A new manager contacts me in the hopes I can help his team function better. The twelve people on the team have broken into three camps that refuse to communicate. Multiple team members have filed complaints. He tells me the conflict has gone on for twelve years, because the previous manager ignored it and hoped it would go away. He has the budget for one day of mediation. I tell him one day of mediation between twelve people might have worked in the first year, but not after the conflict has been left to smoulder for over a decade.
The best approach to conflict is a culture of prevention.
In her book Circle in the Square: Building Community and Repairing Harm in School, Nancy Riestenberg applies a public health framework of prevention to a restorative approach to school discipline. She talks about prevention as a pyramid: it’s very stable when right side up, but when turned upside down, it becomes a tippy hazard.
I find this metaphor to be helpful when thinking of an organization’s response to conflict. Lots of organizations I work with look like upside-down pyramids, teetering on one point. A tiny amount of attention goes to preventative approaches such as supporting healthy disagreement, creating cultures of feedback, and prioritizing psychologically safe workplaces. A slightly larger amount of attention goes to dealing with conflicts or complaints as they come up, particularly if there are legal implications, a grievance procedure, or a human rights process. But because things are often left unaddressed, the biggest focus ends up being on damage control after a major complaint, investigation, or workplace trauma. In the end, waiting until something is a crisis creates far more suffering, wasting energy and expense. This upside-down pyramid is out of balance — it leads to lots of stress and can leave people at the bottom to get squished when it tips.
An organization with a preventative culture has the fluidity and flexibility to encourage disagreement, prevent serious harm, and learn from both successes and mistakes.
The following are tips for leaders who want to create a healthy conflict culture:
• Be transparent about power and decision making in the organization.
• Celebrate the value of diversity.
• Prioritize conflict skills and emotional intelligence, especially for leaders.
• Emphasize feedback, reflection, and learning.
• Support people to build trust-based relationships.
• Develop effective and clear conflict systems.
• Address burnout and treat people as whole people.
• Be intentional about building community on remote teams.
• Make it safe for people to come forward with problems.
• And finally, conflict can help, not hurt.
Conflict in any workplace is inevitable, but it can be generative rather than destructive. In the end, the most effective route to a resilient organization is to create a healthy workplace in which people feel comfortable and empowered to raise concerns, share ideas, and talk about difficult issues. While shifting the balance is a culture-change process that happens over time, there are concrete steps you can take right away to move your workplace in that direction.
This article is an excerpt of a longer blog post on the same topic. For more information about the tips above, check out the full blog at:
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