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Occasional conflict is a fact of organizational life. There are a variety of reasons why it arises, many of which are normal and natural. However, left unaddressed and unmanaged, conflict will increase business risk and financial loss as well as reduce work performance quality.

In circumstances of prolonged tension, employees’ vision becomes myopic and their view of the organization’s future (and their own future with the organization) becomes blurred. Shortsighted decision making and reactive defensive behaviors damage the company’s ability to achieve long-term goals.

With all of these harmful ramifications of something that inevitably occurs in every organization, it behooves leaders to identify all current intrinsic environmental and behavioral factors that contribute to the periodic occurrence of disharmony.

Only when you thoroughly and completely understand the systemic sources of disputes throughout your organization can you craft thorough, complete and enduring resolutions to conflicts that will at the same time strengthen the relationship bonds among all affected personnel.

As we’ll discover later in this article, conflict, well managed, can actually increase employees’ desire to collaborate and strengthen their commitment to work together to achieve departmental and company goals.

Examining the causes of conflict is not the primary purpose of this article. Most people know what causes conflict in their lives and in their jobs. Rather, I will concentrate on how to redirect the time and energy that conflict siphons from legitimate business activity into solid enterprise growth.

Leadership’s Role

Although it would appear to do so, conflict does not create energy. Rather, it diverts existing energy and subverts efforts to focus that energy on accomplishing organizational objectives. When human energy becomes diffused through conflict it goes “off target” and into activities that are very often subversive and injurious to the continued viability of the organization. This results in “process loss” in that the intended outcomes of processes are not achieved due to the unavailability of the energy that is required to achieve them.

The primary task of leadership is to manage people’s time and energy to realize the organization’s intentions. By developing an unambiguous approach to human energy management and conflict resolution and prevention, leaders will be equipped to reclaim sidetracked energy and recapture any process loss resulting from occasional or chronic conflict.

Energy Flow

When you experience conflict, the usual attending emotions are anger and fear exacerbated by an involuntary rush of adrenaline and other hormones throughout your body. If the discord is thought to be particularly hostile or threatening (which is often the case even in innocuous and benign situations), you experience a surge of energy in preparation to do one of two things: fight or flee. This redirects the energy you would otherwise be expending on enterprise-related endeavors toward self-preservation. This seems to be a “hard-wired” instinct for all human beings, one that occurs without conscious choice or control. Such a quick redirection of the flow of energy often overwhelms the reasoning process and heightens some of the physical senses while diminishing others. For instance, the field of vision narrows considerably to focus on the perceived threat as the hearing becomes less specific and acute. Prepared with what it takes to act with overwhelming force to accomplish a vital objective, the choice of what is the best action to take is unfortunately not a clear one. When clarity of thought is most needed it is least available.

This doesn’t mean, however, that whenever conflict occurs only bad decisions will be made. But good decisions are deliberately made and take into consideration all pertinent immediate data as well as potential consequences of both intended and unintended outcomes. This takes some time. It takes focused energy and a 360 degree awareness of your environment. During conflict the time and energy it takes to make good decisions for the organization is diverted toward self-preservation thereby increasing the likelihood that less than desirable decisions for the company will be made. Any business that creates specific and well-thought-out conflict risk management policies and processes can actually turn conflict into a strategic competitive advantage by channeling human energy in any discordant situation to flow toward improving work relationships.

The Dangers of Unresolved Conflict

The danger of occasional conflict is that it will not be resolved in a timely and thorough manner. In this case, the underlying sources and factors of the conflict linger and fester. As with anything negative that is hidden or ignored, these contributors to conflict grow in perceived significance and power to adversely affect how one lives and works.

Unresolved conflict, no matter how initially inconsequential the conflict may appear to be, will eventually degrade the liveliness of the organization. At best, people will emotionlessly go through the motions of work and, at worst, they will actively work to undermine the enterprise. In either case, the quality of work and business outcomes over time declines to depths that gradually makes the organization’s very existence untenable.

When occasional conflict is left unresolved it becomes a chronic source of future disharmony. When it flares up again its negative impact on the operating environment becomes more acute and destructive because of the remembrance of past similar conflicts and the intervening growth of negative emotions and resentments surrounding those previous experiences.

