Conflict Resolution
Despite a company’s best efforts to hire the right people and create a positive and productive working environment, challenging, and sometimes severe, workplace conflicts will happen. If left unchecked, they can drive one or more valuable employees away and ruin employee morale for those who stay. So, it falls on managers and leaders to resolve things quickly. This is where well-practiced conflict resolution techniques can help.
First, it’s important to understand that when a conflict arises, tempers flare and the people involved are likely not thinking about solving the problem diplomatically. Instead, they’re focused on threat recognition, said Jathan Janove, during his presentation “Five Tools to Resolve Conflict Constructively” at the Do it Best Spring Market. When this happens, managers must be the mature adult in the room and help resolve the issue. If they don’t, their direct reports will lose faith in them as a leader.
Fortunately, Janove, an employee relations and leadership development coach at Janove Organization Solutions and author of Hard-Won Wisdom (AMACOM, 2016), offered a few helpful conflict resolution tips.
One technique he recommended is appropriately named the EAR method, which stands for Explore, Acknowledge, and Respond. The first part of the method requires you to explore the problem by asking open-ended questions to understand the other person’s position. Doing this gives you more time to think about and craft your response. Next, acknowledge your colleague’s problem to show that you understand the situation. Only after you’ve completed these first two steps can you appropriately respond. Otherwise, without completing those first two steps, Janove said, you’re just making an assumption.
The next method is called the Triple 2 Method, which requires those involved in a conflict to answer the following question: What two things do I need to start doing, stop doing, and continue doing? This can help angry and upset colleagues hit the reset button, Janove said.
Another useful strategy is the MIDAS Touch Apology. We don’t apologize anywhere near the amount of times we should, Janove said. Sometimes, however, an apology can be insincere, which often makes the recipient even angrier. An example might be an apology with an excuse, justification, or a counter attack, such as, “I’m sorry I was mean to you, but you’re a jerk. Apology accepted?” Janove said.
Clearly, an “apology” like that is not going to work. The MIDAS Touch Apology has five parts: Mistake (acknowledge that you made a mistake); Injury (acknowledge that the mistake hurt the offended person); Differently (say you’ll do things differently, this shows you’re being sincere); Amends (offer a kind gesture or gift, such as a potted plant, a beer, or a meal to help repair the relationship); and Stop (don’t say another word, especially “but,” because you might say something offensive).
The Bottom Line
Hiring managers must be proactive about recruiting and retaining valuable employees, which requires a lot of listening, planning, communication, compassion, optimism, and self-awareness to be successful. If done well, your organization can develop a good reputation as a desirable company for employees. But once you get new hires in the door, it is what you do as a leader that will keep them or lose them.
“Reputation recruits, but reality retains,” Hadden said. “Your best recruiting tool is your reputation as an employer. And it is the reality of working in your store that will determine your ability to retain and engage the very best talent to work there.”
