A Systematic Approach to Creative Conflict Management

Most organizations now have some kind of mission statement. If thoughtfully

created, these statements can help organizations achieve their goals and create a

powerful culture. Consider including conflict management as a part of your

organization’s mission.

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For example, a large transportation district crafted the following addition about

conflict to their general mission statement. You can see it also intersects well with

the organization’s union contract.

Goals Statement for Conflict Resolution

The Transportation District, as an organization, recognizes that conflict is a normal

and predictable part of working together. Therefore, we adopt the following goals

relating to conflict resolution:

1. We are committed to increasing our skills in resolving conflict.

2. At all levels of the organization, we strive to resolve conflicts in a productive

and creative way, without threats, harassment or violence.

3. Nothing in this goal statement is meant to conflict with the Collective

Bargaining Agreement or other policies.

Section 1: Management-Union Relations

The Employer agrees to meet in good faith with the duly elected

representatives of the Union and attempt to resolve all questions arising between

them. The Union fully agrees that within its ability each of its members shall

render faithful service in their respective positions as outlined in the classes of this

Agreement and will cooperate with the management of the Employer in the

efficient operation of the system in accordance with the rules, regulations and

operating conditions as announced by the Employer, and will cooperate and assist

in fostering cordial relations between the Employer and the public.

The district combined elements from their usual mission statement with the

mission statement on conflict. They also included a statement about their goals for

labor/management relations since they were a unionized organization. You can see

the parallels between the two statements. Reprinting these two together helped the

organization create a dialogue with the union around the issue of conflict

before

they faced their next issue.

What is the mission of your organization? What are its goals? How would it help

your organization reach its goals if you included your mission for conflict

resolution?

One of the most powerful statements is to emphasize that you recognize, as a

group, that conflict is a part of life, can be valuable, and that it’s your goal to

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skillfully manage conflict. This can serve as a revelation to those in your

organization who are constantly frustrated by the very existence of conflict. They

need to know that their leaders understand conflict is normal and healthy. Yet,

leaders also need to make it clear that

skillful and creative conflict management is

something they consider a part of everyone’s job description. Just making these

statements and serving as role models for their enactment can help to resolve many

problems around conflict.

FOSTERING A CREATIVE CULTURE

Of course, one purpose of productive conflict is to incubate more creativity in your

culture. What other organizational characteristics encourage a creative and

conflict-positive culture? A group of creativity researchers

3 used the Department of

Labor’s classification of the characteristics of U.S. organizations to determine what

organizational values led to innovation, and identified four factors:

1. People orientation, such as collaboration, supportiveness, and team orientation

2. Risk taking, such as a willingness to experiment and aggressiveness

3. Attention to detail, such as precision and results orientation

4. Stability, such as security of employment

These results suggest an organizational culture that supports risk taking,

collaboration, quality, and security is likely to be innovative and “high

performance.” They also found using teams and information sharing led to higher

levels of group interaction and fostered creative decision-making. Organizations

with these characteristics in their culture will be most able to generate good fights

and the resulting innovation.

Perhaps one of the most critical components of fostering a creative culture is

encouraging risk-taking. How do you encourage reasonable risk? Dick Liebhaber,

executive vice president of MCI, has observed, “We do not shoot people who make

mistakes. We shoot people who do not take risks.”

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Organizational norms, top management walking the talk, and managers

encouraging risk, help encourage creative risk-taking. Without encouraging risks,

it’s difficult for anything creative to emerge. Researcher Amy Edmonson,

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example, studied the effects of “psychological safety” in a large number of teams

in an office furniture manufacturing company. Psychological safety “is

characterized by a shared belief that well-intentioned action will not lead to

punishment or rejection.” She measured safety with a survey instrument that

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included statements such as “it is safe to take a risk on this team.” Edmonson found

the level of psychological safety felt by team members affected learning behavior

and led to higher team performance. She also found that team leadership needed to

create the climate for risk-taking that led to enhanced performance.

Leaders must also be careful how they respond to failure in order to encourage

risks. A superintendent at Chaparral Steel, for example, championed a $1.5 million

arch saw for trimming finished steel beams. When he brought the saw back to the

site, the tool failed. After a year of unsuccessful tinkering, the saw was replaced.

