7 Tips to Resolve Conflict in the Workplace

Conflicts exist everywhere at home, small or big institutions, government or private offices, factories, or manufacturing units.

Workplace conflicts become the primary concern when they develop into issues affecting the economic stability of organisations. Conflicts in the workplace can cause among workers, restlessness, anger, frustration, pain, and sadness.

Identifying Major Causes of Workplace Conflict

At any point in time, workplace conflicts exist; and the management has the responsibility to manage workplace conflicts without affecting the routine work schedule.

The conflict between the employees and the people in the management team has become the sole reason for employees leaving an organisation.

Sudden loss of a team member may develop into a situation that requires more funds for extra training and getting resources ready to maintain scheduled production.

Maintaining Better Communication

Most workplace conflicts occur because of poor communication, lack of information, and unclear information. Circulation of clear, concise, accurate information on time helps to ease and reduce workplace-related conflicts.

Spare quality time to listen to your team members while they share their ideas or express their genuine concern about work-related issues. Along with your verbal communication, take care of your gestures and behaviours to impress your team.

Handling Emotions Effectively

Handling employees who are emotionally weak at the workplace needs more patience. Professional handling of feelings related to fear, anger, or upset must be the norm. Being professional helps employees to accept criticisms in the right spirit and be open to learning.

Emotion-driven decisions in the workplace may affect the peaceful workplace environment. Supporting emotional outbursts at the workplace may cause resentment among employees and lead to unnecessary blames or verbal arguments.

Resolving Resistance to Change

Changes in the infrastructure of teams evoke unknown fear in the employees. If there is no better understanding between the employees and the employer, it may cause hostile employees who induce workplace conflicts.

While embracing change, it is natural to go through stages of anger, confusion, and denial. The management must have efficient guidelines to help employees in a smooth transition. Effectively communicate reasons for the change, allow the team to be involved, and support them with training that helps them understand their new roles and responsibilities.

A team that remains calm will be open to change and proceed further to grow. Change-related conflicts rarely affect confident employees.

Managing Personality Clashes

Globalisation has open doors for employees from different locations, backgrounds, preferences, and experiences to work together. It is not possible to expect everyone to become friends and get along with each other.

For a healthy workplace, all workers must exhibit mutual respect and understanding. The team leaders and managers must act unbiased so that it will be easy to resolve workplace conflicts among team members without affecting the harmony of the workplace.

Learning Ways to Resolve Workplace Conflicts

Clarifying the Source

The important step in resolving workplace conflict is to find the source of the problem. Identifying the cause will help you understand the base of the problem.

It will also help to understand the reason for disagreement between team members on the issue. Discuss thoroughly with the team members what led to their misunderstanding.

Clarify your doubts by asking as many questions as possible until you get clarity on the issue. A detailed explanation will help the members involved to understand better.

Showing Empathy

Talk to your employees and listen to their views and suggestions. It will help you to know about hidden problems on time.

Constant interaction with everyone in the workplace will help you avoid workplace conflicts and resolve them before it becomes a critical issue.

Some employees who turn toxic to the workplace environment may not have an intolerable personality. They may face stress at home or be forced to handle problems beyond their ability. Talk to those employees and help them tackle those challenges with confidence.

Focusing on Behaviour

Inappropriate behaviour in the workplace may lead to reasons that may trigger workplace conflicts.

Learn to be impartial and give the much-needed transition time to change. Behaviour related issues affect the overall work environment of the organisation.

Listening Carefully

Spare quality time and space for members involved in the workplace conflict and allow them to vent out their thoughts and feelings. You need to maintain a positive approach towards resolving the conflict and help to maintain peace at work.

While handling issues between teams or team members, take time to listen and consider both points of view. Avoid commenting on attitudes and characters and pay attention to facts. Discuss with team members and collectively resolve the conflict with your decision.

Transparent sharing of information avoids/handles conflicts better and resolves issues related to miscommunication. The information must be clear and help team members to understand thoroughly the information shared.

Accepting Solutions

Let your employees understand your solutions will not be biased and you will take care of their points of view and suggestions. It will help you arrive at a better solution and make everyone accept your decision.

Finding out the root cause for the solution will help to resolve conflicts and enforce them effectively.

Hiring Workplace Investigators

For resolving issues that need extra attention, it is better to hire workplace investigators. They can investigate the case better and find out what leads to such an issue in the workplace.

The case study may help you understand why workplace investigation is essential to find out any underlying reasons which you have not noticed or are not clear.

Evaluating for the Future

After resolving a workplace conflict, take care to avoid situations that may induce a problem at work.

Learn from the lessons you have learned while handling workplace conflicts. It will help you know what issues can resurface again at the workplace.

You can develop a plan to manage workplace conflicts by conducting routine training on conflict-management skills for the management personnel.

Conclusion

Identifying common workplace issues in the initial stage will help the management resolve workplace conflicts effectively and immediately.

Globalisation enabled organisations to hire employees from any part of the world. With employees from different geographical locations, cultural and intellectual backgrounds, a clash of opinions and views has become a common issue.

Liam is a blogger and marketing specialist dedicated to marketing communications in the digital age. He enjoys traveling the world and meeting new people!