I recently assisted a client to recruit a management team for his growing business. It was an interesting project, he had started a business just a few years ago, and achieved a level of growth that exceeded anyone’s expectations. Instead of a job he now has a business and it is no longer possible for him to run it without the support of a professional senior management team.
My assistance has focused on helping him identify how senior management activities will be delegated and how the business will be structured as well as what he will do once the team are in place. It has been easy to have the conversations about processes and responsibilities, but conversations about relationships have been more awkward.
You see when we bring a group of talented individuals together we want them to work as a team, in harmony with collective goals at the forefront of their minds.
Unfortunately, when a team of talented individuals are brought together it is not only their skills and knowledge you want, you also want their passion for their area of expertise, because that is what makes them the best people for the job.
Where there is passion there is also the potential for conflict, but most business people, regardless of the size or type of business they run don’t really want to have to deal with conflict between their star performers.
Yet, conflict in the work place remains a perennial problem for all types of organizations, and takes many forms; a disagreement between colleagues, a dispute between managers and employees or a large-scale industrial action, all conflict has the potential to negatively affect both people and ultimately profits as employee morale and productivity fall.
There are lots of resources available to help you resolve conflict once it has reached the surface, but most of them do not work because they are either based on a them versus us approach, or they fail to recognise that most work places are based on a them versus us management style. In manager employee conflict situations, it is often this approach to managing that is the problem, so a solution that uses the same approach just will not work!
As David Liddle says in his book Managing Conflict, it is important to accept that conflict is an inevitable part of working life and have a plan for managing it so that it’s negative aspects are minimised and the potential positive impact maximised.
You can download a summary of the book Managing Conflict by David Liddle in the form of a guide to managing conflict here.
The guide to managing conflict will help you to establish a positive approach to conflict management by explaining:
- Why your current approaches to dealing with conflict don’t work,
- What strategies might enable you to manage conflict more effectively, and
- How learning how to mediate can encourage more effective dialogue amid controversy and conflict.
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