Avoiding Uncomfortable Conversations and Managing Conflict are two of the most common areas where leaders typically fall short. What can leaders learn from this, and how do they become more effective at managing these?
1. Avoiding Uncomfortable Conversations
Have you ever experienced a problem within your organisation that you decided to tolerate rather than address? Where the solution required having an uncomfortable conversation, but you avoided having the conversation because you were afraid of conflict?
We’ve all avoided necessary uncomfortable conversations at times, and suffered as a result.
Which is why the old saying is true, “The quality of your life is determined by the number of uncomfortable conversations you’re willing to have.”
Perhaps it’s that team member who arrives later and later to a weekly meeting, then stops showing up at all. Or a fellow executive who asks you to look the other way as they act dishonestly. Or a team member who has been given every chance to improve but is consistently underperforming, and it’s your job to let them know their employment at your organisation is going to be terminated.
The formula is simple. Avoiding the necessary conversation to address problems like these means the problems will continue. Having the conversation, despite any discomfort you may have about this, leads to positive growth and development for both you and others.
It causes a lot more discomfort in the long-term to ignore and tolerate problems like these. Ignoring and tolerating problems is a recipe for underperformance.
Have the conversations that are required, combining direct honesty with a supportive approach. Be clear that your intention is to support rather than to blame. To help facilitate the best outcome. When your intention is clear, it brings people closer together not further apart
2. Managing Conflict Ineffectively
If you’re in an organisational leadership role, managing conflict is going to be part of your reality. Contrary to popular belief, managing conflict can be an enjoyable and rewarding process. But it needs to be done effectively.
Ineffective conflict management usually involves trying to solve the problem using logical and left-brain type approaches that remain in the realm of the intellect. While these approaches are useful for a lot of organisational work, they do not work well on their own to resolve conflict, because conflict between people involves emotions. Resolving conflict requires an emotion-based approach.
In his landmark work on the concept of “emotional intelligence”, author Daniel Goleman conducted research on organisational leadership in nearly 200 large, global companies. Goleman found that the most effective leaders had a high degree of emotional intelligence, which was demonstrated by their self-awareness, ability to manage their mood, self-motivation, a natural empathy for others, and social skills.
Effective conflict management and resolution requires a high degree of emotional intelligence from a leader. At the heart of the majority of conflicts is a misunderstanding about where the other is coming from. To address this misunderstanding, it is necessary to have the self-awareness, empathy, and self-regulation to be able to put yourself in the shoes of another and have insight into where they are coming from.
There are many conflict management conversational structures that have been developed with these principles in mind, some very effective and others not so.
One of the main structures I recommend to my clients involves four simple questions that both parties involved in the conflict ask of each other:
• What happened? Removing any language of judgement, simply describing the facts.
• How did you feel about that? Allowing emotions to be expressed.
• What were your need/s that were not met? Getting to the root of the real cause of the conflict.
• My request of you is … Moving forward constructively by letting the other person know what you want from them.
The critical shift in this process comes when the parties in conflict understand what were the others need or needs were that were not met. It might have been a need for more responsibility, or more space, or understanding of a need for privacy, or greater challenge.
At this point of insight, the cause of the conflict is understood and the conflict dissolves. The parties realise that what they thought was behind the other person’s frustration was actually not the case. There was a misunderstanding based on the differences in the worldviews of the two people.
Helping people to grow and deepen their emotional maturity in this way is one of the most rewarding experiences you will have as a leader.
Stay safe
Dave
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