Six proven conflict management strategies

Conflicts can cause tension and reduces group effectiveness, leads to a loss of productivity and increase staff turnover. While conflicts can be good for improving the quality of decision-making and helping to foster an environment of self-evaluation, there is a point where conflicts can go too far. 

The following 6 strategies will help you to manage conflicts before they escalate and damage relationships.

1.    Consider an individual’s personality when engaging in discussions

Over time, personality has been used to explain why people behave the way that they do, and while valid in most situations, there is no excuse for poor behaviour.

2.    Consider your role in the resolution process

If you are not directly involved in the conflict, you can only be a facilitator as this is not your conflict to resolve. If you are a facilitator, find out what the expectations of the parties are. Sometimes people don’t want anything to happen, they may just want to complain!

3.    Consider your communication/body language

You should avoid aggressive behaviour, interrupting or talking over people, talking loudly to get the point across and generalising. If one party is displaying any of these behaviours, call it out. You can say something like, “I think the conversation is getting heated, let’s take a break and re-visit it after a coffee.”Also, try to match your communication and body language to that of the other person e.g. if they are standing up, stand up too.

4.    Resolve the conflict in a timely manner

Ideally, the conflict should be resolved within two days. It is recommended to use an informal approach first to bring up the issue. You can ask the other party to have a coffee to discuss “something” but never bring up the issue via email as this can cause miscommunication.

5.    Gather the facts

The key points to address are what happened, how it happened and what the outcome was. Encourage analysis of the situation, such as whether the differing perspectives could be due to a misinformation or miscommunication, whether it was facilitated by stress, tiredness or being under pressure and whether the incidence had occurred before. Consider all points of view before making a decision.

6.    Encourage parties to talk to each other

Parties should talk to each other to get down to the bottom of what they want. Usually people will not change their behaviour, but they will become more aware of it and can select when those behaviours will or will not come out.