How To Resolve Conflicts At Work

When you have a group of people working on multiple projects for a long period of time, conflicts are inevitable.  Even though you screened your team members and hired them after a thorough vetting process, conflicts arise. While they may have all the right answers to your questions on how to handle conflicts, they aren’t always equipped to deal with the situation in real life.  If you have faced this situation at work on more than one occasion, then here are steps you can follow to resolve conflicts:

1. Don’t avoid the problem

In order to start solving the problem, start by embracing the situation.  The more you avoid it, the bigger it becomes and the harder it becomes to deal with the conflict in question.  To get around the dispute, sit your team down and ask them what the issue is first. Set up a time and talk about the problem uninterrupted.  Don’t assign blame, instead, talk to your team, understand the problem and get to the root of the situation. The minute you understand what happened, you can figure out a way to get to a solution.  When you deal with the problem at hand on mutual ground, it reduces the amount of tension and gives you the best possible outcome not just for your team, but for the project as well!

2. Keep your conversations focused on the goal

When you are looking at resolving a tough situation, make sure that your conversations are centered around the end goal.  Sometimes, when you have discussions with multiple people at the same time, the conversations tend to go all over the place.  When you are sitting down to resolve conflicts, this cannot happen because you lose sight of the end goal and this usually leads to more conflict.  Prepare a rough set of talking points before entering the meeting and have an agenda in place so things don’t go haywire. The more focused your discussion is, the quicker you solve the problem!

3. Listen

Most conflicts are usually resolved when you start listening to what other people are saying.  When the other person is coming to you with their grievances, listen to them carefully. Wait till they finish what they have to tell you and only then, voice a suggestion.  Once the person has finished, don’t offer your opinions to them. Instead, let them find the answers. You could say something along the lines of: “So your basic problem with them is this, but you would like to solve it another way?”  Through this approach, you let the other person know you are open to letting them fix the problem themselves.

4. Find  middle ground

When you are dealing with solving a conflict, the conversation mainly centers around  disagreements. However, if are going to solve the problem, focus on the details, which help in solving the issues at hand.  This step works when you have listened to either side and figured out where the two parties have common interests. When things get too heated, turn the conversation back to the middle ground.  By doing this, you not only cool the situation down, but also show your team members you care about them.

5. Give them a path

The final step in solving a conflict is to provide a route to solve the confusion.  While you aren’t directly giving your group a direct solution, you are taking them to the answer by guiding them along the way.  You can do this by talking about the positive points of letting go and why getting over this scrimmage is actually in their favour.  Chart out a course of action and tell them to try out the plan for a specific duration, say, 2 months. Revisit the problem after the specified duration and look at what worked and did not.  By doing this, you get a clear understanding of how deep the problem goes and if it can not be worked out immediately, then chart out a different course of action. Whatever it may be, you can solve the issue at hand only with a clear understanding of the problem and the path ahead.

As a leader, solving conflicts and resolving arguments is one of your key responsibilities.  If you think there are different ways you could solve a problem, comment and let us know!