Interpersonal conflict

Objective

A business environment where all colleagues ‘get on’ with each other, however laudable and potentially enviable, is unlikely to be an environment in which creativity and good business sense flourish if ‘getting on’ means that issues are ducked and realities not confronted. There is generally no worse environment than the one in which corporate/collective heads are buried in the proverbial sand.

But equally, it is unlikely that a workplace fostered on personal animosity is likely to be one in which the needs of the organisation in its marketplace are met. Of course, there are times when an element of competitiveness between individuals is healthy, especially when the sense of colleagues snapping at your heels sharpens your act. Of course, all organisations are fertile organisms where an element of politics, and the manoeuvring which goes with it, is inevitable.

An organisation will only prosper with individuals who are ambitious, and ambition will lead to energetic rivalry. This rivalry may lead to market-bearing ideas or it may lead to conflict.

The objective for a leader is to consider how this competitive energy is harnessed, and how dysfunctional behaviour is eliminated.

Context

Organisations have an unerring and innate ability to generate misunderstanding. It is as if, no matter how clear the vision, how elegant the communication plan, how inclusive the managerial style, some dysfunction is destined to break out.

There is within this characteristic something deeply complex about the employee–employer compact. When an employee joins an organisation, it goes beyond a supplier–client relationship – some element of independence is sacrificed by giving so many waking hours to the employer. An employee’s life may be changed by the success or failure of the organisation; emotions may be shaped by the way he or she is respected or disrespected. Once this dependency is established, the employee becomes the organisation’s critic, and will likely shower condemnation as much as praise.

It doesn’t help that however an organisation nurtures its modernity and its capacity to change, there will always be business units that gather a reputation (fairly or not) for bloody-minded insouciance – the departments that do things ‘their way’. Such pinch points enter corporate folklore as standard whipping boys – the targets everyone loves to knock, the ones always thought the worse of, the ones everyone rushes to judge irrespective of evidence.

Finally, into this mix comes a range of alienating interpersonal characteristics:

• a failure to listen;
• a tendency to lecture, especially on other colleagues’ responsibilities;
• a self-belief which expresses an opinion on every subject;
• failure to communicate because others don’t matter;
• failure to communicate because knowledge is power;
• an inability to deliver anything on time;
• excessive absence from the workplace;
• a stubbornness to refuse to back down in the face of incontrovertible evidence;
• the propensity to flog a dead horse;
• the inability to understand the organisational entity in anything other than their own department’s terms;
• the belief that business exists for purposes other than for the customer.

Lack of self-awareness would not in itself matter were it not the source of much corporate stress – the frustration that arises from directly suffering poor performance; the bitterness which cannot fathom why ‘management’ doesn’t tackle it; the resentment that in a competitive world someone can ‘get away with it’; the sense that it undermines one’s own belief in a commitment to excellence.

You should regard this cocktail of emotion and stress as the inevitable by-product of the living organism – which is nothing if it is not about people. You should recognise that:

• where ambition is driving competitiveness, there is a real potential source of competitive advantage;
• that commitment to an organisation is a driver of excellence;
• that however poor a last bastion of underperformance might seem, it can be used as a motivating exemplar of how not to operate;
• however uncoupled from corporate goals an individual might seem, the very insecurity that led to dysfunctional behaviour can itself represent the starting point for a transformational change.

Challenge

So your task is to discreetly manage organisation conflict. Rather than seeing it as an unnerving threat (which you might then want to ignore) identify it as a source of improvement – not least because if you are anything as a leader, your role is about fostering permanent improvement as a way of business life.

Indeed, many might say that if there is no conflict there is no life, and that in a bizarre way some conflict is actually a healthy sign.

Success

You will face some broad conflict categories.

• Where you become aware that a department or team or group is seriously dysfunctional compared with its raison d’être – this will arise from direct observation or repeated second-hand reports. You should not take any action based on hearsay. Rumour-based intervention will likely be seen as knee-jerk and unanalytical. Instead, you create a circumstance for a KPI-based review of the group’s operational performance. A key judgement will be about the capacity of a team’s leader to change and, secondly, the ability of the team to face its own shortcomings.
• Where you are aware of groups in conflict – you must raise the issue with the two group leaders together. If the conflict is between their respective teams, then you must agree an approach to bring the issues into the open (perhaps facilitated by HR) with regular reports and feedback on progress.
• Where there is conflict between two individuals reporting to you – you should not open a dialogue with them about the source of conflict until you are satisfied that they have attempted to do this themselves. You thus create a culture where disagreements are confronted, but not in a way that others see you as a first port-of-call for conflict resolution, which enables them to avoid attempting solutions themselves.
• Where an individual has a performance issue that is causing conflict – you are open with them about its existence, why you think it harms the business, and why you think it is in the individual’s interest to confront it. You provide evidence-based feedback as soon as possible – not waiting for the annual performance review! You agree an action plan, which is reviewed regularly.

As leader you must always cultivate a business environment in which criticisms can be made freely but are issue- and not personality-based; and in which staff do not express opinions based on the perspective that they can do others’ jobs better themselves.

Pitfalls

There are two equal and opposite risks in confronting inter-personal conflict.

• Doing nothing – lacking the will or energy to tackle a conflict that impedes your business risks undermining your credibility and commitment to your vision and strategy. Significant conflict is usually easily recognised and if ignored sends signals that such behaviour is tolerated, or is even acceptable as a norm. It becomes very difficult in these circumstances for you to pursue an achievable agenda of performance excellence.
• Tackling conflict the wrong way – confronting issues that are driven largely by personal emotions is always an area in which you must be sensitive to individual difference. Responses to conflict are best moulded and tailored to the individuals concerned. Nothing in this eliminates the need for a clear statement that certain kinds of behaviour are unacceptable – what it means is that success often demands an understanding of the reasons why the specific individual is behaving in the way they are.

The moral here is that tackling conflict requires a demanding blend of courage and adeptness.

Leaders’ checklist

• Be alert to signals of conflict – direct or indirect.
• Learn to discriminate between conflict that may represent healthy competitiveness, and conflict that degrades business credibility and performance.
• Never lose sight of the risk that untackled conflict can undermine your organisation’s performance.
• Understand that conflict between individuals needs managing differently from conflict between groups.
• Use your HR specialists to assess the significance and impact of conflict, and to determine ways of resolving it.
• Make sure that the leaders of teams where there is unhealthy conflict understand its impact and recognise their responsibility for resolving it.
• Always remember that the source of conflict can be very personal, and that solutions need to reflect the situations and personalities of individuals.
• Be aware that how conflict is tackled sends broader signals to your team about your integrity and resolve.