Now more than ever before, corporate life is changing. As part of everyday work, managers must deal with a range of conflicts within their organization and outside it.
Internally, reorganisation, budget cuts, downsizing, changing roles, and an increasingly diverse workforce with differing expectations, can create miscommunications, insecurity and stress that may lead to disputes and conflict. Externally, mergers, takeovers and acquisitions, union negotiations, and disputes involving suppliers, intellectual property and competitors can take a manager into realms where the expense, time and uncertainly of litigation is a poor business option.
There are changes in the makeup of the workforce in industrialized countries, as a result of the aging workforce, the increase in the birth rates of minorities, the pressures of refugees and the many differences in culture, education and expectations they bring to the workforce.
There are also emerging pressures in workforce demographics. Increasingly there is a war for talent to recruit the best and the brightest as the workforce is shrinking. For example, it is estimated that by the year 2020 the number of workers over 50 years of age will be equal to the number of workers less than 50 years of age. Increasingly, companies are competing with each other to become an employer of choice. How managers negotiate differences of opinion and conflict will have a significant impact on how their organisations are perceived. Workers are better educated now than ever before, and have a better understanding of their own power and options. Increasingly workers believe that they have a right to be treated by companies as individuals and want their personal situations and needs taken into account.
Such is the current complexity in the workforce that, in the United States, it has been estimated that many managers spend one third of their time resolving conflicts. Handled well, conflicts can create opportunities to improve relationships, generate new ideas and improve operations. Handled poorly, conflicts can, in the words of Americans Wilmot & Yarborough, create
“a time bomb without a clock. No one can safely handle the time bomb or predict when it will explode. Organizations spend enormous time; energy and money cleaning up messes created after long ignored or hidden issues erupt.”1Managers are negotiating all the time and most are inclined to rely on what they think has worked well for them in the past. Some managers opt for a strategy that approximates, fight, flow or flee, depending on the situation. Others will try to argue that they are right, (this nearly always leaves winners and losers and so could be seen as a losing proposition from the start) which is difficult to establish convincingly and so, by default, leads to who has more power, which is, of course, the manager. Again, this makes for winners and losers and is unlikely to lead to a happy and productive workforce in the long term.
Some managers do all they can to protect relationships, but in the process are likely to find that they are not solving key business problems. The reason is simple; they are focusing on the people, not the problem to be solved.
Other managers are so keen to see their solution to a problem implemented, that they will ignore the ideas and feelings of others in order to have their solution implemented, this leads to loss of good ideas from staff and resentment among workers that generally leads to higher staff turnover.
Still others avoid debate, they fear conflict getting out of control and that resolution may be time consuming or slow down decision-making and implementation.
The way that managers deal with debate and the potential for ensuing conflict has the power to shape every aspect of a company’s future.
There is a solution and it is known as
interest-based negotiation.The key elements of
interest-based negotiation are:
- Firstly, to separate the people from the problem and
- Secondly, to recognise that most arguments or positions are only a person’s preferred options for resolving a particular issue. And the issue is often one that affects both parties.
With most disputes, it is likely that both parties have similar underlying interests, identifying these interests is the key to effective resolution. The more each party’s interests are met, the more durable and satisfactory any solution will be for both parties.
In any dispute it is likely that both parties see a problem, the key is identifying what are the underlying interests of each party and then working together to identify as many options as possible, not just the two positions or “preferred options” that form the basis of most differences.
This is illustrated by the following example. Two male bookkeepers are quarreling in an office. One wants the window open and the other wants it closed. Their argument becomes increasingly heated as they argue about whether it should be open or closed and how much it may be reasonable to leave open, a quarter, half or three quarters? To satisfy both their positions, open or closed, there is no answer. A compromise may be possible but it is not an answer to the positional debate over keeping the window open or closed. There can only be a winner or a loser and if the lore of the jungle prevails, the one who has more power, in this case the larger man is the one who is likely to carry the day.
Enter the manager. She has more power, but instead of trying to establish who is right she asks questions to establish each party’s interests. She asks one man why he wants the window open: “To get more fresh air.” She then asks the other why he wants it closed: “To avoid the draft.” After a few moments consideration she opens wide a window in the next room, thus bringing in fresh air while avoiding a draft.
2The manager could only come to this solution by understanding the interests of each party. A decision based on trying to decide who was right would have lead to ongoing resentment by the perceived loser, a compromise would have had the same effect, exercising her power would have perhaps been a little faster but the likelihood is that the issue would have smoldered between the two and resentment would spill over into other areas of their work.
Once two parties identify or are assisted with identifying their underlying interests then the issue at hand becomes a joint problem to be solved. The manager could equally have resolved the problem and gained buy in by the two bookkeepers if she had restated their interests and then posed the question. What would it take for us to increase the fresh air to the first bookkeeper while avoiding draft for the second? Once the focus is on the problem then all parties can look for options together. There is only one answer to should the window be open or closed. But there are many options to solving the joint problem, now posed as a joint question.
Eleven points to improving your success in handling disputes:- Try to tackle a problem as early as possible, it is easier to solve than one that has built momentum. (When differences fester sometimes people can’t remember what situation started their disagreement in the first place.)
- Be soft on the person, hard on the problem – separate the problem to be solved from the people involved.
- Recognise that trying to establish who is right or wrong or who has more power will not lead to ongoing improvement in a relationship and, generally, does not offer the best solution to resolving differences.
- Demonstrate that you are open to persuasion; nothing is more persuasive.
- Ask lots of questions to identify view points of others; it is impossible to provide effective options for resolution if you don’t fully understand every aspect of their concerns.
- Demonstrate that you are listening by paraphrasing and summarizing their points of view, they will soon correct you if you are not right which adds to your knowledge of their concerns.
- Having listened you can now expect the other party will extend the same courtesy to you.
- Identify interests to be met and frame a question that you can both generate options to answer. Typically, such a question would start how would we–? Or what would it take to–?
- Make sure both parties have worked out their Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). Your BATNA is something that you can do without the other person. If the agreement you come to is worse than your BATNA you should walk away and implement your best alternative.
- If you think that the situation may arise again, when you reach an agreement, build in a process for identifying a resurfacing early and agree on a process for resolving it effectively.
- As a manager, it may be difficult for you to demonstrate neutrality or to avoid a perception of bias, in this case, call in a trained mediator. It will be a small cost to having a lingering issue sap your time and affect staff moral and productivity.
- Yarborough, Elaine & Wilmot, William W. Artful Mediation, Constructive Conflict at Work, Carins Publishing, Boulder Colorado (1995) p58
- Adapted from 'Getting to Yes' Fisher and Ury