The superintendent was promoted to vice president of operations, surprising

outsiders who “can’t believe you can make a mistake like that and not get

crucified.”

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Leaders can learn to deliver honest feedback in a way that encourages creativity

and risk-taking. Alan Horn, for example, chairman and CEO of Castle Rock

Entertainment, is careful when first presented with creative ideas such as

screenplays or ideas for marketing. He tries to cultivate a “heartfelt, internalized

respect for what these people do.” When they present a new idea:

I want to remember that they are

completely vulnerable at that

moment. My job is not to kill them but to find the bright, creative,

special parts of their proposal and focus on those first, to ease their

anxiety, make them feel less vulnerable. Then I have to find a graceful

way into the parts of what they’ve brought that need improving.

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Feedback delivered in this way helps create a culture that welcomes risk-taking and

innovation. Such a culture helps incubate productive conflict.

CONNECTIVITY AND CONFLICT

Nurturing connectivity is also critical to fostering a culture of creative conflict. For

example, one CEO of a high-tech company makes it a point to wander through his

various groups of developers to look for ways in which different programming

research can be shared in new and innovative ways.

Other companies foster connectivity through the web by creating sites related to

specific projects and making sure that workers around the world can access the site

to share and learn.

ADDITIONAL ORGANIZATIONAL TACTICS

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The research on creative conflict confirms a strong culture organized around clear

purpose helps lead to conflict-skilled organization. Nurturing risk-taking and

connectivity also helps. In addition, researchers Kathleen Eisenhardt, Jean

Kahwajy, and L. J. Bourgeois, III, reporting on their findings in the

Harvard

Business Review

,8 identified five other cultural tactics that helped companies

skillfully manage conflict to drive creativity and productivity. The successful

teams were able to separate the person from the problem, disagree over strategy

significance, and still get along with one another. The tactics were:

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They worked with more information and debated on the facts.

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They developed multiple solutions to raise the level of debate.

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They injected humor into decision-making

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They maintained a balance of power.

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They used a fallback instead of a true consensus.

Let’s look at how successful teams used all of these factors.

FOCUS ON THE FACTS

The researchers found more information is better because it encourages people to

focus on issues, not personalities. Companies who skillfully managed conflict

claimed to “measure everything,” including facts about the external environment.

As one CEO explained his process, “we over-MBA it.” Otherwise, teams waste

time in pointless debate over opinions and biases. Without timely and accurate

information, people rather than issues become the focus, creating interpersonal

conflict. Managers with high degrees of interpersonal conflict rely more on

“hunches and guesses” than on current information.

The researchers found “a direct link between reliance on facts and low levels of

interpersonal conflict.” With facts, people moved swiftly to the central issues. In

the absence of facts, people instead suspect others’ motives. “Building decisions on

facts creates a culture that emphasizes issues instead of personalities.”

MULTIPLE ALTERNATIVES

Sometimes leaders assume they reduce conflict by focusing on only one or two

alternatives in order to minimize the possible disagreements. Yet the researchers

found that teams with low interpersonal conflict do just the opposite. They

purposefully float multiple alternatives, sometimes even suggesting options with

which they disagree, just to promote debate.

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Considering multiple alternatives lowers bad fights and increases good ones,

because it diffuses conflict, choices become less black and white, and people can

more easily shift positions. More creative options emerge, sometimes taking part of

several different solutions. The process itself becomes more creative and

enjoyable–people focus more on the problem instead of on personalities.

THE POWER OF HUMOR

The researchers found teams that handle conflict well make explicit and often

contrived attempts to relieve tension and promote collaboration. They find

competition exciting. In the teams with unhealthy interpersonal conflict, humor

was absent.

The successful teams used humor as a healthy defense mechanism to protect

people from the stress that arises in the course of making strategic decisions. The

humor also put people in a more positive mood. Many researchers have found that

people in a positive mood tend to be not only more optimistic, but also more

forgiving of others and more creative.

BALANCED POWER STRUCTURES

Organizations with autocratic leaders as well as organizations with extremely weak

leaders both generated high levels of unhealthy interpersonal conflict. The lowest

level of destructive conflict comes from teams with balanced power structures in

which the CEO is the most powerful, but the other members of management wield

substantial power in their own areas of responsibility.

