Any work environment comprising different people with unique personalities and ideologies is susceptible to conflict. Each person has their own opinions, mood swings, and daily lives that differ from yours. Sometimes discord is bound to occur and navigating this is crucial.
Let’s first understand some reasons why conflict could occur:
- Poor communication skills could lead to misunderstandings
- Differing viewpoints, opinions, and personalities
- Stereotyping and biases
- Different qualification levels and working styles
- Perceptions of unfairness
Although conflict is common, most people don’t know how to handle it professionally. When you are working in a team, it is likely you will see and communicate with your colleagues regularly, and it’s best if you have a good relationship with them.
Pretending conflict doesn’t exist does not make it go away. Ignoring issues could lead to festering resentment and toxic work cultures. Unresolved conflicts don’t only affect the employees but also decrease overall productivity, causing huge losses for the company as well.
As a leader, effectively resolving disputes as they arise benefits your employee’s wellbeing and your company’s financial health. Let’s learn about five conflict resolution strategies, also known as the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) that are at your disposal.
Avoiding
Sometimes it’s best to avoid a situation, especially when there are minor disagreements, emotions are high, or when you care about maintaining a lasting relationship with colleagues.
Ignoring a conflict or completely sidestepping an issue is effective, but sometimes it could backfire. Unresolved issues may fester or resurface later in more disruptive ways. It is best to find a balance. Ignore minor issues instead of making them a big deal, but when there is a significant issue that needs resolution, communicating and solving the problem would be best.
Competing
While often not suited for workplace conflict, competing can be useful in some situations.
This is for scenarios where you place high importance on your goal and low importance on your relationship with others. It’s high in assertiveness and low in cooperation.
You can use this style especially in situations where you have to stand up for yourself and where you feel unsafe. In situations like these, asserting yourself and reaching safety is more important than your relationship with others.
Sometimes assertiveness can also earn you respect in specific situations and assist you in handling conflict, particularly in emergency scenarios or when immediate, decisive action is necessary. This can also damage relationships if overused or used intensively.
Accommodating
The third conflict resolution strategy is accommodation, in which you acquiesce to the other party’s needs. Use this strategy in instances where your relationship with the other person is more important than your goal. Yielding to other’s viewpoints or demands sometimes can preserve harmony.
Sometimes when an issue is more important to the other person, it’s best to let go and be accommodating.
While accommodating has its uses, using it in every situation could snuff out opportunities for you, so use it depending on the situation.
Compromising
Compromising is a situation in which you and the other party forfeit some of your needs to reach an agreement. It’s also known as a lose-lose situation.
This strategy works best when you care about your goals and the relationship with the other person is moderate. Unlike accommodation, here you do not abandon your goals completely, but sacrifice some of your wants for mutual harmony.
Compromise involves swallowing your pride, knowing you won’t get all your needs fulfilled. The benefit is that you can save your relationship with the other person. It’s your decision to decide whether that relationship is worth saving or not.
Collaboration
This approach benefits everyone, unlike making a compromise. When your goal and the relationship with the other person are equally important, motivating both of you to work together to find an outcome that meets all needs.
Collaboration is ideal for most workplace conflicts. Promote it to find creative solutions to problems.
Although this strategy does require time and effort from both ends and is not always practical under pressure, you can still revert back to compromise if collaboration fails.
