Tips to Deal with Conflict and Increase Productivity
The workplace is more diverse than ever before. Leaders have teams with a variety of individual backgrounds, conflicting viewpoints, multiple generations, and varying amounts of experience. Great leaders are adept at managing emotions, opinions, needs/wants, and inspiring their people to work as a cohesive unit.
The ability to recognize conflict, understand the nature of conflict, and to be able to bring swift and just resolution to conflict will serve you well as a leader – the inability to do so may well be your downfall.
The following tips will help to more effective handle conflicts in the workplace:
- Define Acceptable Behavior: Clearly and publicly make it known what will and won’t be tolerated.
- Hit Conflict Head-on: you will minimize the severity of the conflict by dealing with it quickly.
- Understanding the “What’s In It For Me” Factor: If you approach conflict from the perspective of taking the action that will help others best achieve their goals you will find few obstacles will stand in your way with regard to resolving conflict.
- View Conflict as Opportunity: Hidden within virtually every conflict is the potential for a tremendous teaching/learning opportunity. Smart leaders look for the upside in all differing opinions.
Studies show a direct correlation between workplace conflict and lost productivity. Some leaders spend more than 30% of their time dealing with conflict, which equates to lost time and lost productivity. By dealing with conflict head-on, leaders have an opportunity to learn from conflict and keep their team focused on productivity.