These submerged negative emotions constitute much of the fuel for the “fires” that managers often complain about. They lament that much of their own time and energy is diverted away from the important issues they need to attend to in order to grow the business. Consequently (and to mix the metaphor), they often feel like they’re in over their heads treading water or worse, drowning. Discontent and malaise are the prevailing perspectives informing the work environment and managing the time and energy of disgruntled employees does, indeed, take an enormous amount of a leader’s time and energy. The momentum of the organization slows and eventually halts due to the dissipation and diffusion of human energy. When energy flows in all directions, it cannot move an organization in a specific direction.

Following is a list of the effects of unresolved conflict in any organization that can lead to its slow but sure decline:

• Conflict spreads by feeding on negativity with the result that nobody sees it as “their” problem; resolution is considered to be somebody else’s problem

• Chronic conflict becomes acute and urgent; this increases business risk, financial losses and can speed movement toward litigation

• Conflict erodes performance resulting in process breakdowns and unintended outcomes

• Conflict distorts focus resulting in loss of contact with the realities of the internal and external environments resulting in a muddled view of the marketplace

• Conflict dilutes enterprise resources resulting in wasted time, energy and cash

• Conflict fights change resulting in overt and covert resistance, resentment and revenge; beneficial and necessary change is thwarted or is effected too late

• Conflict attacks quality and service through “foot dragging” and retaliatory activities; this results in loss of customers and competitive edge

The Quick Resolution Solution

To resolve conflicts quickly there must be an unambiguous resolution process in place and a clear understanding of the skills involved in participating successfully in it. This process needs to be crafted to serve the long-term economic interests of the business in its efforts to achieve strategic goals and objectives and not just to ameliorate interpersonal strife caused by misunderstandings or injured feelings.

This is where many conflict resolution processes go awry: they focus exclusively on the personal issues and emotions of the parties involved and don’t take into account the systemic cultural sources that trigger and sustain conflict. Examples of the latter could include inequities in workload distribution within the same department and differences in management supervision approaches and practices among different departments. Further to the point, the lack of a clear communication process that holds both speaker and hearer accountable for the timeliness, thoroughness, accuracy and consistency of intentional messages, both verbal and written, is the primary cause of a primary source of conflict: misunderstanding. Until these types of fundamental elements of organizational culture are honestly scrutinized and any shortcomings corrected, no matter how well conflict appears to be initially resolved it will reignite later without warning.

Any effective resolution to organizational conflict must include an unmitigated examination of the organization’s structure, policies, procedures and processes and must accomplish three ends:

• Reduce the risks of failure to achieve goals and objectives

• Prevent loss of financial investment, asset value and human capital

• Recover negatively impacted performance so that business outputs are measurably improved

Furthermore, all personnel will need to be trained in simple yet effective relationship development skills so they can confidently engage others with whom they are in conflict to:

• identify the primary issue(s) at the center of the dispute

• establish agreement that there is a better way to be in relationship and that “anyone who angers you conquers you”

• enter into a simple resolution process that they and all employees have had a hand in creating and commit to stay in until a mutually satisfactory resolution is achieved

This simple conflict resolution process involves the following:

1. Initiating non-judgmental dialogue with a co-worker

2. Committing to participating in the process, cooperating with the rules of engagement as they are defined by the process and to listening without interruption

3. Stating the problem in terms that remove the other’s defensiveness

4. Removing environmental obstacles and challenges from the meeting time and place that typically cause communication efforts to fail (i.e., no uninterrupted privacy, noisiness, too close to meal time, etc.)

5 Agreeing to approach the issue not as “me-against-you” but as “us-against-the-problem”

6. Acknowledging naturally occurring conciliatory gestures, such as admission of misunderstanding or even culpability, apologizing, expressing responsibility for the consequences of one’s behavior, etc.

7. Forming simple agreements that prevent recurrence of conflict by soliciting specific supportive behaviors and verbal encouragement from all those who have been affected by the conflict and, therefore, have a stake in its resolution

Resolutions that emerge from this type of process quickly release arrested energy and allow it to be steered toward goal accomplishment. Ironically, the experience of conflict becomes an element in a shared history between colleagues that serves to bond them in future interactions. The tension, anxiety and stress that are relieved by means of mutually addressing and resolving conflict transform into a predisposition toward cooperative behavior. The lifting of the emotional weight caused by conflict generates enthusiasm, creates a collaborative spirit and builds hopefulness for a better future as well as a desire to maintain an environment in which these emotions and behaviors can thrive.

