How To Resolve Conflicts At Workplace

Conflicts at the workplace are inevitable and it is important to know how to handle them. There are a lot of reasons why conflicts arise at the workplace. When these conflicts happen, it is important to handle them in a professional way. An unresolved conflict in the long run can make individuals feel demotivated and teams feel disengaged.

Even after knowing how important resolving conflicts is, most people use one of these approaches.

1. They ignore or avoid resolving conflicts and assume they will be resolved over-time

2. They attempt to resolve conflicts but because they lack the right skills, they end up handling them badly

3. They attempt to resolve conflicts and handle them really well because they have the right skills

If you are reading this blog, I am sure you would like to resolve conflicts effectively.

In order to deal with conflicts, it is important to first understand what causes them and how they can be solved. The most common reasons for workplace conflict are:

1. Lack of communication

If one has to write the topmost reason that causes conflicts, it will be nothing other than a lack of communication. We all experience a lack of communication at some point in our lives. It resulted in misunderstandings and several other confusions. Ultimately it impacted the relationship. Imagine a coworker not communicating enough about the project’s progress. It will only lead to insecurity among other members of the team and will eventually lead to conflict. If there is a lack of communication, it will only create higher conflicts.

3 Ways To Overcome Lack of communication

A stronger relationship is built on the foundation of good communication. There are three things to consider if one has to overcome this hurdle of lack of communication.

1) Understand that communication is two-sided. If one holds back, it only leads to challenges. Don’t be the one who is holding back in communication.

2) Communication is not just words but more than words. When it comes to conflicts, what is unsaid is more important. So, be aware of this element of communication.

3) Listen more and talk less. You should learn to listen without interrupting, even if you disagree with what they are saying. This will help them feel heard and will allow you to better understand their point of view.

2. Personality Clashes

Each individual working in the team brings their unique personality. DISC assessment categorizes people into 4 different types. It is based on the observation that people have different preferences for how they interact with others, which are either dominant, influential, compliant, or cautious. Imagine different people who have different preferences interacting with each other, the likelihood of conflicts multiplies if they are not flexible to understand other’s preferences. For example, a D style may want things to be done faster and is open to taking risks while a C style would like to be more calculative in the approach. These different styles will lead to different conflicts.

3 Ways To Overcome Personality Clashes

The best teams are those that are able to work together and collaborate with each other irrespective of differences. When there are different personalities in a team, here are a few things that you can do.

1. Learn about the person’s preferred style and how it is different from yours. Good training to understand different DISC styles will always help individuals and the team

2. Set a common goal that everyone must focus on and let that be the most important driver of the team’s performance

3. Encourage individuals to expand their perspectives by being open. You can create interesting projects and invite different styles to share perspectives and push them to think differently.

3. Conflicting Priorities

Conflicting priorities in teams can lead to the whole team being unproductive and not reaching the desired goals. For example, one team member might want the team to focus on research and another person wants them to focus on sales pitches. In this situation, the priority is different for these two tasks, which can lead to conflict between the two members of the team about what should be prioritized. This can become more difficult if these conflicting priorities are coming from two different leaders.

3 Ways To Overcome Conflicting Priorities

1. Always encourage team goals and not individual goals. This will promote collaboration, not competition. Conflicting priorities are usually when individual interests become more important.

2. Whenever there are conflicting priorities, re-evaluate. Ask, how this impacts the team’s vision.

3. You may as well communicate transparently about the conflict at hand. This will enable everyone to reprioritize.

In addition to the above reasons and solutions. Here are 6 steps that you can consider as a team leader or manager to resolve conflicts in a more productive way.

1) Identify the root of the problem: The first step is to identify the root of the problem and figure out what is causing it.

2) Listen without interrupting: You should listen without interrupting, even if you disagree with what they are saying. This will help them feel heard and will allow you to better understand their point of view.

3) Be open-minded: Be open-minded about how you approach the problem so that each person feels like they were heard and understood by both sides.

4) Be respectful: Being respectful goes a long way when trying to solve a conflict at work because it shows that you care about how they feel, which means that you care about their opinion too.

5) Find a solution: Once everyone feels like they have been heard and understood, find a solution together.

6) Start a conversation again: If the problem is not solved after finding a solution, start the conversation again with more time and patience.