people managers & Leaders
Conflicts cost a lot of time and consume energy
Do you recognize this?
- You are constantly solving problems between employees, but nothing really changes.
- Collaborators come to your office to complain about their colleagues and just want to ventilate. You listen, try to be understanding and do someting about the situation, but they don’t let you.
- Your collaborators are competent people, but collaboration as a team just doesn’t work.
- During meetings you notice how hard it is to disagree in a construtive way and to talk about difficult topics.
- Arguments and rows are predictable and everybody knows in advance who will fight with whom.
- It’s surprising to observe that your employees don’t dare to openly confront each other and speak directly when there are frustrations.
At some point you can no longer ignore the signals of conflict: lack of motivation, complaints, a high level of absenteeism and an increasing number of burn-outs, an alarming turn-over. Something needs to happen!
You have tried all sorts of things: indivdual conversations, solve quarrels between two colleagues, establish a new meeting charter, call the team to order, a team building,… but nothing results in real change.
How to lead a team when there is tension? How to deal with frustrations that are not openly addressed? How to change persistent, unproductive habits? How to move from putting out fires, to sustainable change?
As a leader you are sitting in the first row. You feel the tension and observe the consequences of conflict. You have to do something about it. The question is: what to do and how to approach collaborative conflict?
Fortunately you can learn how to deal with collaborative conflict in a different way.
Read here what you can do as a leader to address conflict and to become more skilled at conflict resolution.
“It is obvious that many leaders of organizations have an ambivalent attitude towards teams.
Too often they have no idea how to put together a well functioning team. Their fear to delegate (read: loss of control) reinforces the stereotype of the heroic leader who does everything.
Many view teams as trouble, a burden, or a necessary evil. Unsurprisingly, this results in a self-fulfilling prophecy. Although many teams demonstrate a remarkable synergy and generate excellent results, some get stuck in endless unproductive sessions and are stiff with conflict.
Like many have discovered to their despair, the price of dysfunctional teams can be dizzying.”
(Manfred Kets de Vries)