Why you can’t train or team-build your way out of organizational conflict

• Training is about taking your team and helping it move to the next higher level of performance. If there’s enough conflict that you’ve sought out a trainer to help you, there’s other work you need to do first.
• Team and organizational conflict interferes with optimal learning. When troubling conflict is lurking in the training room, people are not at their best and the likelihood of their successfully deploying new approaches is rather dismal.
• Learning new conflict management approaches and skills doesn’t translate automatically into elegant use of them. Even top-notch training and the best circumstances can leave a gap between what people know and what people do (unless you and your trainer have a plan to address this … you should, you know).
• People central to organizational or team conflict know the training is really directed at them. They’re not fools. It puts them in an awkward position that doesn’t contribute to good learning.
• People uninvolved in the conflict suspect the training is really intended for others. That suspicion can be a real de-motivator and feel like a waste of their valuable time. Even if it’s true they could use the new approaches and skills, they may not see it that way because of the circumstances in which the training was initiated.
• Training doesn’t address the conflict. If conflict is complicated enough that you’ve sought out training to get some relief from it, it’s likely that what it will take to address the conflict is to…address the conflict.

Is organizational conflict resolution training ever useful?

Of course it is. When your organizational or department house is generally in order, conflict resolution training helps you and your team:

• Learn efficient, effective frameworks for problem-solving and conflict resolution.
• Understand the signals of healthy conflict and the warning signs of escalating conflict.
• Develop a common language for engaging conflict and solving problems.
• Make better business decisions by learning how to tap the opportunity conflict offers without the danger of conflict running amok.

What to do if you have organizational conflict and would also like your team to learn better approaches

Start by sorting out the conflict that’s getting in the way of business and work. Arrange for training after that. And arrange for support after the training to help your team put into practice what they’ve just learned.

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at ConflictZen.com.

We’ll be gathering at The Georgian Club in Atlanta on Friday, September 24, and I’ll be speaking about dialogue-based business and marketing strategies for mediators, conflict coaches, dispute resolution trainers, arbitrators and other conflict management professionals.

Registration details will be available at ACR-Georgia’s site.

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at ConflictZen.Lenski.com.

I ask you to get yourself to that sunny meadow as fast as you can. You have two choices of path: One is through the woods I just described, the other is a well-work footpath that heads straight to the meadow. Both are about the same distance.

Which do you choose? The well worn path. It’s easy. It’s fast. It’s efficient. It helps you achieve the assignment most readily.

Now imagine this: I ask you to get yourself to the sunny meadow, without benefit of the well-worn path, every day for several weeks. You traverse the same section of woods again and again, back and forth.

What happens? You create a new well-worn path. The more you use it, the more worn it gets. It gets easier, faster, more efficient. Eventually the old path, unused, turns once again into thick woods.

This is the experience of adopting new habits for resolving conflict and negotiating, and unlearning your old, less effective habits. The neural pathways in your brain are like the well-worn path in my story. Adopting a new habit is the act of creating new neural pathways and letting the old ones wither.

New, better negotiation and conflict management habits are so very learnable. Years ago my doctoral research into behavior change and habits taught me a great deal about what it takes, what works and what doesn’t. But I knew then and I know now that anyone can successfully adopt new negotiation and conflict habits with the right approach, commitment, and a dose of kindness toward themselves.

If you’re considering one-on-one executive coaching for yourself or an employee, I’ve just begun accepting executive coaching clients for fall and early winter. Coaching can include (but isn’t limited to) improving executive communication, increasing your workplace influence, managing interpersonal and group conflict, addressing business partner conflict, and negotiating better for yourself or your team.

Drop me a note if you’re interested.

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at ConflictZen.Lenski.com.

I say this when I train advanced mediators and when I teach mediation and conflict management in organizations and groups. And I said it last night while meeting with a community group interested in getting “inside mediator” training for some of their members.

