Hopefully you're having a wonderful January today is the inauguration.
And with all the turmoil happening between the two parties,
it really made me think about conflict,
which is something that we have to deal with in all aspects of our lives.
It doesn't matter if it's at work school with your family, with your friends,
with strangers, it happens and you have to learn how to deal with it.
So when I was thinking about it,
I was looking at the PMP because every year or
every two years, it changes. So I got mine in 2015,
and since then there have been some changes.
And one of the areas that I saw that has been added is managing conflicts
within teams. And so I thought it would be a good idea to talk about it today.
Hello,
my name is Chavonne and I talk about management productivity and organization.
And I do discuss also my time as an online grad student,
as well as taking care of a baby with my busy schedule.
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So you're notified also subscribing to my email newsletter and let's get
started on talking about conflict. So why does conflict exist?
There are multiple reasons by conflict exists.
The main one is personality clashes.
We are not all carbon copies of one another.
And so there will be differences in the way people think the way
they feel and the way they deal with a situation.
And with that,
there's always going to be conflicting ways of doing that within the
team and also with your clients. And as I said,
this can actually apply to any part of your life.
And so that is one of the main reasons why conflict exists is the fact that two
people just have clashing personality.
Other reasons why conflict exists, it could be like schedule conflicts.
It could be technical issues. People have competing priorities.
And if they're a skin stakeholders in one project,
they can have competing priorities.
And so that is another reason why conflict can exist.
Other type of conflicts as well can be poor planning, um,
issues with the contract. Also,
if you're working with a team that is
spread all over the country and or even the world,
you can also have like, uh, cultural differences because even within the us,
someone from the North East coast is totally different than someone's from the
West coast. So, so that could also be one of the reasons that there is conflict.
Now, one thing is it's all conflict bad and no, it isn't.
One of the things that is great about conflict is that it can spur innovation.
And the reason why can help with innovation and is because you
break apart,
that sense of group think that can sometimes happen in established teams that
have been together for awhile.
It is great when people have different ways of doing things,
the ways of thinking,
because it actually can help spur a better
way of dealing with a project. And it doesn't have to be a technical solution.
I usually think about that because I work in it.
It can be in a wide variety of ways.
So I do think that there are some times that conflict is great.
And one thing that I remember is I took the disc test.
I don't know if you're into personality tests,
but that is one that my old company had is take.
And one thing that we found out is that people tend to hire people
like themselves.
And so it's always good to hire people that are not like you
because of that.
You have different people thinking in different ways.
And so you're able to come up with better solutions and usually more innovative.
So not all conflict is bad.
So now that we have talked about what causes conflict,
what if conflict is good or bad,
let's go ahead and talk about the ways that you can resolve those conflicts
within your team and also with your clients as well, or even with a professor.
So let's discuss that now.
So there are different techniques that you can use for managing conflict,
and some of them are better than others.
And then one other thing is that some of them are temporary.
So it's something that you need to keep in the back of your head,
that there are some,
even though they're not probably the most preferable option,
they're the ones that make sense at the time,
as well as the fact that you have to follow up afterwards and
come up with a more permanent solution.
And let's go ahead and discuss the different ways of managing conflict.
So the first one is withdrawing and this basically means that as a project
manager, you stay out of it.
And this kind of reminds me of when your kids are fighting or my kids
usually the most preferable option in the beginning when it's just
a very minor argument is just remaining neutral and
just staying out of it and letting them try to resolve it themselves.
So that is one way of resolving conflict is the fact that
you are working with professionals. And usually if,
especially if it's a minor conflict,
they can try to work it out themselves and you just stay out of it.
But one thing that you have to note is the fact that you were probably going to
have to get involved if it starts escalating.
So this is if there's just very small,
minor conflicts that can be handled very quickly and easily
by the people that are having the conflict.
So initially you probably just want to withdrawal and just stay out of it and
see if they can resolve it themselves. But one thing would say with that,
and I guess I'll probably be saying this with all the conflicts is you
definitely want to follow up in a way that
it doesn't show favoritism to any of the people involved
just quickly check in probably like two weeks later and just be like,
Hey, just checking to see how things are going. And in that way,
you can see if it is time for you to step in.