The Conflict Log

An important step in a quick resolution solution is to chronicle conflicts by documenting in a “conflict log” all manifestations of conflict in the organization. Each example is analyzed as to date of occurrence, personal as well as structural causes, internal and external environmental contributors, all attempts at resolution, outcomes, duration of initial resolution, amendments to initial agreements and instances of reoccurrence and subsequent outcomes. This history and encyclopedia of conflict in your organization will help to easily identify the patterns and sources that give rise to and fuel conflict between and among individuals and business units. When in disagreement, the parties involved can quickly consult the log to aid them in their understanding and appreciation of the dynamics of the conflict in which they are currently engaged.

Develop a Conflict Risk Management Strategy

A clearly defined and communicated conflict resolution process is only part of the organization’s overall conflict risk management strategy. A conflict risk management strategy is simply a detailed plan that clearly states the environmental causes of conflict, their current negative impact on the organization’s forward momentum toward accomplishing its goals, all specific deleterious effects on its finances and prospects for growth and a concisely written list of all the behaviors that lead both to conflict and its resolution. It furthermore identifies the resulting benefits to individuals and processes that the resolutions of conflicts will have. But it goes a step further in that it details the ways in which the energy that is freed up by means of constructive resolution can be practically applied to existing business processes and improvement efforts.

Any effective conflict risk management strategy must include:

1. Specific corrective actions that will concurrently remove the disruptive effects of conflict from all aspects of the operating environment

2. Identification of processes, procedures, policies and behavioral patterns that contribute to recurring conflicts

3. A detailed plan to eliminate these contributors to conflict from the operating environment

4. A list of proven methods and behaviors that quickly resolve conflict by identifying and then addressing the underlying environmental and/or personal root causes

5. A written agreement template to be completed by those in conflict agreeing to change their focus from “me-against-you” to “us-against-the-problem”

6. A list of detailed scenarios in which processes are delineated to harness the liberated time and energy now available for productive ends

When designing and implementing your conflict risk management strategy, you’ll need to assess the entire business environment to determine the relevant factors and forces at work in the dispute. In other words, you’ll have to approach conflict and its causes in a holistic manner. One of your objectives will be to remove all contributing sources within your operating environment that feed the continuation and escalation of conflict while transforming the energy that is bound up by conflict into positive momentum toward productive business outcomes.

Managers will need to be equipped with conflict resolution skills that enable them to place organizational conflict resolution into the larger context of strategic business issues that require their attention. Solutions need to be reality based and driven by project management disciplines that bring measurability and accountability for everyone involved in every resolution.

Effects of an Effective Conflict Risk Management Strategy

• Conflict is everybody’s business

• Conflict is resolved quickly and conflict-related risk and loss is permanently removed

• Conflict is used as a performance recovery tool

• Conflict sharpens focus on strategic business goals and objectives

• Conflict is used to identify and prevent waste through conservation and enhancement of assets

• Conflict is used strategically to build collaboration, commitment and civility

• Conflict is used to identify and design corrective actions

Simple conflict resolution skills for risk reduction, loss prevention and performance recovery are a vital aspect of your conflict risk management strategy. These skills, together with the quick resolution solution process will make resolving differences between personnel a natural part of the daily operating environment in your organization. In short, it will become a competitive edge that will drive enterprise growth.

Ken Wallace, M. Div., CSL has been in the organizational development field since 1973. He is a seasoned consultant, speaker and executive coach with extensive business experience in multiple industries who provides practical organizational direction and support for business leaders. A professional member of the National Speakers Association since 1989, he is also a member of the International Federation for Professional Speaking and holds the Certified Seminar Leader (CSL) professional designation awarded by the American Seminar Leaders Association. Ken is one of only eight certified Business Systems Coaches worldwide for General Motors. His topics include ethics, leadership, change, communication & his unique Optimal Process Design® program. Tel:(800)235-5690 Claim your free Leadership Self-Evaluation Checklist by visiting the Better Than Your Best website. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kenneth_Wall

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 9:35 am and is filed under Organizational Conflict. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.