Handling Workplace Conflict: 4 Approaches To A Win-win Solution

The consequences of conflict in the workplace are common and costly. Its prevalence, as indicated by three serious studies, demonstrates that 24-60% of management time and energy is spent dealing with anger. This results in decreased productivity, increased stress among employees, hampered performance, high turnover rate, absenteeism and at its worst, violence and death.

Conflict in the workplace is the consequence of a variety of factors. Maybe the most significant cause is when somebody feels taken advantage of. This might happen when a perfectionist boss demands the same dedication and commitment from employees as he or she exhibits, but does not compensate them for the late or weekend hours.

There are 4 specific steps managers can take to decrease workplace conflict. The first is for managers to look at communication skills, both when it comes to how they communicate and how they are teaching their employees to communicate with each other. This, naturally, consists of utilizing I statements instead of you language. Owning your own feelings and your own communication is a much more efficient approach to communicate and even more, teaching your employees to communicate that way with others, goes a long way toward reducing conflict.

The second aspect of communication is for managers to beef up listening skills. Active listening entails things such as really trying to understand what the other individual is saying, and then communicating to the other person that you do indeed understand what they're saying.

The second way to decrease workplace conflict is to create healthy boundaries. Without boundaries, there will be conflict and squabbles, power struggles and all kinds of circumstances that make for unpleasant situations.

You can be professional and be empathetic and compassionate toward your employees, without crossing the line of becoming their friend. This is particularly important when there's a power difference between 2 individuals in an employment situation.

The third factor to decreasing conflict is a skill called emotional intelligence. You will find several elements and facets however it essentially indicates acquiring skills to be more effective by teaching people to combine both intelligence and emotions in the workplace.

Seeing and handling employees as human beings with real lives is frequently ignored in the busy workplace. Individuals with high emotional intelligence can do this in a professional manner, and maintain appropriate boundaries. One more aspect of EQ is knowing and being sensitive to how employees are experiencing you as a manager. Part of EQ is teaching managers to be sensitive to how they're coming across to others.

The fourth aspect of reducing workplace conflict is establishing behavioral consequences to be utilized with really uncooperative employees who're not willing to change. In spite of using all these recommendations, there will be a few employees who just won't change because they're unwilling or unable. Which means a manager must explain a consequence, which is an action or sanction that declares to the employee the likely outcome of continuous problematic behavior. It will take skills from the three previous points to do this in a non-threatening way.

Is there ever a place for anger in the workplace? Yes. When people can say, Wait a minute. I am not happy with this; I do not like what is going on, and they turn that anger into a positive action, then the anger could be viewed as a type of motivator. Occasionally when we are in a position where we recognize that we're upset about something, and we utilize that to our advantage, we can make that work for us, and in the long run, really work for the company.

As employees, the more we can learn to speak up, to be able to say what our needs and our wants are in a healthy approach, and not let it fester to the point of rage or explosion, we can make use of our anger as a motivator to assist us take action.

Employees can also change their attitude towards their job while putting up with the unpleasant aspects of it. One method to reduce conflict and to be happier is to find a way to change our perspective and our vision of why we are there.