Chip Shot - April 2019

Conflict Management Skills

Conflict management skills revolve around making sure everyone feels heard and respected while negotiating a mutually beneficial solution that everyone involved can accept. It does not necessarily involve pleasing everyone or removing any and all disagreement. Conflict can be necessary and good, and the goal of conflict management is to make sure that any disagreement remains productive and professional. But poor communication or interpersonal tension can easily cause simple disagree- ments to flare up into resentment or worse. Conflicts that are allowed to fester and grow will ultimately diminish productivity and damage staff morale. This is why employers seek employees with the skills to manage and diffuse It’s hard to avoid conflict entirely, both in the workplace and elsewhere in life. It’s human nature to disagree. In fact, eliminating conflict entirely would cause its own problems: there would be no diversity of opinion and no way for us to catch and correct flawed plans and policies. Not all conflicts are alike, nor can they be managed as if they were alike. A confronta- tion with an angry customer is very different than a personal tiff between co-workers or friction with one’s own supervisor. Likewise, some conflicts occur when people dis- agree on how to do the right thing, while others involve actual malice. The key ques- tion is usually who has more power within the company and whether either party has direct authority over the other. Conflicts can be addressed directly by the parties involved, or with the intervention of supervisors, human resources staff, union officials, or professional mediators. The process might involve a casual conversation or the filing of a formal grievance. In vir- tually all cases, handling conflict and achieving conflict resolution involves the same core set of skills. Types of Workplace Conflict: