I Know You Are But What Am I

 Have you ever had to deal with conflict in your workplace?  How did it go?  Were you in charge of the folks that were creating a riff and how did you handle it?

In my experience, conflict will do nothing but fester if not taken head on.  Depending on the severity of the conflict, it must be dealt with and dealt with quickly.  I typically like to acquire information from both of the individuals on an individual basis to determine what is going on in each of the conflicting peoples perspective.

Utilizing that information, the truth of the matter typically falls somewhere in between the two stories.  Surprisingly, most of the time, the stories are the same.  Sure, the emotion of each person tends to draw emphasis on the parts of the story they are passionate about, but they still have the same basic understory.

If the issue needs to be dealt with (as in, the issue most definitely create ongoing hardship), sit the people involved down and make the two people present the information and the issues as they see them.  It is important to facilitate the conversation and ensure that each person sees the side of the other person.  It is not always simple, but having the opposing parties state the other persons concerns as they understand it typically is a good way to walk in one another's shoes.

Conflict will do nothing for any organization.  It will create loss in production, hurt feelings, and at the end of the day will hurt the bottom line.  Snuff it out immediately.  Issues that need to be dealt with are simple to resolve early on, but are challenging at best if not dealt with.

In the next post, I will talk about conflict that it challenging to create a win/win.....never fun!