QUALIFIED CONSENUS

The most successful teams didn’t seek true consensus all the time. Instead, they

used a kind of

fall back or qualified consensus. The group talked and tried to reach

consensus. If they couldn’t within a relevant period of time, the most senior leader

made the decision. Remarkably, the teams that insisted on resolving substantive

conflict by forcing consensus displayed the unhealthiest interpersonal conflict.

Insisting on consensus in all issues leads to “endless haggling.”

As one VP of engineering put it: “Consensus means that everyone has veto power.

Our products were too late and they were too expensive.” What the researchers

found was that people wanted to be heard–they wanted their opinions and ideas

treated with respect–and that people were willing to accept outcomes they

disagreed with if they believed the process used to come to a decision was fair, and

that the leader didn’t just seek their opinion as a ruse.

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In sum, these five tactics, in addition to emphasizing common goals, lead not to

less conflict, but to more healthy and productive conflict. What these researchers

affirmed is that if there is a little conflict over issues, there’s also likely to be poor

decision-making. Conflict over issues, not personalities, is valuable. The successful

teams avoided groupthink, which has been a primary cause of failure in both public

and private sections. The researchers found “the alternative to conflict is usually

not agreement, but apathy and disengagement.”

ORGANIZATIONAL CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

Once you establish a mission statement around conflict for your organization such

as storytelling and facilitating, you’ll want to consider structures that support

creative conflict management and help incubate productive conflict. A successful

model for the conflict-skilled organization involves the following:

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A creative conflict management mission statement

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Leaders who model skillful conflict resolution through walking the talk

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Skilled mediators to resolve conflict that people cannot directly resolve

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Skilled coaches to advise people in the midst of conflict

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Conflict management skills training specifically tailored for leaders, mediators,

coaches, and all employees

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Accountability

The first element of this program–a mission statement–was discussed earlier in

this article. The other elements also require careful consideration.

BASIC CONFLICT MANAGEMENT SKILLS TRAINING

An organization that wants to successfully and creatively manage conflict should

consider basic conflict management training for all employees. These trainings

should be four to six hours in length and cover the organization’s overall mission,

policies and procedures around conflict, and the basic management skills

employees need. The sessions should be designed to be practical, hands-on and

experiential. Participants should experience a successful conflict resolution

exercise as well as understanding of the theories and steps involved. The session

should emphasize the power of attitude about conflict to encourage employees to

value and embrace conflict in order to drive innovation.

The most successful organizations will make such trainings mandatory for all

employees.

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ADVANCED TRAINING FOR COACHES, FACILITATORS, AND

MEDIATORS

After completing the basic training, those with the interest and ability to serve as

coaches, facilitators and mediators should move on to advanced training. This

training would help people learn two skills:

1. Providing confidential coaching to those in the midst of conflict

2. Serving as coaches, facilitators and mediators for those who cannot creatively

manage conflict themselves

Organizations should consider training one coach/mediator for every 50 to 100

employees. This training would also be highly interactive, focusing on mediation

and coaching skills beyond the basics. The training should take two and a half to

five days.

EXECUTIVE BRIEFING

Ideally, executives should take both levels of training since surveys show they

spend at least one fourth of their time resolving and mediating conflicts. At the

least, executives should be briefed as to the basics of the program in a one to two

hour session and receive a taste of the regular training.

If you skip this step, you won’t have executives who understand the process and

“walk the talk.” They tend not to encourage their subordinates to go to the other

sessions and do not use the same language to manage conflicts. Although it can be

difficult to convince the executives to take the time to sit through even a short

briefing, it will be well worth the effort in the long run.

ACCOUNTABILITY

The last piece of the puzzle to creating a conflict-positive organization is to focus

on accountability. None of the other moves will create the level of cooperation,

community and teamwork you need in your organization without this important

element.

