Conflict management is something that a lot of leaders want or need to work on. A while back I took two online training sessions available from my HR department on conflict management. One called “Addressing Stakeholder Conflicts”, and another called “Facing Conflict in the Workplace”. These were actually pretty good trainings. I have two things that I want to discuss in my reflection from my learning from these. The first is a reflection on the more intense of the two trainings: the “Facing” module. The content was quite good. There was a six-step process for handling conflict:
- Identity/Understand the source of the conflict
- Take preventative actions
- Recognize off-limits behavior/escalation
- Whether, or how to respond
- Resolution process
- Keep the resolution moving forward/getting back on track
I won’t go into all the details because that would be excessive here, but I will recommend it if you are looking for a resource. What I like about that training was that it was actually pretty good about recognizing the complexity of social situations and human interactions in those situations for such a short (roughly half hour module), which a lot of trainings don’t accomplish, particularly in that amount of time. I felt like a learned a lot. But what I didn’t like was that I scored a 77% (80% needed to pass) on the test because the assessment didn’t reflect that nuanced understanding of human behavior. It assumed that there is only one path to conflict resolution even though the training didn’t really indicate that fact.
One thing that I have learned in handling conflict is that different people don’t react to the same logical progression. Some will follow right along with one line of thought, and others will need another, and others may be illogical altogether. I see this in resolving conflict in my own work situations. I can think of a recent experience with two groups I was overseeing. I used the same solution for each group having the exact same issue with slacking teammates and one group readily accepted my intervention and the other basically was offended by my approach. I learned a lot about not standardizing conflict solutions in that experience. So, while I learned from this module, I probably won’t be retaking the test as knowing your followers, the situation, and how to interact with them is much more helpful than sticking to a prescribed solution.
But the second thing I want to reflect on is that I realized, is that leaders don’t always need to work on conflict resolution, even though that is what they have identified in themselves as a growth opportunity. Rather their issue is more about having difficult conversations or giving negative feedback. I personally have a harder time doing that than resolving conflict. I think that this is because I want to assume the best of everyone, that they will work on continually improving themselves. However, what I found out recently from an exercise called “Reflected Best Self” and sharing my reflections with other leaders was that having difficult conversations is actually the bigger issue for many leaders. They said it is rather rare in people.
What I gleaned from those conversations (to improve my own coaching) was that when leaders identify conflict management as a goal to work on, I’m going to suggest that they look into that a bit further and see if having difficult conversations is the actual skill they need to improve.
It may be one, it may be the other, it may be both.