Why do solutions and agreements fall apart after the organizational conflict appears resolved? I see these eight reasons more frequently than any other:

• It wasn’t really agreement. This is the big kahuna of agreement failures and most of the others listed below are variations of this one. It may look like an agreement and sound like an agreement, but a well-trained organizational mediator knows what to look for to make sure it really is. Making nice, for instance, isn’t real resolution.
• Agreement-building was hurried. This happens because people are uncomfortable in the groan zone, hurry to solve before fully understanding, and feel organizational pressure to multi-task and handle conflict “efficiently.”
• They felt pressured by someone in higher authority. Leaders and managers sometimes describe “passive-aggressive” employees who pretend to agree but then never act on the “agreement.” Stop diagnosing the passive-aggressives (there are far fewer than you think) and start understanding that pushing creates resistance, even if that resistance doesn’t show up ’til later.
• The agreement failed to solve the real problem. Solve the wrong problem and – you guessed it – you get the wrong solutions.
• It didn’t really meet their most important interests. Interests are people’s underlying needs, the reasons they take the positions they do (common interests in organizational conflict include reputation, job security, career advancement, physical and psychological safety). The theory goes that an agreement is more likely to be sound if it meets one or more of each person’s important interests.
• The not-really-agreed-upon solution didn’t come from those directly involved in the conflict but it sure sounded good at the time. Too much organizational conflict is handled by giving advice liberally and persuading people to take it. It’s ego-building for the advice-giver but generally a lousy way to really address problems.
• There were stakeholders missing. Absent stakeholders can unravel an agreement faster than kudzu grows overnight.
• Something changed. It happens. That’s why no agreement can stand the test of time forever and it’s why you never want to brow-beat someone for failing to act on an agreement. You want them to be willing to return to the table and re-work the agreement.

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at ConflictZen.com.

In Entitled Workers Are More Frustrated On the Job and More Likely to Abuse Co-Workers, New Research Finds, the University of New Hampshire reports,

The researchers found that individuals with strong entitlement-driven self-perceptions can feel more frustrated and dissatisfied with their work lives than employees with a more objective view of their relative worth and their contributions.

“Overall, the frustration experienced by entitled workers appears to stem from perceived inequities in the rewards received by co-workers to whom psychologically entitled employees feel superior,” Harvey said.

The entitled employees studied also engaged in abusive workplace behaviors such as insulting, breaking promises and spreading rumors about co-workers in response to job-related frustration. They also were more likely to engage in political behaviors such as ingratiation, self-promotion and doing favors. While such political behaviors often are considered acceptable to draw attention to employees who have earned such recognition, the researchers note that these behaviors also can be used to promote favoritism and influence an inequitable distribution of rewards.

And here’s where it gets particularly interesting for management and human resources: It’s tempting to think that increased communication from supervisors would reduce entitled workers’ frustration, reduce the team conflict that results from their behaviors, and improve organizational conflict management.

Yet the researchers concluded the opposite is the case. When supervisors increase communication with psychologically entitled employees, their frustration can increase. The same was not the case for employees who don’t generally have a sense of entitlement.

Lots of implications there for the ways and amounts that supervisors and managers interact with entitled workers.

The full article, Frustration-based Outcomes of Entitlement and the Influence of Supervisor Communication by Paul Harvey and Kenneth Harris, is available in the July 2010 issue of the journal Human Relations.

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at ConflictZen.com.

The Bedouin did not respond. “I said, how far is it to the nearest oasis?” the man asked, a bit more loudly this time and enunciating his words very carefully.

The Bedouin still did not respond. The man shook his head in frustration, turned, and began to walk away.

The Bedouin called out, “It will take you three hours!”

The man spun around to face the Bedouin. “Couldn’t you have told me that when I first asked?”

“No,” replied the Bedouin. “I couldn’t answer until I knew how fast you walk.”

I often advise clients to flip the understanding-to-solving ratio when resolving conflict in organizations. Instead of the typical 25% of time on understanding and 75% on solution-generating, try 75% of time on understanding the problem from multiple frames of reference.

Why? Because when you head almost straight to resolution, the only frame of reference from which you can reasonably try to solve the problem is your own. And when two or more people try to address a problem, each working primarily from their own frame of reference, there’s likely to be a solution gap.

It feels productive and ego-boosting to tick off ideas for solution, to show how creative you can be, to demonstrate how hard you’re working to find a solution that will be acceptable. But it’s terribly unproductive if you don’t yet fully understand the others’ frames of reference and make sure you’re all solving the same problem.

So: Be the Bedouin. Take the time to understand from outside your own frame of reference and discover answers and solutions that were invisible to you before.

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at ConflictZen.com.

