Most managers know that people interacting in the workplace can often lead to conflict. This common office event will always arise, and managers must know how to identify and deal with conflict. Most people automatically associate conflict with a negative outcome and the avoid it. Conflict comes from different perspectives among different individuals. Clashing of ideas and perceptions form many different confrontations. These ideas stem from society norms, individual values or religious morals.
Conflict is part of life and is not such a bad thing. Conflict helps identify problems or potential problems that must be corrected before mistakes happen. It's fair to say that conflict is necessary for the evolvement of organizational goals and needs. This benefits the workplace for the long run.
Conflict, specifically competition is a great motivator for employees to participate in the decision making cycle. Debating over issues can bring forth new and improved processes and ideas. This evidence may have been passed bye if employees weren't challenged to change or other office conflict.
Conflict can really help personnel and management learns to recognize and benefit from differences. It can be daunting to get through conflict because it's hard to put personal feelings aside and see things from a different perspective. If conflict doesn't materialize and management leads by example conflict can rapidly escalate to violence. Everyone will lose and conflict will continue.
Common conflict in the workplace can come from many different ways. Poor communication, change between managers and employees, or broken boundaries of social norms or groups. Poor communication happens when a worker or subordinate is unable to receive the message from supervisors and management. Confusion is a common factor with conflict. With employees unable to understand the requirements from management sparks confusion.
When management can clearly describe in a polite professional way, the requirements at hand, then the results will have a lower possibility of ending in some type of conflict. Employees seek for leadership traits in management. If these traits: integrity, charisma, credibility are lost then management has lost the pedestal to workers. Credibility and leadership are key roles in managing people.
People manage conflict in many different ways, such as through humor, avoiding colleagues or using one's position or authority to resolve the situation. When it comes to relationship conflicts, the people at my company tend to use avoidance. For instance, there were three employees including myself in our sub-department. Two of them don't like each other; they often get into arguments regarding how to get the work done.
There is no communication between the two, they totally avoid each other and when disagreement happens, they tend to withdraw themselves and pretend that conflict did not really happen. This is a lose-lose conflict situation because no body really gets what they wanted, the underlying reason and cause for the conflict still remains and similar conflicts occurs over and over.
They are competitive of each other; they only have concerns for the outcome and low concern for the relationship. When major disagreement occurs where they need to divide up the work, be!
Being the lead of the department she would use her authority and assign the other employee to a less favorable task. Moreover, the situation worsen when information are not shared and they rely on themselves to get the work done, which ended up downgrading their work performances and received warning for poor productivity. This is like a mirror for me, telling me that sometimes using avoidance to resolve a conflict is not the best approach.
Management is able to reduce conflict at work by reiteration of position requirements, task descriptions, and also by being receptive to gripes or statements from subordinates. Listening from the top will make or break productivity from the bottom. Supervisors are the first line of defense to intentionally upgrade communication with all subordinates that they lead.
This can be done with positive results by meeting with employees on a one on one basis, with timely and professional ways. Evaluations usually seem to be that time, however it is okay to provide personal feedback anytime management or employees see fit. Open forum is another communication process for managers to minimize conflict. Open forums provides a neutral, safe atmosphere where workers are able to speak freely. Open forums also develop new ideas and procedures for routines and tasks at hand.
Depending on certain management styles and leadership qualities, conflict can be minimized. It's up to managements experience with handling these conflicting situations. Smaller organizations can have lower conflicting incidences. This is because most workers handle their fair share and mind there manners.
Smaller organizations seem to be a tighter knit workplace, where large corporations aren't able to bond. Most conflicts are escalated up the chain and end up as a memo. Smaller companies with less people resolve most conflict on the spot, only because managing less people can be easier to communicate with.
With regular positive feedback, management can cut down on any misunderstandings in house. Managers are great business oriented members of any organization. It takes a leader to be able to handle conflict in a professional manner that ends in a positive, productive fashion. A leader is someone who people naturally follow through their own choice, whereas a manager must be obeyed.
A manager may only have obtained his position of authority through time and loyalty given to the company, not as a result of his leadership qualities. Some managers may not have very good leadership skills whatsoever but a good leader will make a good manager.
If conflict can't be reduced by management then social norms kick in, and natural leaders are born. Natural leaders are the unofficial spokesperson within the group. After management passes bad information, the natural leader tends to keep members focused in an unofficial way.
Management usually consists of people who are experienced in their field. A manager knows how each layer of the system works and may also possess a good technical knowledge. A leader may not be experienced in their field and could be a new arrival to a company who has bold, fresh, and new ideas.
Conflict simply comes from differing viewpoints. Dealing with conflict as a manager takes special elements to mange "not" to or, conquer the situations that may arise between you, other people, or the organization. Conflict management is a learned behavior and turns into an art form.
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