Resolving Conflict in the Workplace – Four Key Steps

Resolving conflict in the workplace is fundamental to maintaining a productive and harmonious workplace.

Unfortunately, disagreements, personal grievances and misunderstandings can often occur, and therefore effectively managing conflict is imperative to generating trust and maintaining confidence.

Thus, any manager or leader needs to maintain their vigilance in picking up on conflict and stamping it out wherever possible.

This involves several key steps, including:

• Establishing rapport with the affected person to create an atmosphere of openness, constructive criticism, and problem solving
• Setting the stage – emphasising that you want to work together to achieve a mutually satisfactory solution
• Describing the conflict from your perspective as objectively, clearly and specifically as you can
• Gaining perspective: working to understand the other person’s perspective by asking relevant questions; never assume you understand all the facts.

It is also important to prepare the points you are going to make with the affected person before you have the conversation.

This allows you to focus on remaining open and listening – without interrupting or showing anger.

Identifying and evaluating the potential solutions together is crucial, as this helps resolve the conflict in a constructive way.

When choosing a solution always pick one (or several) that best meets all of the party’s needs, and establish an action plan that you are both willing to take in order to implement that solution.

And finally, don’t forget to arrange to meet up again at a later date to check on progress.

By following these guidelines, it is possible to defuse employee conflict issues constructively and effectively.

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By Mike Peeters