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Managing Workplace Conflicts

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Kinds of Workplace Conflicts

Let’s start by identifying where conflicts happen. Think about the kinds of conflicts that happen around your workplace.

• Disagreements over turf (who should do what)

• Disagreements over policy (how things should be done)

• Conflicts of personality and style

Common Ways of Dealing with Conflict

These are some of the ways we typically deal with conflict. Do you see yourself in any of them?

• Avoid the conflict.

• Deny the conflict; wait until it goes away.

• Change the subject.

• React emotionally; become aggressive, abusive, hysterical, or frightening.

• Find someone to blame.

• Make excuses.

• Delegate the situation to someone else.

All of these responses are nonproductive. Some of them are actually destructive. This is why learning to manage conflict is so important.

Effect on Work Relationships

The workplace is a system of relationships. Relationships have many different aspects; here are several examples:

Trust

Teamwork

Quality

Morale

Self-esteem

Loyalty

Respect for boss

When conflicts are handled well, there’s a positive effect on work relationships. When they are not, these factors can deteriorate. Productivity and the free expression of ideas are also impacted.

Factors That Affect How People Manage Conflict

The skills involved in managing conflict are learned behaviors. None of us is born knowing how to deal with differences of opinion, arguments, or turf wars. Some of the factors that affect how we behave in the face of conflict are:

1. Status: People in higher-status positions usually feel freer to engage in conflict and are less likely to avoid confrontation.

2. Company style or unwritten rules: Some companies encourage conflict; others have unwritten rules that it is to be contained or avoided.

3. Gender differences: Males are generally encouraged to be more confrontational than females.

4. Behavior learned in families: In some families, conflict and confrontation are a communication style. In others, conflict always remains hidden.

5. Behavior learned from role models: People who have had a teacher or boss who modeled effective conflict-resolution skills are more likely to develop these skills themselves.

Conflict Resolution Skills

No one is born knowing how to resolve conflicts. Conflict resolution is a set of skills that anyone can learn. Let’s look at two important ones: active listening and conflict deescalation skills.

Active Listening

Active listening is a valuable skill for resolving conflicts because it enables you to demonstrate that you understand what another person is saying and how he or she is feeling about it.

Active listening means restating, in your own words, what the other person has said.

Active listening is a way of checking whether your understanding is correct. It also demonstrates that you are listening and that you are interested and concerned. These all help resolve a situation when there are conflicting points of view.

Active listening responses have two components: (1) naming the feeling that the other person is conveying, and (2) stating the reason for the feeling.

Here are some examples of active-listening statements:

“Sounds like you’re upset about what happened at work.”

“You’re annoyed by my lateness, aren’t you?”

“You sound really stumped about how to solve this problem.”

“It makes you angry when you find errors on Joe’s paperwork.”

“Sounds like you’re really worried about Wendy.”

“I get the feeling you’re awfully busy right now.”

Actively listening is not the same as agreement. It is a way of demonstrating that you intend to hear and understand another’s point of view.

Benefits of Active Listening

If a person uses active listening as part of his or her communication style at work, how would that be good for resolving conflicts, i.e., what are the benefits?

1. It feels good when another person makes an effort to understand what you are thinking and feeling. It creates good feelings about the other person and makes you feel better about yourself.

2. Restating what you’ve heard, and checking for understanding, promotes better communication and produces fewer misunderstandings.

3. Responding with active listening has a calming effect in an emotional situation.

Conflict Deescalation

Everyone has been in an argument that has escalated. Before you know it, it’s blown out of proportion. Let’s think for a moment about some actions that will help you deescalate a conflict. In your experience, what actions put a stop to the defend/attack spiral?

• Stick with “I” statements; avoid “you” statements.

• Avoid name-calling and put-downs (“A reasonable person could see that...”).

• Soften your tone.

• Take a time-out (“Let’s take a break and cool down”).

• Acknowledge the other person’s point of view (agreement is not necessary).

• Avoid defensive or hostile body language (rolling eyes, crossing arms in front of body, tapping foot).

• Be specific and factual; avoid generalities.

Conflict Prevention Skills

Now that we’ve talked about how to resolve a conflict, let’s look at how to prevent conflicts from happening. Here are a few ideas:

• Bring issues out in the open before they become problems.

• Be aware of triggers and respond to them when you notice them. • Have a process for resolving conflicts. Bring it up at a meeting and get agreement on what people should do in cases of differing viewpoints.

• Teach everyone conflict-resolution skills and expect people to use them.

My colleagues and I get asked a lot about licensing. Frankly, Microsoft doesn’t have a great reputation for keeping it simple. And to be totally transparent – I, like many of my colleagues, would usually rather stick a fork in my eye that talk about it because it can get complicated. And confusing. And just…ugh.

So you can imagine my joy when I was asked to write a newsletter editorial about simplifying licensing. Exactly.

Then I had a very enlightening conversation with Terry Choquette, Licensing Marketing Manager at Microsoft and she pointed me to a few resources that got back to the basics and laid it all out very simply. I like simple. And I decided that this simple information was as blog worthy as it was newsletter worthy. While details about software licensing is not everybody’s favourite reading material, stick with me on this.

Ways to buy a license

First of all, there are 3 ways to buy a license as illustrated in the slide below: a full packaged product from a retail store, an OEM product on a new computer or a volume agreement from a reseller.

Volume licensing agreements

While you could simply walk into the nearest Best Buy or Future Shop and make your purchase, most organizations that need 5 or more licenses can benefit best from volume licensing agreements. Why? Well, there are some pricing advantages, there are more flexible options based on size and type of business, payment structure, ownership of software, etc., there are additional use rights for cross-language and reimaging machines, and there are use rights to new product versions, support, training, tools, etc., with Software Assurance (more about this below). 

For this post, I’m going to limit my discourse to those organizations who want to license less than 250 devices or users, which I would hazard a guess applies to most of you reading this blog. If you need help with licensing options for 250 devices/users or more, lemme know and I’ll put you in touch with people who can help you or you can check out these online resources.

Below is a great 3.5 minute video that lays out the volume licensing options that are part of the Microsoft Open License program for small and medium sized businesses:

(Please visit the site to view this video)

 

Basically, there are 3 volume licensing agreement options: Open License, Open Value and Open Value Subscription. Now if you want more detail than the video gives (you did watch it right? C’mon it’s only 3.5 minutes long and it’s pretty entertaining!), you’ll want to take a look at the Open License Program Guide. It has a very useful chart on page 8 which compares what you get with an Open License agreement compared to an Open Value agreement.

Software Assurance

Software Assurance is something that can be added to your volume license agreement which provides 24x7 support, deployment planning services, training, and the latest software releases. Although once viewed as simply an insurance policy for free software upgrades, Software Assurance has now been recognized by analysts as an essential tool for getting the most out of your licensing purchase.

Below is a screen shot from an interactive PDF listing the benefits of Software Assurance with each type of licensing agreement.

For more information about Software Assurance and what it can do for your organization, check out the Software Assurance site.

Let me know if this was helpful!

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