For example, Helen, the president of a large manufacturing company, hired a

consultant to conduct a conflict management workshop at their annual executive

retreat. She’d told the consultant that one of their problems was that some people

on the executive team used an overly aggressive style of conflict resolution while

others triangulated conflict. The workshop was a success based on the feedback

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and participation; in fact, the executives wanted to expand the session to a full day

class and bring it to all of their other managers. Over the next month, the

consultant conducted day-long workshops for their entire management team across

the country. Again, the feedback was positive.

In the consultant’s last meeting with Helen, she thanked her for making the

workshops a success, but lamented that–even though they’d provided the skills–

one VP was still a problem. His behavior included incredible displays of rudeness,

attacks and constant criticism of the other executives and managers, yelling

profanity and a general inability to be a team player, even though he was good at

his own substantive area of expertise.

“I just don’t understand why he won’t change,” she sighed. The consultant then

asked the obvious question: “Have you talked to him about his behavior?” Helen

responded that she had, several times, but nothing shifted.

The consultant then went on to emphasize to her the difference between a talk

about his behavior and making him accountable for his behavior. She’d never

enforced any

consequences for his inappropriate behavior. The consultant then

suggested that she needed to make improving his behavior a part of his

performance plan, complete with consequences up to and including termination if

he failed to meet those requirements. Helen revealed she was concerned about

losing someone who was substantively good at what he did, yet she understood

failure to do so would continue to undermine the entire executive team.

Miraculously, when Helen followed the advice and included accountability for his

behavior, he started to improve his skills.

You have the right and, indeed, the responsibility as a leader or manager to insist

that all of your individual contributors make creative conflict management a part of

their job description. Just giving them the skills may not be enough if you fail to

follow through with significant consequences for their failure to improve.

HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS IN PRACTICE

With this system in place in a conflict-positive organization, most conflicts would

be managed directly between the involved parties. If they are unable to do so, the

participants could request individual coaching sessions from designated coaches. If

that fails, they could then request mediation. Leaders could also refer associates to

mediators to resolve disputes.

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This approach allows an organization to take a systemic approach to creative

conflict management and will result in significant savings in lost productivity, time

and energy. This system also prevents a rise in the negative spiral of unproductive

and personal conflicts, lawsuits and other costly disputes. Finally, this system will

help you harness the power of a good fight to improve productivity and innovation.

The time an organization invests in this system and training will bring dramatic

results for all involved and incubate many creative conflicts within your

organization.

LEADERSHIP AND STORYTELLING

Storytelling is the final piece of the puzzle of designing a creative approach to

conflict management. Much has been written in recent years about leadership in

general and the need for all employees to become leaders, not just employees. Yet

these writers miss two significant nuances: the need to give people

meaning in

their work and the power of

story as a tool for encouraging meaning and for

serving as a model for the “why” behind conflict management.

Meaning drives

motivation.

People must have common goals or resolution is not possible. Many

organizational conflicts result from disbelief in or a lack of understanding about:

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Why the organization exists

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Why the organization does what it does

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What the organization’s true goals are

Skillfully using stories can help change this dynamic.

Glen Gienko, executive vice president of human resources for Motorola in

Schaumburg, Illinois, agrees that leadership and storytelling are keys to making

constructive conflict a part of the fabric of an organizational culture. As he recalls:

Fifteen years ago during an officers’ meeting in which everyone was

celebrating the success of the company, one employee stood up in

front of his peers and their spouses and proclaimed that Motorola’s

quality stunk. The willingness of (that lone) employee to speak

against the grain ultimately turned into Motorola’s highly praised Six

Sigma quality effort. Today, we tell this story over and over as a way

to show employees what constructive dissent can do for a company.

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Futurist Rolf Jensen claims that in the years ahead we will move into what he calls

the Dream Society:

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In today’s Information Society, we prize those who can skillfully

manipulate data; in tomorrow’s Dream Society–focused on dreams,

adventure, spirituality and feelings–we will most generously reward

those who can tell stories . . . . In the future, the notion that the work

should be no more than a means of obtaining something else will

disappear. People will, of course, be paid for working, but money will

not be the main reason for working. People will require meaning in

their work.”

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Current surveys of Generation-Xers place “meaning” high on the list of what they

look for in a job. Aging baby boomers–having passed through their materialistic

stage–will also demand meaning in their work, not just management.