And another way to handle conflict is by forcing.
So this is when you either pick one
side of the argument or you pick yourself and just use
your authoritative voice as the project manager to say, no,
this is the way we're going to handle it.
And this is good to get the
conflict resolved. But one thing is,
is that we have to remember,
there's always emotions that are involved with that.
So you could alienate people and you can have people build resentment towards
you. So that one is probably one of the worst ones to do.
I mean,
you don't want to always be the authoritative person and not allow people
to have a voice.
So that one is only if there is no
other resolution, you would have to do do that,
but I would leave that one till the end. The next one is smoothing.
And so this one is when you find the
areas that both parties agree to,
and then just kind of ignore the disagreements and just move
forward again, temporary, because this will,
but disagreements are still there.
So even though you can just smooth it and just say, okay,
let's just focus on what we agree on and let's move forward.
You're still going to have to eventually address the parts that people do not
agree on.
And one thing about smoothing it's usually the consideration is to one party.
So it's not going to work.
Long-term because eventually what's going to happen is someone's going to get
and they're going to leave the company. And especially if,
if it's someone that is a valued employee, you don't want that to happen.
So if you just need to have like a quick bandaid on something and
then come back to it later, then just use smoothing to move forward,
get over the hurdle and then address it in the, in the future.
The next way of handling conflict is compromising.
I will admit that smoothing and compromising are very similar.
So one thing about compromising is that each party gives up
something.
And so there is a level of
everyone is sacrificing something unlike smoothing,
that is usually one party winning over the other.
So with compromising is if both parties need to win,
I'm going to let you in on something.
The more knowledge and the more skills someone gets
the majority of the time, they have an ego.
And so you're going to have to find a way to just get them going,
let them sacrifice something.
And then they both feel like they're not both just giving into the other and
then just moving forward. And the last one,
which is the best one is confronting collaboration.
So this is where people sit down and they hash it out and try to come
up with ways of problem solving the situation and both of
them aren't invested. And I think that that's always the best one. I mean,
it will take longer. So again,
if it's something that needs a quick turnaround,
I would use the other type of conflict resolutions.
And I'm mainly talking about more the smoothing and the compromising.
But if you have the time and everybody is willing to participate,
then I definitely think as with anything,
you always want to do collaboration and try to get people to really
focus on what the issues are and come up with resolutions for them and problem
solve. So that's always the best one. So personally,
I have always tried to use the collaboration.
So one way that I've done it is I usually will withdraw if it's something
very small.
And if it's something that is just escalating or there is no
resolution,
then I will go ahead and use the confronting collaboration,
conflict resolution type.
And I will sit there and get the two parties together and I'll play
mediator.
And then I'll usually give them the same amount of time to discuss their issues.
And then after that,
we all start to work together to problem solve and come up with ways to
resolve those issues. And so, in a way,
both parties are agreeing to something and the disagreements are
getting resolved. And again,
I have to stress follow up because you might think,
Oh, well, we got the problem solving session going, everything was great.
But then you find out later that one person was not happy,
or it just the solutions that you all came up with,
the other person didn't follow.
So you definitely want to follow up and make sure that whatever path you all
decided on during that problem solving session,
that it's being followed by all the parties involved.
And it's actually working. If it's not,
then go back to the drawing board and come up with other ways to resolve the
issues that are still outstanding.
So I hope that this helped learn a little bit more about conflict,
especially with a team or with a client that is always one of my
interview questions,
because I want to see how people are able to handle conflict.
Because when you become a leader,
you're going to have to deal with conflict.
That's just a given you can't just ignore it all the time you're going to have
to face.
And so that is an important skill for a manager to have is conflict
resolution and being able also to re identify the conflict and
find the right way of handling it.
So let me know if you've had to deal with conflict at work,
which I know you have and the ways that you have used to resolve it.
And I will talk to you next week. Bye.