Recommend page to a friend

Contact us

Web site comments

Add to favorites (bookmark)

By JoAnn Meyer, Fredrikson Human Resources Consulting

Do any of these situations sound familiar? Have you ever experienced any of these?

¨ The purchasing department manager is openly critical of her production manager peer. The production manager in turn discourages communications with purchasing. Bottlenecks and production delays result, with some customer complaints coming in.

¨ Two administrative assistants are in such conflict that they are not speaking to each other. The mood in the office is tense and uncomfortable except for when one or both of them is not there.

¨ The new billing system has met with some resistance. A new finance manager is brought in, and his main job is to 'implement the system.' This he does, with intimidation and an 'in-your-face' mode of confronting those who do not follow procedures.

What do all three scenarios have in common? One obvious commonality is the presence of conflict, whether it's on an individual or work-group level. Although conflict is a natural part of the workplace and of simply being human, sometimes we see conflict escalate to a point where it starts to impact the work place negatively. Too much conflict can cause customer complaints, delayed orders, shoddy products, missed deadlines, excessive absenteeism and turnover.

One method to use in managing conflict more constructively draws from the field of problem-solving. With this approach, the individuals involved, or a facilitator, work on a definition of what the problem really is. Once we all have a clear understanding of what the problem is, we can generate all kinds of ideas of what to do about it. Often, people or groups are mired in conflict because they don't share the same view of what the problem actually consists of, much less what to do about it.

In the first example above, for instance, what is the problem? You might think, "The purchasing manager is criticizing the production manager publicly." While that's usually not a good idea, we'd call that a symptom. You can tell you're dealing with a symptom when it makes sense to ask, "Why or why not?"

Why is the purchasing manager criticizing the production manager publicly? Well, because the purchasing manager is angry that the production manager is not submitting all of the production schedules in a timely manner, which means the purchasing manager can't procure several materials in a cost-effective way. Again, we can ask, "Why not?" "Why isn't the production manager completing some of the production schedules on time?" There could be some very good reasons why not, besides the first one that comes to the purchasing manager's mind (that one being, "He's incompetent.")

For example, perhaps there are problems with the scheduling software. Maybe, unknown to the purchasing manager, orders have traditionally fallen off this time of the year, and the production manager decided to consolidate the prst neglected to tell the purchasing manager. Or perhaps the engineering department told the production manager they are about to change specifications for several of the products; the production manager won't schedule production until he gets the new specifications; and no one has told the purchasing manager.

All of these reasons serve as examples of how to start describing a problem. Often, we find that the problem can be traced to some breakdown in communications, and just as often, the breakdown is unintentional.

This helps us state the problem in more objective terms. Rather than, "The production manager is incompetent" (from the purchasing manager's point of view) or, "The purchasing manager is unprofessional" (from the production manager's point of view), the parties involved can say,

The problem is that the purchasing manager wasn't informed of the spec change for the XYZ product , or
The problem is that the purchasing manager did not know that traditionally, orders fall off at this time of year and therefore production and purchasing schedules change.

At this point, we can start generating ideas on how to prevent those breakdowns in communication or knowledge from happening in the first place. Tools and techniques can include sharing organizational knowledge, learning how to confront potential conflict in the first place, and separating the person from the problem. Other solutions we've seen emerge from this process include simplifying the workflow, cross-training, documenting procedures and clarifying roles and responsibilities.

Usually, the greatest challenge in managing conflicts such as those we've described has to do with defining the problem. As a nation of doers, our natural tendency is to jump into action and solve the problem. This approach won't work, however, until we know what problem we are trying to solve. Once all parties involved have a clear understanding of what the problem is, they can put their energies into solving it. Leaders make sure they take the time to define the problem on the front-end. Once defined, many times the solution will become fairly self-evident, and its implementation smoother with less chance of failure.