Consensus Mediation

Managing conflict

Conflict is never an easy situation and many of us would like to pride ourselves on never having conflict in our lives. However, this is not reality and in fact, having no ‘conflict’ with anyone is less badge of honour and more an indicator that you might be either avoiding or ignoring difficult situations. As a manager, striving to avoid or ignore conflict can seriously hamper your effectiveness, as well as how you are perceived by your team.

So what can you do if you have a situation where something is ‘brewing’? This might either be an issue that you have to  raise that you are concerned might cause conflict or it might be trying to repair damage done by an unconstructive conversation that has already taken place?

A key question is how is the relationship now between you and that person – for example, on a scale of one to ten, what number would you give to the level of trust and rapport between you? If trust is at a low level or has already been damaged by previous interactions with each other, then you have a much greater challenge.

Options you might have:

• Decide first of all whether to raise an issue or not with someone. This can be a difficult call to make. On the one hand, you need to address issues that arise in the workplace and all the evidence would point to the value of intervening at an early stage rather than allowing a situation to fester. On the other hand, have you clearly thought through what it is you want to get from this situation? For example, if you are very angry or frustrated, you might be tempted to ‘hit and run’ – but where will this leave you after the conversation. Or you might be motivated by a need to ‘change their behaviour’ – again, think long and hard about how you might do this. This demands a whole strategy rather than just a once-off conversation

• Meet with them in a one-to-one situation. Questions you should consider are where this meeting might take place and how you will invite them to the meeting. Check out also our Tips for Difficult Conversations here

• Get support for yourself. One option would be to have one or two sessions of conflict management coaching. This will help you first of all explore all the options and also help you to figure out the best way to approach a difficult conversation with the other person.

• If the level of trust and rapport between you has deteriorated a lot then you might consider having a mediator facilitate you both to have a constructive discussion. A key barrier to a constructive conversation is the defensiveness that comes up when you have to give a negative message to someone. Mediation can help to diffuse this as it gives an opportunity to speak one’s mind and the mediator’s role can be to help to reframe this in a way that gets the message across but avoids the other person ‘losing face’ – in other words, there is less need for them to defend and debate and more space for them to listen and learn.