Any business brings in workers from all walks of life with many different personalities. No matter how hard your human resources department tries to hire to make a team that works well together, there will be conflicts.
People butting heads is an inevitability but it doesn’t have to be a disaster or lead to a toxic work environment. In fact, some conflicts are actually ok if it comes from a place of wanting what they think is best for the company. If two employees are both doing their best to advance the company’s goals but disagree on the how then this is easy to manage.
Other conflicts can damage a business and effect the bottom line. How you deal with these conflicts is very important to prevent bigger problems later on.
In this article, I will go over several ways that you can prevent conflicts from arising and then deal with them if they do pop up.
Table of Contents
1 – Focus on team building
Think about team building in the same way that a professional sports team operates. They practice every day with set drills to make things a habit. During the game they can react immediately as a single unit since they prepared for the situation they find themselves in.
Doing team building exercises like scavenger hunts, corporate retreats, or even virtual team building activities these days will do the same thing. They reinforce teamwork but also give the employees the tools to manage themselves. When they butt up against an obstacle that ordinarily would cause conflict, they are trained on how to get around it with as little friction as possible.
2 – Don’t make emotional decisions
Sure, your emotions are going to play a part as they are part of your personality and how you react to the world around you. But, when your emotions cause you to dig into a position then this affects the team from the top down.
Emotions cause people to draw lines in the sand and this prevents moving forward to collaborate on a way to resolve the problem. It causes people to end up withdrawing to the familiar to feel comfort in their beliefs rather than come out of their shell to compromise and find some common ground.
If your management does this, then the employees will as well, so taking emotions out of the equation is essential.
3 – Pick your battles
There are some hills that you just shouldn’t choose to die on ideologically speaking. Try to evaluate each conflict as it arises and then decide if it is worth sticking with your position.
It may be worth it in the long run to give in to that particular point and forge ahead begrudgingly. In fact, some conflicts allowed to pass by may end up strengthening your position later on if you don’t try to make it a point early on.
After all, it’s better to win the war and lose the battle.
About Carson Derrow
