Conflict Management Training
Low-level conflict is an issue that all companies face - what are the options available for prevention of major disputes and how can conflict be viewed as a good thing? Donal Kavanagh reports...
Organisations that view low-level conflict amongst employees as an unavoidable aspect of ‘office politics’ that can continue unchecked and un-monitored, would be shocked by the findings of last year’s report by the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CERD), Europe’s largest mediation body. CERD calculated that internal conflict cost companies a total of £33 billion a year, comprising £6 billion in legal fees and a whopping £27 billion off the bottom line through factors that include damage to company reputation, poor staff morale, increased staff turnover and loss of customers.
Mary Rafferty, founder and director of Consensus Mediation in Co Leitrim, believes that 'very few of us like conflict and culturally we are taught that conflict is something to be avoided at all costs. For that reason, it tends to be an area where few businesses or organisations invest time, resources or money in pro-active responses.'
Companies who do not manage internal conflict proactively tend to swing into action only when the crisis of a formal complaint from an employee arrives ‘out of the blue’, when it is often too late for amicable solutions.
So what opportunities exist for businesses seeking to become pro-active in the area of conflict management?
According to John Mulligan, Director of Breakthrough Consultancy, there are three major causes of conflict.
Firstly, problems arise from 'people being confused about their own values and needs'. Mulligan asserts that 'often people have internal conflicts they don’t resolve. In other words, they want two things and can’t decide which is more important. Secondly, there is emotional incompetence. People can’t read or understand their own emotions or communicate them effectively to others. The final causes of conflict are organisational: a lack of clarity around roles, responsibilities and boundaries that lead to a breakdown in mutual expectations and relationships.'
The first step a company will take in many conflict management programmes is to recognise that conflict is an unavoidable and completely natural human condition and that 'while it might be unpleasant, there are tremendous benefits to dealing with it, such as reducing stress levels, increasing creativity, strengthening relationships, and maximising profit.'
Mulligan’s ethos, and one that is increasingly popular among conflict management experts, is that conflict should be viewed as a source of learning and transformation within an organisation.
When approached with a spirit of inquiry, a breakdown in communications or relationships should encourage people to learn about each other’s roles and responsibilities, and adjust their expectations accordingly. Similarly, a conflict over goals gives rise to the questions including ‘what is the best way to deal with this?’ And ‘what are appropriate goals?’
These questions 'open up inquiry', says Mulligan, 'what I’m interested in is how do you arrange the situation so that is not "you against I", but "you and I against the problem?"'
The second step to managing conflict effectively, according to Mulligan, is the need for employees and management to develop mental resources such as emotional literacy and competence. One of the most common causes of conflict is that the average human response to a perceived threat is defensive and negative; Breakthrough work on facilitating clients to understand 'new ways of responding to conflict. A lot of conflict work is about managing your own personal states – how do you deal with strong emotions? People have strong emotions when important things are at stake – repressing or suppressing them is not the way to deal with them effectively.' Communicating those emotions effectively, in stressful conflict situations, is an important skill.
The ability to maintain healthy and positive relations with other people is the third central element to reducing unnecessary conflict.
'Lots of people don’t have strong interpersonal skills, and dealing with conflict requires a very high level of interpersonal skill. You have to develop these skills in advance of the conflict – trying to learn them in the midst of a heated dispute is probably asking a bit much of yourself!' For Mulligan, effective communication is all about 'high quality conversations – we can learn to put words on things that normally result in an incoherent emotional response. By raising the quality of conversation we enable people to turn their emotions, values and needs into positive rather than destructive motivations.'
Conflict management programmes, such as that provided by Breakthrough Consultancy, are also designed to help the clients recognise conflict situations at an early stage, and this is not always a simple process. Mulligan is a proponent of the ‘iceberg theory’ which underlines how most conflict goes unacknowledged. Too often, conflict is viewed as 'something dysfunctional or to be ashamed of, rather than a natural everyday occurrence,' and is only dealt with when matters reach a crisis point. The findings of the CEDR’s 2006 research tend to support this theory: fewer than forty per cent of the managers surveyed felt sufficiently trained to deal with unrest, and almost eighty per cent would rather eat insects for a week than confront a conflict situation!
In certain situations, a conflict will escalate to the point where even a company that has received coaching on conflict management requires third party assistance to resolve the dispute. In these cases, often involving allegations of bullying or harassment, the company may well make use of the services of a qualified mediator.
‘Mediation’ is a process where an independent third party from outside the organisation facilitates communication and negotiation between disputants, and assists them in composing a mutually acceptable and voluntary solution.
Karen Erwin, President of the Mediators’ Institute of Ireland [MII] reveals that an eighty per cent success rate in conflict resolution has seen 'mediation becoming more mainstream. People are recognising it as a very useful and successful form of alternative dispute resolution.'
Keen to avoid the financial cost, workforce disharmony and damage to reputation that formal and litigious conflict resolution can cause, most companies now offer informal conflict resolution processes, such as mediation, to employees. Erwin adds that 'there is also the whole argument of corporate social responsibility. Employers should not be forcing people down the road to investigation and litigation.'
An important element of mediation is ascertaining the real causes of disputes. According to Erwin, 'people classify as "bullying" a wide range of behaviours. However, often what is actually going on is not bullying at all, maybe it’s a once-off incident.'
The mediators deconstruct the behaviour of the protagonists, in order to discover what exactly the problematic behaviours are on both sides. Mediators can never take issues of employee mistreatment at face value, says Erwin. 'Sometimes people are using their grievances as a crutch that masks other issues in the their life, while on other occasions management may insist that it is a work performance issue.'
The important thing is to get both parties in a room with the mediator where they can air their grievances in a confidential setting. 'I am not aware of any other form of conflict resolution where that can actually happen,' says Erwin, 'and it is awfully powerful because when A says to B, "I believe this is what you are doing to me and the effect on me is…", then that might be the very first time that party B actually has had that put to them.' From this mutual awareness an agreed solution can be forged that the disputants are responsible for upholding, and subsequently 'start to rebuild their relationship, and form a modus operandi for working together in the future.'
In the same way as John Mulligan, Erwin believes that conflict provides the opportunity for learning and positive change. 'Workplace mediators are transformational people, because what they’re trying to do is bring about a transformation in relationships,' she concludes.
About the MII
The MII was formed in 1992; it promotes mediation as a form of conflict resolution and provides training to people who wish to become professional mediators. Members are classified by the following levels of experience and qualification (in ascending order) - general, associate, certified and practitioner. Only certified and practitioner members are entitled to MII practising certificates and inclusion in the ‘Find a Mediator’ section of the website www.themii.com. Many professional mediators (e.g. Consensus Mediation, a member of the MII) also provide training and coaching services, just as many trainers and coaches (e.g. Breakthrough Consultancy) provide mediation services.
Current president of the MII , Karen Erwin, is a strong believer in the absence of legislation in the area of mediation – 'I argued recently at a legal colloquium, in front of the Attorney General, that we should not legislate for the mediation process, save as to enshrine the confidential and voluntary nature of it. We shouldn’t be making rules and regulations because it is a very flexible process.'
Erwin plans to use all her experience as the current overseer of the regulation of the accountancy profession in Ireland to ensure that 'the MII is a highly professional body that people can place their trust in', and promises to be 'quite tough in making sure that we have proper complaints and disciplinary procedures, accreditations and assessments. I want to see lay people and non-mediators on our ethics and complaints committees – so we’re not just sitting in judgement on ourselves, but include in our number other independent third parties who are well-recognised people.'
