Originally post on: 2020-03-30

Conflict? What is it?

Working in a group seems to be a nice choice, gathering ideas from people from different backgrounds, knowledge levels. Many times, you can benefit a lot from being in a group. But not every team can get along. Different minds between people create disagreement on the thing they want to do or not. This is the conflict. Conflict happens all the time, some of them are positive, helping the organization becomes better. Some of them will just be the opposite way, stall the progress, or eventually make the project or even the company collapse. How should the leader see the conflict and make it better?

When you communicate, respect is key.

How to deal with it.

Conflict may happen all the time. Dealing with it correctly is always important. There are many ways to respond to it. Many people will just avoid these conflicts. The TEDx talk by CrisMarie Campbell and Susan Clarke gave a great example of it (Campbell & Clarke, 2015). They show the data point that one-third of a company are disengaged, you can see how those conflicts will discourage the development of the organization. I think there is nothing wrong with it, people try to get away from risk. But I do believe there are better ways to solve it since there are things to lose if avoided.

The ideal organization I am imagining should listen to both sides because many conflicts happened is due to miscommunication. Employees don’t understand each other as Francisco Cobos’ article points out(Check out the Article!) . The leader should learn the explanation from both sides from a third-party standpoint, to see whose points are worth taking. At least this approach is to create a compromising resolution. If both ideas can be integrated together, a collaborating resolution can be created for a better outcome.

I think there is no best practice to resolve conflict. The solution is created for the case, not for general. Otherwise, it won’t work at its best. But avoiding is the worst way to do when facing conflict because no one ever will know about a person’s idea that a person doesn’t reveal it.

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Source

Campbell, C., & Clarke, S. (2015, July 13). Conflict – Use It, Don’t Defuse It | CrisMarie Campbell & Susan Clarke | TEDxWhitefish.

Cobos, F. (2018, July 4). Poor communication lead to conflicts and harms the organization, it’s essential to have reliable communication structures in place.

MICHAEL A. HITT, C. C. (2018). Organizational Behavior. Danvers, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.