Handling Conflict

This resource first appeared in issue #35 on 31 Jul 2020 and has tags Becoming A Manager: Conflict/Difficult Discussions, Managing A Team: Other, Becoming A Manager: Managing Individuals

Models for conflict resolution – choose the right one for you - Andy Skipper, CTO Craft
Leading Through Conflict - Scott D. Hanton, Lab Manager

These two articles cover how to deal with conflict in the technical or laboratory workplace, each with several resources to follow up on.

(Disagreements are not themselves conflict! Technical people of any field in any team should be cheerfully, respectfully, disagreeing with each other all over the place.)

Both start, sensibly, with the fact that conflict comes from somewhere - there’s some underlying issue driving it, which may be quite a bit removed from the topics or events that the conflict seems to be about. And as managers, part of our job is to work at not just ensuring the current conflict is resolved but reducing the chances of the same fundamental issue causing future conflicts.

Skipper’s article concludes with several broad models of conflict resolution with descriptions and pointers to find out more, and some general reminders. Hanton’s article goes into more specifics about broad approaches - stay calm and focused on the big picture and overarching goals so as to avoid being dragged into the conflict, stay away from opinions and try to learn from the two competing vantage points, and in so learning try to find (and create) areas of common agreement that can be built upon. Some examples are provided.

One thing I like about Hanton’s article is it points out the good that can come out of conflict - by helping get the underlying issue resolved, by bringing forward multiple vantage points, by clearing the air and in the end potentially strengthening relationships. As long as conflicts don’t fester and become toxic, some disagreement and tension is normal and even helpful.