Land Records Leadership Series: Navigate Professional Conflict Without Boxing Gloves

What workplace conflict do you want to resolve?  Whether it’s the temperature of the office, what is out of scope on a client project, or which department should be paying for software licensing, workplace conflicts come in all shapes and sizes.  Some can be easy to solve with the proper tools. Others can be challenging, even for experts.  Here are suggestions from WLIA members.

Understanding Workplace Conflicts

"As a supervisor the most difficult conversations are those when you are telling an employee that they are not doing their job the way that they should or that they are doing something inappropriate."… "You need to really get to know how each employee works, what interests them, what drives them, what they respond to. Once you know that then you can apply the appropriate techniques to deal with situations."

"Many clients have the attitude that they are paying you and you should give them what they want even if it is increasing the scope to do so. Make sure when you start a project that the scope is very well defined and that the deliverables are detailed. This will help with explanations. Many times graphics will help the client to understand those as well."

-Jon Schwichtenberg

Early Intervention and De-escalation

"Address issues as soon as you have the full picture [of] the issue. Typically if issues are left too long, they become much bigger than they really are.

1)    Try discussing individually with each person involved to hear every side of the issue, then compile a plan to address it. Usually getting all parties together without having a lot of detail causes more issues.

2)   Once you have all of the details, refer to your policies on how to handle it. If you don’t have one, apply similar policies to the scenario and develop a plan.

3) Once you have that, pull the parties together. Set ground rules for the meeting. Make sure you are fair to everyone involved, and let them all have the floor. Keep to your plan and ground rules." "…leave the meeting with documented results that each party signs off on, and you have action items to resolve the conflict with a timeline defined."

-Jon Schwichtenberg

"Early in my career, I learned a very effective approach to calming a vehement, angry "customer." I was working for the supplier. Three of us were on a business trip: my colleague (something of a mentor to me), and a manager in another department. The manager was asked to meet with the president of a very important client, a major Chicago A&E firm. My colleague was there for specific technical expertise.

Before the meeting, the manager sat us down to review the intent of the meeting and laid out how the client (well-known around our company, a rather voluble and flamboyant person) would act in the meeting. One term was "explode." The manager calmly said he'd listen to his concerns and acknowledge them as he listened, but not interject.

He'd let the customer have his say and not try to refute anything. When the customer was done, he'd ask the customer if he had anything else to say, and listen to that. Then he'd ask a simple question: what can we do to help?

The manager said (still in prep mode) that often angry people first just need to "vent their spleen." And once they do, they feel better and often are willing to engage in a useful conversation about how both parties can work together to solve the problem. The manager's approach worked. VERY well.

I've used this technique several times successfully. The most memorable was in the early 2000s - a young colleague came into my workspace and was clearly in angst over something. He had a VERY angry customer he didn't know how to handle.

I first calmed him and then explained that I would help him get back to a place where he could continue on in a productive conversation. I applied the technique. It worked. Once the customer was able to express his frustration, he was actually somewhat apologetic. And he and my colleague continued the conversation about how we could work together to solve his issue."

-Mike Koutnik

Jon and Mike provide a great framework for resolving conflicts in the workplace. Once you are comfortable with these techniques, seek more resources from conflict resolution experts to learn more.  For example, I recently read the book Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss. Known for being a negotiation book, it also does a good job explaining techniques to understand other people's perspectives during conflicts.

There is a difference between resolving typical workplace conflicts and dealing with threats of violence or illegal activities. If a workplace conflict crosses that line, contact the appropriate authorities, such as your human resources office or law enforcement.

Contributors to this article include:

• Jon Schwichtenberg - Minneapolis Office Manager at GRAEF

• Mike Koutnik - Owner at Michael A. Koutnik Consulting

Image Credits:

• conflict resolution by popcornarts from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)
• conflict resolution by kang somad from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)