Organizations will have to develop a collective meaning to survive and to resolve

the ever-escalating conflicts. Companies in the future will also have to show that

they have values and contribute to society.

Leaders will be increasingly called upon to help give meaning to employees. Of

course, before you can help others find meaning in their work, you have to find it

in your own. Meaning fuels the sometimes-challenging work of conflict

management.

Can all honest, legal work have meaning, dignity and value? Yes, it can. If you

doubt this, read Victor Frankl’s classic work,

Man’s Search for Meaning, about

finding meaning in his work as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp. There may

be more difficult environments, but it’s difficult to image where or when.

Even if your current job doesn’t fit your long-term passion, find meaning in the

support the work provides as you plan for more passionate future work. Find

meaning in doing what you do with excellence and integrity. Mother Theresa

noted, “We do not do great things. We do small things with great love.”

Ultimately, if you can’t find meaning in your work, leave. The dilemma is this: The

future will require such a level of commitment that you will not be able to sustain

your work with anything less than all out dedication.

One way to give meaning to your work and to work of those you lead is through

storytelling. As we moved into Jensen’s Dream Society, in the later part of the

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twentieth century, it’s no accident we elected an actor, Ronald Reagan, as president

of this country and a playwright, Václav Havel, as president of the Czech Republic.

How powerful are stories? “Everybody is a story,” writes Dr. Naomi Remen in her

book,

Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal.

When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their

stories. We don’t do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table

telling stories is not just a way of passing time, it is the way wisdom

gets passed along. Despite the awesome powers of technology many

of us still do not live very well. We may need to listen to one

another’s stories again.

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Loneliness is the hidden wound of our time–the price many have paid for

embracing such frontier values as independence, self-reliance and competence. It’s

also a price paid by those who frequently change jobs. In the future, leaders will be

increasingly called upon to remember we are all connected and can become a

community, to help organizations work more cooperatively and to move toward

goals with humor, meaning, purpose and quality companionship. A good story

provides a compass for a group’s mission. Skillful conflict management builds

trust and creates connections and helps a group work together to accomplish its

mission.

As a leader, how do you discover and develop your own stories to inspire others?

Look at your

wounds. There is power in the wounded leader. As Nietzsche wrote,

“life breaks all of us eventually, but some of us grow back stronger in the broken

places.” Ironically, our greatest strengths come from these wounds, from what

makes us vulnerable, because our vulnerability also makes us human. And in our

humanity lies our ability to connect with and lead others. At the heart of most

wounds is a conflict. The healing of most wounds involves connection.

The ability to appropriately reveal our wounds and vulnerability makes the most

powerful leaders. Bob Dole, despite his physical wounds, was not. It’s why Clinton

won a reelection (despite his many mishaps) and Hillary may not. It’s why Marilyn

Monroe–“the vulnerable blonde”–is a timeless cultural icon and Madonna never

will be. (Unless, of course, parenthood brings Madonna to her knees, as it does

most of us.)

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How do you develop storytelling ability? After you look at our wounds, ask what

you can teach from that place of wounding. What do you know because you

brought that knowledge with your life?

Learn also from other great storytellers. Read and listen to a diverse collection of

artists. Recent examples from different sources might include, for example, a novel

by Haitian Edwidge Danticat,

Krik? Krak!, and the Academy Award winning

documentary about Maya Lin,

A Strong Clear Vision. Danticat evokes the conflict,

terror and heartache, along with the wonder of her native Haiti, telling the story of

a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination

and community. Through her work, those of us who find the news from Haiti too

painful to hear can understand the place more deeply than we ever thought

possible. Out of her wounds, and the many conflicts in her country, Danticat

weaves her life and culture into a powerful force to move us to understanding and

action. Similarly, you can use your own life and culture to move your organization

closer to its goals.

Maya Lin, the architect who at 20 beat out hundreds of more established architects

to win the contest to design the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, recounted how

wounded she felt in the conflict when people attacked and misunderstood her

design. Yet she found that out of that wound came the inspiration to design more

and even greater work. Her story inspires all of us.

Tell stories. Use them in your work. Search for the stories of others in songs,

novels, poems and dance. Practice them first if you must–in front of your kids, a