Healthy Conflict
Is conflict in the workplace good or bad? Is it possible to have conflict that is healthy? I believe that healthy conflict is possible, in fact, it’s critical to build and maintain effective teams.
Conflict is healthy when its aim is to improve the outcomes for the team. It’s healthy when it’s respectful and not personal. It requires openness and an ability to entertain others’ ideas. This is where it gets challenging as we constantly deal with egos and low self-esteem.
Ego is the enemy in the workplace, and certainly so in conflict resolution. When we place significance and self-importance upon ourselves to a high degree, we can begin to lack the self-awareness needed to properly interact with other people. We start to believe we are bigger than ourselves, and some in fact enjoy getting to the place where they no longer must listen to others. As we rise in the ranks, we acquire more power. This brings a desire for people to want to please us and do things as simple as agreeing with everything we suggest, whether the idea is good or bad. At this stage, the conflict discussion is going to be particularly one-sided. This issue of placing a high degree of significance and self-importance upon yourself is not limited to those in senior positions. However, it is more common the higher you go.
Self-esteem is essential to assertiveness and healthy communication, which lay the foundation for avoiding arguments and managing conflict. Unfortunately, this isn’t the norm. Low self-worth generally starts from a young age and can be heavily influenced by the volume of social media, reality shows and finally - parents. We might see a popular reality show where the show participants find success despite not actually accomplishing anything. We can be left believing it’s possible to succeed by not accomplishing anything. Youth sports also contribute to low self-esteem where everyone is a winner and scores aren’t kept, especially in the younger ages. Unfortunately, life has a way of providing a reality check and children will ultimately learn the hard way that perhaps they aren’t as amazing as they had been told. Learning how to win and lose, well, will contribute to a higher level of self-esteem. This is not to say positive reinforcement should not be used, as the opposite is true, but the point is to put it in perspective and not say they’re a winner if they came last.
Workplace conflicts are often about differences in perception. Acknowledge your reality is not everyone else’s. We have all met a potential candidate who we are looking to hire at work and walked away with very different opinions. While someone’s reaction may seem wildly inappropriate to you, it could feel completely justified to them. In fact, attribution bias proposes that, ‘we are consistently more favorable in interpreting our own behavior than that of other people’. Attribution is something we do every day, often without any awareness of the underlying process and biases that lead to how we infer something. It is not uncommon to hear people blame external forces rather than their own personal characteristics for failures in their life.
Conflict will happen, and arguments are not necessarily a bad thing as it means differences are surfacing. The higher the level our self-esteem is, without being to the point of arrogance and being over-confident, the simpler conflict resolution will be. If you find conflict resolution is consistently a challenge, the first thing you need to do is look in the mirror, followed by assessing your teammates, as one or both of you are at fault. This is where a good leadership coach can come into play.
