"Growing Your People Monthly" Newsletter

 

Conflict is inherently human, and as we discussed in November, an unavoidable part of a business leader's work. This article will give you a head start at understanding the conflict modes you and those around you typically use. Having a common language and understanding of conflict can make solving differences easier for everyone in your organization.

Be well,

Yvonne Kinney-Hockert
National Speaker, Business Consultant & Coach
Consulting Solutions, LLC.

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What's Your Conflict Mode?

Spoken or unspoken conflict can get in the way of efficiency and effectiveness in organizations of all sizes. It can even damage profitability. When working with teams, I find the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Modes to be tremendously helpful. Understanding how you typically handle certain kinds of conflicts makes it much easier to decide whether your conflict style is suited to the problem at hand. Is it helping you move forward, or getting in your way?

Thomas and Kilmann identified five primary modes of handling conflict: Avoiding, Accommodating, Compromising, Competing, and Collaborating. Most people use all of the modes in different situations, but most of us also have one favorite mode of handling conflict. All of the modes are useful at the right time. For example, sometimes a leader just needs to make the decision. The competing mode is appropriate then.

If you typically use just one mode when dealing with conflict, you may not be handling conflict in your own best interests, or in the best interest of your business or of your clients. Flexibility is what matters here--being able to use any of the modes when they are called for. When a conflict arises, being aware of which mode you're using and how well it matches the context--the situation, the topic, the people involved--is the key.

Imagine yourself in a sales conversation, promoting a service or a product. You discover that the customer has a different view of the value of what you're offering. Suddenly you find yourself veering away from your pricing strategy to please the client. This is accommodating to please the client and end a conflict.

Have you ever worked for the manager who doesn't understand why people won't bring her ideas and feedback, but who greets new ideas with suspicion and criticism? (Have you ever been that manager? Most of us have, at least once.) This is often a misapplied competing reaction to conflict. The new ideas don't jibe with what's in the leader's head--that's the conflict--and so she squelches them.

How many of you have found yourself saying something like this, "I've been trying to get the manager to meet these goals for six months. I've talked it through with him so many times, and it seems like he just doesn't address this stuff." In this case, the manager is reacting to conflict in avoiding mode. He may not agree with the goals; he may expect pushback from his employees; he may feel unsure or incompetent to address the issues. Whatever's going on inside, his way of managing the conflict is to wish that it would go away.

In each of these cases, the conflict mode being used is getting in the way of the business goal. Next month, we'll look at the flip side: conflict modes being used to resolve the problems, and move the business forward. If you are interested in learning more about this topic for your team or business, click here to contact us about scheduling a workshop customized for your group or audience.

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