Q & A Table of Contents
Dealing With Personal Conflict In The Workplace
From: Preet, Malaysia
Question: Can you please give me more information on interpersonal conflict and how to manage it in the workplace?
Response: You need to look at the nature of the interpersonal conflict with a cool, analytical mind. Does it relate to hierarchical issues -- between subordinates and bosses? Are such issues as culture, age, gender, or experience elements in the conflict? Does the conflict really relate to issues in the workplace or factors outside such as family obligations or personal recreation. Is there one group of employees that likes rock & roll music in the workplace and another that prefers different musical styles? What about smoking?
In other words, you need to consider a broad variety of issues and figure out whether the issues about which there is conflict are real, substantive problems or merely being used as symbols for some deeper problems. After you have drawn your conclusions or made your assumptions you need to ask questions to check whether those assumptions are accurate. When you ask questions don't phrase them in a way that will limit the possible answers. A question that can be answered 'yes' or 'no' will not give you very much information. Questions that ask things like, 'How do you think this problem came into existence?' 'What would you like to see changed?' and so on may yield information that helps you get closer to the real roots of the problem.
Always remember that you need to figure out how to separate the people from the problem. If the issue is really about one person's lousy personality, you need to explore the best way(s) for the company to deal with that. On the other hand, most problems cannot be solved by simply taking a troublesome person and making them work far away from other people. People at work are like a family, at least for their working hours. They need to develop ways to balance differing personalities, hierarchical positions, and different professional mindsets to work together successfully.
Ask a lot of questions. Listen hard to the answers. Sometimes the most important thing to a person who seems to have a lot of interpersonal conflict is to have someone pay attention to them.
Good luck with this.
Steve
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