A few years ago, while cooking and lost in thought, I opened an upper cabinet door right into my husband’s head. He yelped as the corner of the door dug sharply into his skull.

The first words out of my mouth were, “Sorry about that, I didn’t do it intentionally!”

Rubbing his skull, he replied, “That sure makes my head hurt less.”

We inadvertently create three problems when we wrap assurances of our benign intentions into conflict conversations:

1. We imply that because our intention was benign, the other person should miraculously suffer less. But they don’t. The impact we had on them still stands until we address that. In organizational conflict situations, addressing the impact usually means figuring out how to prevent similar impact in the future. How are you encouraging your people to focus more on impact than intention?
2. We distract ourselves from the more valuable conversation. When we make the conversation about our intentions instead of the impact we too often end up in a conversation about fault and blame. When we make the conversation about impact we end up in a conversation that can turn conflict into opportunity for change. How are you leveraging conversations about unintended impact to strengthen organizational systems and processes?
3. We make the conversation about us and our goodness instead of about the problem. Ego-soothing yes, but when we inadvertently hurt or have other negative impact on someone, our best energy is spent on them, not us. They want us to know we understand the impact and when we’re only talking about ourselves, that’s difficult to show. Are you modeling compassion instead of self-protectionism for your team?

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at ConfictZen.Lenski.com.

The first one read, “Please get me on the next flight home – no one here wears shoes.”

The second one read: “I’m going to need more inventory – no one here owns shoes!”

Mental models are the paradigms or lenses through which you view the world. If you know the work of Chris Argyris, Donald Schön or Peter Senge, then the concept of mental models will sound familiar.

Senge, in his seminal work The Fifth Discipline, described mental models as “deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.” He further explained that differences in mental models help explain how two people can observe the same event and later describe it differently.

Because mental models often live below the level of awareness, their influence on behavior may be invisible and unexamined. An important part of the self-work of learning to respond differently in conflict and negotiate better for yourself and your team is to uncover and examine how your mental models influence the ways you act during such situations.

Senge and others have suggested that mental models are generative – you can learn and adopt new mental models that help you navigate negotiations, creative problem-solving, and conflict in more effective ways.

What does it take? In my experience, three key ingredients:

1. A willingness to be self-aware in ways you may not have been before.
2. The right kind of guidance to help you discern the mental models that help and hinder you.
3. Commitment – enough time and an effective approach for adopting a new mental habit.

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at ConfictZen.Lenski.com.

When you’re sorting out conflict, make sure you’re solving the right problem.

I tell my clients, “When you try to solve the wrong problem, you end up with solutions that won’t serve you well and you may not even know why the problem-solving meetings didn’t work. When you take time to name the right problem at the front end, you position yourself for far better negotiating and problem solving.”

The right problem is the important one that the stakeholders are willing to negotiate. The right problem is neither a pop-psych diagnosis, nor a restatement of your desired outcome. There may be more than one “right problem” in a conflict.

Like layers of an onion, there are surface problems and deeper problems. Surface problems tend to draw your attention, but they’re not really important and addressing them won’t change things much. The trick is to go deeper but only as deep as you need to address a meaningful problem. Go too deep and you start hanging out in the quicksand of pop-psych diagnosis, sure to grab and drown you.

These are not examples of the real, negotiable problem, though I hear versions of them all the time in my organizational conflict work:

• Get him to back down and admit he’s wrong (that’s just a statement of your desired outcome).
• Help the group feel more comfortable with change (your diagnosis of their problem with change is thinly disguised and is getting in the way of other ways to understand what’s holding them back).
• Decide whether to expand into that market or not (too many problems get stuck because they’re framed as either/or, leaving you with two options and blind to the many other possibilities).
• Change his passive-aggressive way of dealing with decisions he doesn’t really like but is too spineless to speak up about (pop-psych diagnoses’ will come around and bite you every time; they’re sidetrackers).

You’ll know you’ve got it right when the stakeholders can all say, yes, that’s an important problem we want to sort out.

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at ConfictZen.Lenski.com.

A snarky, tongue-in-cheek essay I wrote a few years ago, The 10 Best Ways to Win an Argument, is featured in the workbook. I wrote the article for a contest hosted by Darren Rowse of problogger and it won me $500 at the time. I guess it’s the article that just keeps on giving!

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski. Work originally published at ConfictZen.Lenski.com.