When two people work together, conflict is inevitable. Hence, in an organization, conflicts among individuals and groups are very common. Many a times an organization will seek outside help to resolve conflicts among individuals. Here in where specialist conflict management companies come in. This all is very routine in today’s business world.
What is new is that not many organizations realize that the problem lies with their organization and not with the individuals.
Usually when conflict management is outsourced, organizations want that only the conflict among the individuals is sorted out. This is the short-term approach. A long-term, more proper approach that most professionals propose is that the conflicts of individual vs. organization be cured. This essentially means that recurring conflicts among individuals can also be hinting towards an ailing system of the organization.
This could be inappropriate leadership, unfair performance appraisal system or maybe the employees are not being adequately trained and sufficiently resourced to do their job. Although resolving conflict among the employees is essential, however with a little more effort an organization can actually solve the real problem, and save a lot of resource and money.
In order to evaluate the whole organization, certain question needs to be checked. Here is a general sample; however each organization can modify it according to its own factors.
1. Is the leadership of the whole organization or the group in focus, appropriate?
2. Does the organization have a long term conflict resolution strategy in place and whether it is accepted and implemented by the employees or not?
3. Does the organization have an effective feedback system that supports cohesiveness among individuals and helps their communication skills?
4. Is the organization providing continual training and adequate resources to all its employees?
Leadership is the most important factor in determining how a conflict will be managed. If the leadership is such that it is not widely accepted in the organization, it will be very hard to implement the strategies. But it takes two to make a clap. The employees also need to be supportive of the conflict resolution; otherwise the most effective of leaders cannot do much about it. So in order to create such a supportive environment, an effective feedback system is necessary. If an organization does not have the feedback system in place, they are not really serious about implementing conflict resolution strategy within the organization.
Further to that, employees need to be trained, without which they will not be able participate effectively in feedback, and would rather be de-motivated by the exercise.
So when the next time you face a conflict situation within your organization, be sure to look beyond that and evaluate the problem thoroughly. You might be surprised how the individual vs. organization approach may help you cure the problem for long-term.