Coaching To Help You Manage Conflict Constructively
When a person is attacked their instinct is to defend and protect themselves by re-establishing control. This instinct is often developed over years and is to defend their own value systems and territory against all comers.
The norm ‘that difficult areas be avoided as they just caused unpleasantness’ is reinforced.
It is often only in crises that we are forced to re-consider our position and drop our defences. The irrational assumption is "that things will never change"
So in teams and organistions we avoid conflict: this is reinforced by managers who continually focus on setting targets and mapping out territories rather than encouraging an honest dialogue about performance.
Our approach is to help people explore conflict and manage it:
This involves several steps
- Recognise the defensive cycle
- Maintain a sense of enquiry
- Recognise and acknowledge continuing frustrations
- Manage the interaction
- Follow up and learn from the conflict
The Defensive Cycle
We need to become more aware of when we become trapped in the defensive cycle and develop new communication strategies to deal with these situations.
If we become trapped in our defensive reasoning, we feel confronted by others and:-
- Want to defend our position
- Develop a game of justification
- Each player plays out his script
- Evidence is contrived
- Individual needs are forgotten
- The drama is plaid out
- The victim is persecuted
What we need to do is try and understand the problem. It is easy to develop this sense of enquiry when everything is going well. However it is much harder in the face of persistent problems and difficulties. In these situations we tend to consistently either blame others or ourselves. It is helpful at this stage if you recognise the situation that exists, i.e.
"The Problem is Yours - You Own It"
and try and understand our feelings for the other team members. If we don’t we express ourselves in the wrong way.
- Labels
- Commands
- Questions
- Accusations
- Sarcasm
- Generalities
Once we become aware of our feelings we need to discuss them in a constructive way.
Maintaining A Sense Of Enquiry:
When we continue to hear things which we do not like, we need to ignore the temptation to become defensive, and along with it an instinct to fall back on logic and argue the point from our own perspective. This creates a vicious cycle when neither party is listening to the other but concentrating on their own arguments to support their own point of view. This is reinforced by a second cycle when we leave the argument and go away feeling judged and criticised: we often feel frustrated and a sense of hopelessness.
We need to distinguish between what we say we do and what we actually do. When our manager calls us to task we are often tempted by such phrases as, “well I listened to him but he was too inflexible and wouldn’t see reason”. This is then reinforced by our manager who says, “well don’t worry I will bring this matter up in the senior management team meeting”.
Individuals under attack will normally provide distorted information, e.g. “this was twice the time we originally quoted,” “she never attends the project meetings,” “he never told me:” all parties then collude, become defensive about exploring the situation further and in some way reward themselves through their own sense of indignation and self-righteousness.
The way out of this trap is to find out what really happened and try to discover what is happening within the project from the observable facts. This cannot be achieved by auditing of procedures, surveys or the monitoring of deliverables; these will simply reinforce the picture as it is presented. Managers must learn to develop their own sense of social enquiry and the communication skills necessary to make this work.
Recognising Frustrations Within The Team:
There are three ways that team members express their emotions in times of stress:-
- Minimising expression
- Exaggerating expression
- Substituting one expression for another
- Posture
- Hands
- Eyes
- Expression
- Attendance
- Hair
Managing The Interaction
Once we have recognised this we need to discuss it with the individual without making judgements. This involves preparation and the sensitive handling of the discussion.
Preparation
- Gather the facts
- Do not prejudge the issue
- Plan the approach according to the individual
- Allow adequate time to talk
- Clarify the disciplinary actions available to you
- Notify the time place and reason for the interview
- Establish an accurate and clear understanding of the problems
- State the reason for the interview giving details of behaviour which have caused concern
- State the standards which you expect
- Agree the action
Check that proposed action has been taken and that desired results have been achieved either by further interview or formal discussion
Conflict is important because it helps us understand each other better and form closer relationships-the alternative is to slowly drift apart!
We can help you manage this effectively through coaching, teambuilding or development workshops. We have 20 years experience in this area.
Call Us On 01202 421229 To Explore How You Can Manage Conflict Constructively
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