7 Conflict Resolution Skills to Use with Your Team

Yet conflicts are often called the points of growth: they indicate a hidden issue in your team interactions or work routine and loudly demand its resolution, whether a managed or unmanaged one. Managed resolution means that the conflict was carefully handled and its results are most beneficial for everyone, including conflicting parties and the team as whole. Or, at least, the solution with minimal imbedded harm was found and applied.

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Unmanaged resolution, as you may guess, is just letting a conflict develop unmanaged. Hence, someone wins, someone loses, all sides are unsatisfied, but the obstacle is overcome, although the outcomes for the whole team or company are yet to be analyzed. Usually, they do not work for the benefit of the company and the whole team, and it means that catching the conflict at its budding stage and handling it properly is the best strategy so far.

Okay, this idea is clear. But how to handle a conflict properly and what skills are required for that? Basically, being an active listener and a person ready to meet in the middle is a key. But there is more to it. A good conflict resolution course will teach you what strategies and steps to choose amidst the growing tension. Here's the list of 7 essential skills that you should acquire and apply within your team or when it goes about bickering between teams and departments.

Focus On Goals

Your intention is to handle and resolve a conflict so that the outcomes were beneficial for everyone. A conflict is not a goal, it is a stage to be passed and forgotten. Decide what you want to achieve in a specific conflict situation and stick to your vision.

Active Listening

Listen and hear what each party has to say. Not being able to listen or assuming instead of actually listening is a safe road to fanning the conflict flames and making the situation worse. No matter what happened in the past, listen attentively to what is being said by each conflict party in a given situation, here and now. Use the same wording while responding, and it will help you to get at the standing of speakers and get to the core of the issues.

Patience

It goes hand in hand with listening. Every party has to express their views and facts, and you have to listen with equal attention to every side. Otherwise, people may assume you just make your own decision without paying attention to actual state of affairs and causes of a conflict.

Empathy

Sometimes it is called emotional intelligence (EI), but you actually need both. Empathy means accepting how people feel in a given situation and adjusting your actions in line with it. Emotional intelligence is reading other people's emotions and communicating in a way that does not make a situation worse. Empathy is more about human compassion, and EI is about taking other people's feelings as a cue to safe interactions.  

Positive State Of Mind

Your goal is to settle the conflict and move on with normal work processes. Additional goal is to help everyone exit the conflict satisfied and not holding the grudge. So be permanently oriented towards mutually beneficial resolution and nudge others in the same direction. Do not let negative feelings ruin the resolution process.

Adopting A Neutral Position Between The Conflicting Sides 

Impartiality is a key if you do not want people to think that you gave preference to one side and disadvantaged the other. Try to distance yourself from people involved (whether they are your friends or people you do not like that much) and deal with the conflict itself. For example, if the issue is the sphere of responsibility, look at the job offers or written and agreed work schedules listing the range of duties, and not on your personal preferences about who should be doing (or skipping) the task.

Making Communication Clear And Transparent

This skill is closely related to the previous one. Impartiality is about treating everyone equally and enabling every party to protect their interests and express their views. Whether in the middle of the conflict or after it, there should be communication channels set up for interaction of these sides. Whether it is a weekly or monthly meeting with you as a moderator, or regular get-togethers of two teams, this channel should be officially introduced and enabled through officially allocated time and place for communication. In such a way, you will ensure that sides of the conflict can check if the other party sticks to the agreement, and they will feel as a single entity working on the problem rather than opposing sides bickering over it. This uniting environment also matters.

Lesley Montoya

Update 12 September 2020