Are Conflicts Wasted Opportunities Or Hidden Ones??

Things were going smoother before you landed on that damn project!

Is this what you feel when you become a robotic employee working incessantly and at the same time struggling through conflicts!

Yess… the CONFLICTS!

No place is immune to conflicts and this is bound to happen when you are working in a mission-critical situation. Shorter deadlines, expanded workload, tight budgets and many other factors contribute to increased probabilities for workplace conflicts.

Employee conflicts do appear as a source of decreased efficiency and wasted opportunities, but the consequences are not a result of the differing opinions, it is due to inefficient handling of these clashes.

While conflicts are inevitable, they are also a great source of new ideas and perspectives coming in. Usually, you see heated arguments and clashes when a task is delayed and someone has to be blamed or when the team is struggling to find a solution. In both the cases, what you need is to find a unique solution to the problem that can only come when disparate minds are put to work.

Thus, what one needs to do is to align these disagreements towards productive benefits to the organization. If they are not effectively addressed, then this may lead to decreased morale of less confident employees, increased absenteeism, reduced productivity, and higher attrition rate.

To avoid such condition, what you can do is make employees more comfortable and open towards presenting their opinions and ideas (even disagreements) but in a polite manner. As a manager, you can play a key role in resolving these issues by listening to the individual perceptions and then responding.

Even the employees can try averse the arguments by patiently listening to one another and then expressing their opinions. You can validate your points and try convincing your opponent any time.

Most importantly, make everyone realize that it is for organization’s sake and not for any individual’s personal win, thus, everyone must try cooperating and understand that working on other person’s idea or opinion is not undermining your self-respect or ego.

Using these simple ideas can help you and your employees come in a win-win situation during conflicts while leading to enhanced productivity and creative solutions for your organizational challenges.

@TeamWise