The Institute of customer service has said that customer service complaints have hit their highest level on record and are costing British businesses more than £9bn a month in lost staff time.
However, if you ask most leaders to tell you about their conflicts, the likelihood is that they will say that they don’t have any. Rather they will tell you that there are a few tensions, some un-joined-up thinking, frustrations or a few “difficult people”.
Whilst minimizing the conflict can feel a sensible thing to do, ensuring that we are not making a mountain out of a molehill, it is also a big mistake. Rather, the aim of any leader should be to ensure that the members of his team is “comfortable with conflict” and, what is more, benefit from the opportunities that it presents.
One of the biggest challenges we come across is a feeling that conflict is “a bad thing”. There is one main reason why. Namely that where there is a conflict or difference of opinion, an unhelpful blame/shame chain reaction occurs as follows:
One or both people are wronged / undermined / irritated;
Each person involved, looks for the cause of the issue otherwise known as finding out who is right and who is wrong;
All involved become defensive and try to avoid being wrong;
Room for honest conversation reduces;
Capacity for individuals to take responsibility is massively diminished; &
The parties involved become less able to work together.
"In fact, where conflict occurs there is a huge opportunity to generate new ideas, open up thinking and build emotional resilience. The starting point is to acknowledge that the conflict exists."
Louisa Weinstein, Resolution Specialist
So, how do you know that you are experiencing conflict? Well, it’s simple: conflict will be anywhere we identify a lack of unity, a breach of the spoken or unspoken rules and it begins when one or both parties believe that they have not or might not get their way.
Once we accept that and become comfortable with conflict accepting that it happens and can be triggered by very many things, a much more helpful chain reaction occurs:
The conflict is accepted and identified as something we want to move to the other side of;
Parties start to think about what they would like instead of the conflict;
Questions are asked about what could happen next;
Common ground is identified;
A wish to work together, if only to resolve the situation, is established;
Each party has room to take responsibility without being berated; &
Lessons are learned.
"One of the beauties of BIG PICTURE® is the way it flips Challenges into Opportunities in a natural flow- and here we see a hugely powerful reason for doing this with conflict resolution."
Martin Johnson, Creator of BIG PICTURE®
The upshot is actually that people are better off as a result of the conflict than they had been before. They understand that the conflict may have been the only way for them to reach the learnings and, more often than not, they will have learnt something new because of it.
If you want to make the most of your conflict – get in touch,
