Pillars of Effective Management: Importance Of Conflict Management For Business Success

It does not matter if the company is small or has a multitude of employees: one hour will have to deal with conflicts.

After all, any environment that brings together people with different personalities, visions of life and cultures is at the mercy of any friction.

The problem is that conflicts cause a lot of damage to the corporate environment, eventually taking professionals away from the perception that common goals need to be pursued.

In this post, we are going to show the greatest harms that conflicts can bring to an organization and how to act before, during and after a disagreement. Ready to better understand how conflict management works and make this kind of episode an evolutionary opportunity?

So keep following Zoe Talent Solutions.

Know the risks

As much as friction within a company is far from being considered rarities, it is a risk to regard them as something natural.

This is because conflicts can be, at the same time, symptoms of more serious problems and problems in themselves.

When there is a harder clash between employees, the whole company is negatively affected and a number of actions need to be taken to address the problem. And this scenario only brings losses.

Productivity decline

Conflicts do not come out of nowhere. There’s always a story behind. An unanswered misunderstanding, gossip or discordant opinions about methodologies and practices: these situations act against the productivity of those involved, who end up dragging a malaise for days, weeks or even months.

One must always keep in mind that, as an unsatisfied employee finds no, he ends up seeing his productivity decline. Obviously, this affects the entire team.

Loss of time and energy

If they are not adequately prevented, conflicts must at least have their effects minimized. This requires actions ranging from a reserved conversation between leaders and those directly involved, through trainings and talks with the whole team or, in extreme cases, a restructuring of internal policies of the company.

And of course, all of this costs money and time, resources that could be invested in more strategic corporate processes.

Deterioration of the organizational climate

It’s a fact: in a conflict between professionals, the whole team is affected. This happens not only because those involved tend to have their productivity reduced, overburdening others, but also because the climate of negativity contaminates the whole environment.

In this context, it is not uncommon for rival groups to form or for some professionals to sympathize with one side over another. As a result, teams appear unbalanced, non-aligned and walking in divergent directions.

Understand the reasons

Conflicts in organizational settings occur for a variety of reasons, including personal quarrels, cultural differences, and even political stances. However, there are situations where the company itself is the creator of problems between employees.

These cases deserve special attention of people management .

Sudden changes

Changes always require special attention from the professionals responsible for managing people, since they can cause insecurities in the team, who begin to doubt whether the work done so far was good enough or to wonder how will be adapting to the new reality.

When these changes are made abruptly or without the right explanation as to why they are happening and with what goals, the whole business climate is affected. Remember: a bad environment is fertile soil for instabilities and conflicts.

Resource scarcity

It is normal for companies to adapt to times of crisis, adjusting their budget to times of austerity. But beware: this type of action causes collateral damage that needs to be predicted and properly monitored.

Cut employee benefits, contingency resources for innovative projects or even suspend the possibility of promotions and increases: all this and more can generate dissatisfaction and insecurity, true triggers for conflicts.

Team disarticulation

It is no wonder that concepts such as integration and alignment have been repeatedly addressed in corporate environments. In increasingly complex business, involving the collaboration of many professionals, the effort really must be put together so that all parties move in the same direction and, where possible, at the same pace.

A disjointed team is the focus of constant conflict. Non-shared goals, methodologies, and processes make teams choose different paths, often crumbling in disastrous ways. Communication needs to be improved.

Learn how to act

When it comes to conflict management, the first step is to try to prevent the problem. Ensuring good communication between company and employees, for example, diminishes the possibility that changes work as a trigger for conflicts.

Likewise, it is necessary to encourage constant integration between teams. This can be done through training, for example, with the clear sharing of information and details of actions and methodologies.

However, when conflict actually takes place, one must be able to remedy it accurately. In this case, we suggest following the step by step that we prepare to follow!

Avoid ignoring conflict

A very serious error in managing people is simply ignoring that a conflict has happened. Incredibly, however, it is quite common for leaders to wait for the situation to resolve itself, with the parties involved eventually understanding themselves.

The problem is that doing so only drags an issue that could have been resolved immediately, still fueling the risk that the conflicts already started will continue to grow.

Act as mediator

In managing any conflict, leaders must act with fairness and justice. Talking separately to each party is the first step in understanding the sides of the story and showing that leadership is likely to seek a balanced solution.

Promote joint solutions

After talking to each party, gather those involved in a reserved place, point out your considerations about the case, and what do you think might be the best solutions to the conflict. But always ask those involved to talk again about what they think should be done and how to correct the problem that causes friction.

Track the unfolding

After talking to the parties, mediating the conflict and building solutions together, continue to see the case unfold. Make sure that the performances have really improved or whether further meetings or even more extensive training, involving not only the conflicting but the entire team, will be needed.

Guest post by Zoe Talent Solutions.

Zoe Talents Solution is to empower organizations through their human capital, by providing highly impactful quality training and consulting solutions customized to their need to help them achieve excellence in their business.

And our core purpose is to help our customers with ability the board methodologies which will upgrade the execution of their people to make progress separately and for their association.

We are putting forth the courses in following classifications, for example: Finance, Management, Health, Marketing, Skills Development and more.