Conflicts between managers are much more common today than conflicts between a manager and an employee. Disagreements on business decisions or procedures can disintegrate into personal conflicts.
Ideally, everyone in your organization is pulling in the same direction, collaborating and cooperating to achieve the company’s strategic goals. But in the real world, problems can arise from mixed messages, personality differences, and real and not-so-real (like political or turf) dilemmas. Your first goal should be to avoid such conflicts. But, should differences arise, your second objective should be to resolve the problem before it escalates and impairs your ability to work together.
Problems fall into four categories: communications, turf and territory, professionalism, and interpersonal issues. Conflicts can arise between you and another manager when messages are distorted by jammed communication channels or by a third person in your organization who distorts your comments, either consciously or unconsciously. Turf battles arise over areas of responsibility, as one manager, like a gang leader, rumbles to protect the boundaries of authority. When one manager treats another with little respect, then a match is lit that can make ashes out of a positive work relationship.
Different problems demand different solutions. Let’s look at some remedies and problems they are most suited to address.
- Exercise professional courtesy. Brusque demands of a colleague can only be alienating. Worse, hostility can seep down into the two departments, and ultimately the employees behave rudely to one another.
- Establish a common ground. This bit of advice might seem manipulative, but rather than criticize your colleague, even if you feel justified, flatter the person. You should be able to find a reason to say something nice. Use flattery to smooth the waters between you and a rigid, negative, or otherwise unpleasant peer and lay the groundwork for a better relationship in the future.
- Watch your mouth. Don’t say anything about a coworker that you wouldn’t want to have repeated by another.
- Ask for help. You can even go so far as to admit your own shortcomings in the process. You can defuse a conflict by making the other party seem superior to you.
- Make small talk work for you. Build connections with your colleagues based on personal interests, not just professional needs. Your common interests are grounds for a more positive relationship in the future.
- Use humor. Humor can be a powerful weapon for building allies, particularly when it is used to show others that you don’t take yourself too seriously. Besides, a shared laugh is comparable to a favorite song, book, movie, or Broadway show—it builds rapport.
- Avoid hostility by reframing the conversation. Your colleague is short- tempered and is always ready for a fight. You can let the individual’s hostility trigger your own anger, or you can paraphrase hostile remarks to prove that you were listening to the complaint, add a sympathetic comment that does not take sides, and then continue the conversation.
- Confront the issue privately. If you must confront a coworker, do so in private—not only away from your mutual staff members but away from other members of senior management. Raised voices have no place in the hallways of an organization or even in a management meeting. One CEO chose to bring in an outsider when she realized that three of her senior executives had territorial issues that they lacked the professionalism to resolve themselves. The new manager was hired as referee, a role the CEO didn’t have time to assume herself.
- Know where boundaries start and end. You may be above issues of turf, seeing territorial battles in your organization as petty and willing to let others operate in your turf without permission, but others may not be so open-minded. If your intrusion into another’s territory is likely to trigger a conflict, respect the boundary and get off that turf immediately. If you need to go into another’s area of responsibility to accomplish an objective, speak to that manager first. Either ask the manager to cooperate by doing the work for you, or ask permission to do the work yourself.
Did You Know . . . ? Silos—the compartmentalization of business into relatively independent, freestanding operating units—are real, and they can be really bad. A study by the American Management Association found that 83 percent of the respondents said there were silos in their companies. Fully 97 percent of those with silos think they have a negative effect. More telling, 31 percent believe that silos have destructive consequences, creating turf wars and territorial battles, lack of cooperation, and power struggles. The primary cause, said the respondents, was the attitude of the unit manager. A noncollaborative corporate culture and tradition didn’t help.
The biggest offender was the research and development department. Marketing, finance, and purchasing were also named.
Intuitively, you may know how to resolve conflicts. But in today’s leaner, meaner organizations, it is easy to forget. It may help to keep in mind that failure to address disagreements early, before they become conflicts, can decrease productivity and innovation and may impede the career advancement of the executive(s) involved.
Tips If you say something, and you find the person with whom you are talking becoming upset, then pause. The silence that follows should help the other person to regain control. You can then probe to find the source of the problem.
We all have hot buttons—from personal to professional to political issues. If you accidentally press someone’s hot button, you may be able to return to your previous relationship if you take remedial action immediately. Don’t let the other party go away upset.
See Also Kaye, Kenneth. Workplace Wars and How to End Them: Turning Personal Conflicts into Productive Teamwork. AMACOM, 1994.
Masters, Marick F. and Robert R. Albright. The Complete Guide to Conflict Resolution in the Workplace. AMACOM, 2001.
Mayer, Bernard. The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution: A Practitioner’s Guide.Jossey-Bass, 2000.
Thiederman, Sondra. Making Diversity Work: Seven Steps for Defeating Bias in the Workplace. Dearborn Trade, 2003.
Weeks, Dudley. The Eight Essential Steps to Conflict Resolution: Preserving Relationships at Work, at Home, and in the Community. Putnam Publication Group, 1994.
Self-Assessment How Do You Rate?
Which approach to conflict management do you usually take when faced with differences?
- Are problems that concern you handled by others?
- Are your ideas and comments ignored?
- Do you feel your concerns aren’t being met?
If you say yes to these three questions, you may often wimp out when faced with conflicts.
How would you respond to these three questions?
- Is negotiating difficult for you?
- Do you find it hard to make concessions to others?
- Are you unable to say, “I’m sorry?”
If you say yes to these, you may be more inclined to fight than to compromise.
And finally . . .
- Do you look for reasons behind a disagreement with another?
- Do you ask questions to clear the air?
- Do you make an effort to avoid a recurrence?
If you say yes to these three questions, you tend to seek out solutions to conflicts and resolve them by getting to their cause. Congratulations!