• miss important information in the other person’s perspective
• push for my perspective rather than listen to the other person
• focus my thinking on a single solution rather than consider alternative solutions
• ignore the other person’s thoughts and feelings

      In short, when I rush, I get selfish.

      When I slow down, I:

• learn from the other person
• listen better
• open my mind to multiple solution paths
• remain sensitive to the other person

      Even though the first approach tends to have a faster conversational pace and often feels faster in the moment, it actually slows us down because it creates new conflicts and side issues that drag out the conversation or hurt our future interactions. Going fast in conflict resolution is actually slow.

      The second approach feels slow because it involves periods of silence, reflection, and carefully crafted conversation. However, it creates an environment where both parties really understand each other. Slowing down heads off future misunderstandings and conflicts. Going slow in the moment is fast in the long run.

      To remember how to slow down in the moment, I focus on giving a SOLID response:

• Stop
• Observe
• Listen
• Interpret
• Deliver

      I wish that I could say I am perfect at applying this concept. Sadly, I am not. I have noticed that when I slow down in conflict, my relationships, both professional and personal, are free to speed up.

     Studies of workplace behaviors reveal some startling statistics with regard to the impact that conflict has on business performance. One study indicates that two out of three employee performance problems can be traced to unresolved interpersonal conflicts. Another study estimates that the average manager spends something like forty percent of their time addressing workplace conflicts.
     These studies show that companies waste an amazing amount of time because of conflicts between employees. This wasted time translates to lost opportunity, lost productivity, and lost profits. By working to reduce workplace conflicts to the lowest possible level, business leaders can make immediate strides towards improving overall performance and results.

     Here are four specific things that leaders can do to reduce team conflicts:

1. Remove resource constraints

In a quick web search using the term “conflict over resource constraints,” I received nearly 300,000 results. As I looked at page after page, I saw everything from legal disputes over water rights to wars over contested mineral rights. On a global scale, people have always, and still do, argue and fight when they perceive resource limitations.

Is the same true on a smaller scale workplace scenario? I think it is. I have seen conflicts over staplers, copier use, computer access, and room temperature. While some of these issues seem minor, consider the implications. People arguing over access to a computer are not working. Two people engaged in a 15 minute discussion about getting the use of resources critical for their job performance just wasted 30 minutes between them. Multiply that waste over several weeks or months, and the impact on productivity and profits completely overwhelms the cost of a new computer.

When people sense that they do not have the right resources to do their job, they will either stop working or fight with each other. Both results hurt the business.

2. Teach and encourage better communication skills

Helping people to develop better communication skills can make your business more profitable as your employees learn to express their thoughts and feelings in ways that resolve conflicts rather than escalate them.

3. Teach conflict resolution skills

4. Get rid of team members who refuse to cooperate

While I prefer to focus on removing the environmental causes of conflict and helping people develop the skills necessary to head it off or resolve it, I also recognize that sometimes people simply do not have the desire to develop these skills. In these cases, they become a burden to the team, and leaders must relieve their team’s burdens in order for the team to move forward productively. As I learned in the Navy, getting rid of an anchor is often more effective than putting more power into the engine.

     In these troubled economic times, I know of few businesses that can afford to allow the time wasted on conflict to continue unabated. To survive and thrive in today’s high stress business environment, I encourage you to take the steps necessary to implement the. . .

    Four Things Leaders Can Do To Reduce Team Conflicts.

     
     Guy Harris, The Recovering Engineer

Or…How To Start A Conflict

     In my last post, I shared a victory I experienced by remembering a key point of conflict resolution. Just to keep things balanced, I think it’s only fair to share a point I remembered after I failed to follow good conflict resolution principles.

     This morning over breakfast, my wife mispronounced a word, and, before I engaged my brain, I corrected her. As the words left my mouth, I knew that I should have remained silent or waited for another time. Maybe it would be acceptable to point out her error in private, but I did it in front of our kids. Not wise. 

     I immediately sensed her frustration, and attempted to correct the damage by apologizing. To my wife’s credit, she graciously accepted the apology, and we continued our day without further incident. She was “on her game.” I was not.

     I violated several key conflict resolution principles in this situation:

     Once again, an interaction with one of my daughters taught me a conflict resolution lesson.

    I drive my kids to school on most mornings that I am not on the road. I like the uninterrupted time with them early in the day. It’s a great part of my day, and I have come to look forward to the 20 minute drive each morning.

     This morning, my oldest daughter got in the car and immediately turned to look out the window. I could only see her hair hanging over her face. Her posture resembled the picture in this post.

     I attempted to start a conversation with a light hearted (or so I thought) comment about how our day had begun. “We all had trouble getting out of bed this morning. Didn’t we?”

     In a somewhat disdainful tone (my interpretation), she said: “Yeah. I guess so.” She continued to look out the window with her head turned away from me.

     I thought I had said or done something wrong. In an effort to connect, I said: “Did I do or say something to irritate you?”

     Raising her voice a bit and speaking with an edge (again my interpretation), she said: “Nooooo!”

      At that, I fell silent. She continued to stare out the car window. I continued to assume that she was angry. I searched my mind for the right thing to say. I almost chastised her for being angry with me when I had done nothing wrong. I wanted to “calibrate” her attitude because I assumed that she had a bad one. 

     Then I thought of what I have written and said in the past:  Don’t attach your intentions to other people’s behavior.

     I hate it when my own words convict me. It’s really frustrating.

     I took a moment and thought about her behavior style and her morning. She is reserved. She is slow to speak. She is slow to get moving in the morning. She had woken up late and felt rushed in her morning routine. I realized that my assumption that she was angry with me just might be wrong. She might be thinking about something else. She might not be thinking about me at all. I decided to remain silent so that she could process her thoughts. I decided not to push her for engagement.

