, disrupting working relationships and leading to hostility, complaints or even legal action.

Organizations with mature approaches to conflict, in contrast, create an environment that people perceive as fair and just. Different perspectives are integrated into decisions in an environment where conflicting information flows freely.

How can leaders ensure that their organizations fall into the latter group? While conflict management is a big topic, a few key things need to happen for the efforts to be effective.

Related: 6 Strategies for Resolving Conflict at Work

Understanding conflict theory

As with any workplace phenomenon, harnessing conflict for positive results requires a shared way of describing its fundamental elements. We can begin by offering a definition of conflict that differs from the way people usually tend to view it. Rather than seeing conflict as inherently destructive, organizations with a mature approach define it as the presence of opposing views or concerns. This diversity of opinion, they acknowledge, is inherent in the human experience.

The internal strife that we see in organizations is only one way in which conflict appears.

Researchers Ralph Kilmann and Ken Thomas identified five primary ones modes of operation people default when approaching collision (disclosure: my company sells the Thomas Kilmann Collision Mode Instrument). These can be understood in terms of how people exercise different degrees of assertiveness and cooperation.

Contestants: This assertive, non-cooperative approach occurs when one party seeks to win 100%.

Conciliatory: This is a non-assertive, cooperative approach where one party lets the other take whatever they want.

Compromising: This is a somewhat assertive, somewhat cooperative approach in which both parties get some, but not all, of what they want.

Avoiding: This non-assertive, non-cooperative approach occurs when at least one party refuses to engage in the conflict.

Collaborators: This dynamic yet collaborative method occurs when two or more parties adopt a problem-solving approach that listens to the concerns of all involved.

Collaboration stands out in that it often produces an entirely new solution than what might have been originally envisioned. It requires the most skill and practice. And while it’s not suitable for every scenario, it tends to be the most underused. Not surprisingly, organizations with a mature approach to conflict tend to use this mode more often.

Identifying a team’s conflict culture

Because of life and work experience, background, and innate psychological and personal preferences, people tend to default to one of these five modes of conflict — usually without knowing it. Likewise, they often fail to consider that there may be other approaches, slipping into the mode that feels most comfortable to them.

Furthermore, based on the combination of conflict styles of its members, groups and organizations have a culture of conflict. When this culture is uncultivated, conflict tends to be unproductive—even destructive.

Therefore, self-awareness and awareness of the other is essential to developing conflict management skills. Increased awareness of conflict modes leads to a reduction in people’s tendency to immediately strike defensive or aggressive postures as conflicts arise. With strategic training and development, people’s unconscious habits and assumptions become conscious and gain perspective on the power of their choice during conflict.

In addition, their tendencies and behaviors in dealing with conflicts can now be observed, measured and improved. Teams can choose the correct mode for the conflict, instead of defaulting to how they are used to handling it.

However, before this can begin, organizations must uncover the culture of conflict. For example, an organization may find that it is biased toward viewing conflict as a threat to teamwork. Others may learn that they tend to see it as a drain on time and resources that should be avoided. However, others may see that they are predisposed to see it as a threat to leadership authority and organizational stability. These perspectives can shape the culture in which employees operate, fundamentally influencing whether they deal with conflict appropriately.

To develop greater effectiveness in conflict management, we need to know our starting point. First, organizations must reveal their biases, assumptions, and perspectives about conflict. From here, they can begin steps towards a healthier culture. Next, each team must build employees’ skills in self-awareness and awareness of others through strategic training and development. Teams will then need help transitioning to the new behaviors.

Related: 3 Ways to Use Conflict to Boost Your Startup

Choosing the best conflict approach

With this awareness comes the ability to choose the best collision mode for the scenario.

Collaboration generally produces superior decisions, particularly when applied to complex issues. However, it takes time, so it may be wise to reserve it for critical situations where a win-win outcome or an innovative solution is required.

On the other hand, when there is insufficient information to make a fair decision, temporarily avoiding the conflict may be beneficial. Provides the opportunity to collect data, research or feedback from other interested parties. Once everyone is better informed, the conflict can be revisited with a greater likelihood of a productive outcome, minimizing the risk of decisions based on misunderstandings.

Even when the optimal mode is selected, it must be implemented in an efficient manner. This includes providing a group with the skills needed to successfully navigate conflict. These may include the ability to:

• Discern people’s concerns — what they are primarily motivated to achieve — and what positions or actions they wish to take to satisfy their concerns.

• Frame an issue based on these concerns relative to the positions the parties involved initially take. Collaboration, for example, requires uncovering the concerns beneath people’s positions.

• Show his balance stability and flexibility when trying to collaborate or host, especially when the other party is stuck in Competition mode.

Reducing the cost of conflict

A final thought is that even when the conflict mode is the best for the situation, it still has a cost. Effective conflict management involves minimizing these costs.

If a leader dismisses the significant consequences of a conflict as simply the price of making the right decision, this is an indication that they lack conflict skills. A competent leader can operate in Competitive mode without challenging colleagues, in Avoidant mode while not appearing to face important issues, or in Compromising mode without seeming pushy.

Related: How to successfully manage and resolve conflict in your team

In conclusion, organizations with mature conflict management get to this point because top leadership has made it a priority and invested in their culture of conflict management and their employees. Such organizations encourage a willingness to entertain opposing views and the free exchange of information, and top leadership leads by example by developing and demonstrating their own conflict management skills.