4 Steps to Help You Navigate Workplace Disputes  

The most helpful 20 minutes I spent at SXSW were focused on learning a simple four-step method for working through conflicts. If you are like me, and you tend to retreat or shut down when faced with conflict, what I learned may help you, too.

Building and cultivating diverse teams produces the strongest business results. Fostering a culture of collaboration harnesses the collective power of functional experts. A highly functioning and collaborative team buzzes at work. Engagement is high. Increasing diversity and collaboration results in increased creativity, innovation, and strong business performance. Recruiting and retaining talent becomes easier, because people want to be part of this team.

However, tension between people and groups with different ideas and perspectives can occur. Conflict often results when two or more people have interests, needs, goals, or values that interfere with one another. How do you ensure that the tension that results from diversity is healthy and does not devolve into unnecessary conflicts, disagreements, or passive aggressive behavior?

At SXSW, author Amy Gallo presented a model to handle conflict. She noted that people are either conflict avoiders or conflict seekers, and you need to know your own style, as well as that of the person(s) with whom you are in conflict. Then, you can objectively use the process below to find a mutually agreeable solution to the conflict at hand.

Four Steps to Solving Conflict

• Understand the person on the other side of the conflict. Push yourself to be generous. See the other perspective. Listen with the intent to be changed.  Understanding others’ needs helps to solve conflict. Always show respect, even when disagreeing. Modeling these behaviors can have an impact on the person you are in conflict with, and may encourage him or her to do the same.

• Determine what type of conflict you have:
  • Task conflict: Disagreement about the objective or goal.
  • Process conflict: Disagreement about what is needed to achieve your goal.
  • Status conflict: Disagreement about who the owner or approver of a project is.
  • Relationship conflict: A disagreement that feels personal.

• Rather than focusing on the conflict, focus on your objectives and the process you’ll follow to achieve them. Ensure that you and the other person(s) agree on the actual goal. This may take working together and, potentially, seeking input to ensure objective clarity.

• Jointly identify the options you have to achieve your goal, and then choose the one that is mutually agreeable. This is when the actual conflict resolution happens.

Managers and leaders should appreciate that appropriate levels of tension and conflict will help drive the best results from their teams. Ideas that are debated, tested, and refined lead to increased quality, and healthy conflict often achieves better results and more engaged teams than consensus-driven or top-down decision making. To balance these differing points of view, you must clearly communicate goals and objectives and ensure that they are understood by all members of the team. Empower your team to make decisions within the context of the shared objective, and ensure that they are clear about who the ultimate approver is.

On the other hand, if you find that you often have disagreements with your boss, you may need to consciously navigate conflicts to avoid negative results. If you are an avoider, do your best not to get caught up in feelings. If you are a seeker, practice empathy, and ensure you are putting yourself in your boss’ shoes. This will take practice, so to be sure you are making progress, enlist the help of a co-worker who can give you feedback in real time. Or confide in a trusted partner, and tell him or her what you are working on. After a meeting with your boss, follow up with these individuals. Describe what happened: Did you shut down? Were you overbearing? Were you able to keep the conversation direct and focused on goals? Ask your co-worker or partner how he or she thinks you did, and openly accept the feedback. Use this advice the next time you are in a similar situation.

Remember, it takes time and practice to develop conflict-solving skills, but in the end, you will have a more positive, efficient, productive work environment that supports quality results.

Written by Amy Lauer, SVP & GM, OldNavy.com. 
Amy has over a decade of digital media and e-commerce experience. A native New Yorker, she happily lives in the bay area with her husband and 4 teenaged children.