The Value of Coaching: Becoming Friends with Conflict

I’ll start this with an anecdote. I’ve worked in restaurants for many years, and got a taste for conflict pretty quickly. Perhaps you may know that restaurants are known for their fast-paced and high-stress environment that can easily become overwhelming, and therefore the quintessential breeding ground for conflict. When I was younger, I got my first taste of unhealthy conflict that happened between myself and a manager. Of course, I kept it bottled up because I was afraid of conflict. By the time the two-year mark at the restaurant came around, the cap finally blew off. Needless to say, it definitely was not a professional way to handle the situation. Looking back now, I realize that I shouldn’t have let those negative feelings build, and that there was a plethora of ways I could have dealt with the situation better.

Conflict is inevitable. In every field, workplace, job, etc., you will experience conflict at some point. I’m not going to lie; the thought of conflict makes me a bit uncomfortable, as it does for many others. So now the question is, how do you successfully, and healthily, deal with conflict? Organizational conflict, or conflict in the workplace, is caused by the actual or perceived opposition of needs, values and interests between people working together. The first step to this is knowing your conflict management style, or you could say your natural preference for dealing with conflict. Are you accommodating, where you cooperate to the expense of yourself? Are you avoiding, where you tend to ignore or pretend the issue doesn’t exist? Are you collaborating, where you tend to work with the other party to come up with a solution that satisfies both needs? Are you competing, where you are more focused on satisfying your own needs at the expense of the other party? Or lastly, are you compromising, where both parties meet somewhere in the middle, and therefore both don’t achieve what they want? Knowing your conflict management style can help you navigate through the murky waters of conflict a bit easier.

After taking the conflict management styles assessment, I’ve come to learn that I prefer the collaborating, accommodating and compromising styles over the competing and avoiding styles. This means that I tend to problem solve when faced with conflict, and like to work towards a solution that involves a win for both parties. I also tend to feel the need to smooth things over even if it means I lose at my own expense. This is not surprising, as I’ve always felt the need (to a certain degree) to want to please others. Lastly, I also tend to suggest sharing in the wins and losses in creating a compromise. At times, while some conflict management styles seem to be better, or more effective than others, different conflict management styles may be more appropriate depending on the situation. It’s important to note that collaborating, as a whole, would produce a better win/win solution, but that a different conflict management style can be effective for a short term solution.

Going back to the situation above. It would have definitely been best to have an open conversation with the individual that I was having unhealthy conflict with. During this conversation, I could have discussed my boundaries, how I feel that they’ve been crossed, and what we can do to ensure that the boundaries of both parties are mutually respected moving forward. In this situation, actively working to solve conflict would have prevented the situation from blowing up the way it did. With this said, we all know that hindsight is 20/20. If I had the knowledge that I did now, I’m sure that the situation would have ended up a lot differently.

As mentioned above, conflict is inevitable. Studies have shown that the average employee spends 25-40% of their time dealing with conflict, and 9/10 employees have seen conflict negatively escalate in the workplace. Conflict not only brings down the productivity of your employees, but also creates negative space in the workplace. Do you currently have conflict brewing in your workplace? If you looked around the office, could you see an entirely 100% collaborative space? 8/10 leaders have a fear of conflict, so what can you do to turn these fears into confidence?

Luckily for us now, Legendary Coaching offers our Conflict Resolution Mastery workshop that allows you to explore the various conflict management styles, gain knowledge and awareness of how you tend to handle conflict, and give you the necessary tools needed to successfully engage in healthy conflict in the workplace. Click HERE to find out more!

Having these tools are important because conflict can easily escalate and evolve into workplace toxicity, which depletes morale in the workplace in the long run. Most conflict starts off with a disagreement, and eventually leads to polarization where the involved parties have no interest in collaborating to come up with a solution. In the polarization stage, some parties may even choose to leave the situation completely, creating the worse-case scenario for unhealthy conflict in the workplace.

Now, to touch back on the reasoning behind this blog series; what new value in coaching have I found? The answer to this is simple: to become friends with conflict. In an almost perfect world, you wouldn’t flinch at the first signs of conflict. While I am still working on being comfortable with conflict, I genuinely think that with the practice, leadership and guidance of your coach — this can come into fruition.

If you have questions on how to create and effective conflict management style for your organization or simply want to up the ante on your leadership and communication skills CONTACT US.

For those leaders who are serious about growth and making a positive impact in their spheres and would like some help with that, you can reach out to Michael Walker for a complimentary 45minute coaching conversation. You can reach Coach Mike at michael@capstonecoaching.ca We look forward to helping you achieve your desired success!