     As we approached her school, she turned to me and said: “I don’t know why I was thinking this, but I was. I wonder if I would have been tried as a witch during the Salem witch trials because I have two different color eyes.” As she spoke, she had a half smiling, half questioning look on her face. The “angry” and “sulking” child was gone. Now she seemed engaged and happy.

     From that starting point, we had brief, fun, engaging conversation before she departed the car for her day at school.

     My initial assumption had been wrong. She was not angry with me. She was thinking about something else, and she was not ready to engage.

     I am happy that in this interchange I remembered to question my assumptions about her intent. I am happy that I put into practice what I teach about conflict resolution and communication skills. I wish I always had the presence of mind to do so.

     I believe that teams, families, and non-profit organizations would all perform at a higher level if team members would maintain a sense of wonder about things rather than a sense of judgment. What would happen if we could always question our assumptions? What if we could ask questions to clarify other people’s perspective rather than label their perspective? What if?    

     Guy Harris, The Recovering Engineer

     Image from www.sxc.hu

     When we interact and work with other people, we will eventually disagree with each other. Sometimes, the disagreement will be over minor issues where we can easily ignore the disagreement. Sometimes, however, we will disagree quite strongly about an issue that is vitally important to both of us. It might be about what course of action to take to turn around the company, which candidate to back in an election, a difference of faith perspectives, or some other issue that evokes strong emotion. When these issues arise, you might reach an impasse where you simply cannot reach agreement and you cannot just “let it go.”    

     When that happens, how do you resolve the conflict?    

     Remember that in the context of this blog, conflict resolution is about finding a way to work together to solve a problem affecting the organization. It is not about agreeing on every issue. So, we can resolve a conflict in the sense that we continue to work together productively without reaching complete agreement. With that context in mind, you can preserve the relationship and continue working together despite the differences by learning to disagree without being disagreeable. Put another way, we can learn to agree to disagree on certain things. 

     Easy to say. Not always easy to do.    

     Issues that are personally important usually produce an emotional response. Once we become emotional about an issue, we tend towards behaviors that escalate the conflict rather than resolve it. We attack the other person’s character or intelligence. We dismiss their perspective as irrational or stupid. In short, we make it about their personhood. We become disagreeable.    

     Learning to disagree without becoming disagreeable takes work. It takes effort. It takes focus. It is also worth it.     

      When we become disagreeable, we usually trigger a similar response in the other person so that we move towards separation and paralysis instead of towards action and resolution. When we can agree to disagree, we can set the disagreement aside in the interest of continuing to work together. We don’t forget the issue. We just don’t let it get in the way of solving the organizational problem at hand. 

    Are there times when you cannot continue to work together because of a disagreement? Yes. If you have to violate your core principles or ethical standards to move forward with the other person, you should stand firm or consider ending the relationship. Sometimes we all reach this conclusion. I’m just encouraging you not to reach that conclusion too quickly or rashly. Be careful that you don’t take a stand on “principle” when you simply disagree about an approach, style, or perspective.

      If you want to resolve team and organizational conflicts so that you can solve the business problem, learn to disagree without being disagreeable. 

    Guy Harris, The Recovering Engineer

     The inspiration for this post comes from a book about Abraham Lincoln. Many years and probably more than 100 books later, I have long since forgotten which book gave me this thought. So, with apologies to the writer who penned words to this effect, let me share a lesson we can learn from the sixteenth president of the United States.   

     Much of Lincoln’s strength as a leader came from his ability to be righteous without becoming self-righteous.    

     Just to be clear, here are the definitions of the two words as listed at Dictionary.com:

righteous

1. characterized by uprightness or morality: a righteous observance of the law. 
2. morally right or justifiable: righteous indignation. 
3. acting in an upright, moral way; virtuous: a righteous and godly person.
 

self-righteous

1. confident of one’s own righteousness, esp. when smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinions and behavior of others.

     Lincoln seemed to have the ability to move and act in righteous (morally right ways) without becoming self-righteous (smugly moralistic and intolerant). He showed his capacity for maintaining this balance in an address he gave during the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.

     As he addressed the crowd in Peoria on October 16, 1854 he said:

I hate [the spread of slavery] because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites—causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty—criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.

Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses north and south. Doubtless there are individuals, on both sides, who would not hold slaves under any circumstances; and others who would gladly introduce slavery anew, if it were out of existence. We know that some southern men do free their slaves, go north, and become tip-top abolitionists; while some northern ones go south, and become most cruel slave-masters.

     Notice his ability to call out the immoral spread of slavery without simultaneously criticizing the people who wanted to spread it. He managed to condemn the behavior without condemning the people involved.

     In the day-to-day miscommunications and conflicts that arise as we work with other people, we can seldom claim a position as morally clear as Lincoln’s stand against slavery. Yet, many of us stake out morally “right” positions and then condemn people who might simply misunderstand us or disagree with us.

     As you confront conflict situations, you will likely have to confront truly bad behaviors from time to time. Normally, there are shades of gray as you work to resolve workplace and family conflicts. Even when the situation has clear right and wrong perspectives, remember Lincoln’s example and learn to act in a righteous (morally right) way without becoming self-righteous (smugly moralistic and intolerant).

     Guy Harris, The Recovering Engineer

“righteous.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 06 Nov. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/righteous

“self-righteous.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 06 Nov. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/self-righteous

     I received this notification while I was on the road, and I just got the chance to check it out. This looks like a pretty good resource. If you have feedback for me on how you use it, that would be great as well.

     Previously, I posted an entry about a challenge for Conflict Resolution Day.  This post is a follow-up on my progress towards applying this commitment: