I saw the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict by Amy Gallo mentioned somewhere in their emails, so they did an effective job of marketing the book. It is a quick read, directly on topic. And as I read the book, it became clear that my idea of “conflict” has been colored by my close work with Theory of Constraints and the way TOC thinking processes talk about conflict and conflict resolution.
In this book, the conflicts are the interpersonal issues we run into all the time in business, be they created by disagreements on the what (task) or how (process) of work, or who is ultimately responsible (status) - which often devolve into relationship conflicts.
The basics behind the guide are good, solid advice - decide whether addressing the conflict is worth it, and if NOT decide to become okay with that decision. Understand where your counterpart is coming from, and consider what might be their motivations from their perspective, the organizational situation, and potentially cultural differences. Come up with an approach to working with them to resolve the conflict, recognizing that a conversation cannot be scripted and is unlikely to go “perfectly.” And then have the conversations and follow-through with decisions that you make together.
As I said above, my take on conflicts is informed by my work in Theory of Constraints. While conflicts are between people and can become situations that seem intractable, like those described in this guide, the TOC perspective is that conflicts come about because our situations drive us to take actions that appear to be incompatible. If we could understand what is driving those actions AND we have a common goal or objective, then there is likely a path forward to resolving the conflict in a way that satisfies both parties.
One of the classic business examples is hold more inventory / hold less inventory. When I use this example, many people find it a familiar issue - and complain about all the meetings and endless wrangling around this conflict in their organization. But why does it exist? We want the company to be successful. And to do that we must good customer service (or high sales), so we want to hold more inventory. Holding more inventory, we assume, ensures that customers will be able to get what they want quickly. On the other hand, to have that successful company, we must also manage our finances appropriately, and to do that there is a drive to hold less inventory. We assume that holding a lot of inventory represents money locked up in finished goods inventory or even in the warehouses themselves. The classic resolution to this is compromise or swinging from one side to the other — hold more inventory until it becomes untenable and then impose across-the-board cuts to all inventory. But there must be a way to have high customer services levels AND good financial management. Must we hold more inventory on ALL products? Must we cut inventory on ALL products? Why do we need the inventory levels that we do have? This line of thinking lets us get deeper into the thinking about why the conflict exists and what might be done to resolve it.
And this has very little to do with the individuals who are in the conflict - it is the system that creates the conflict, not the people. People are good - they all operate in the system which they have. This way of thinking through conflicts tries to de-personalize them, and makes it about modifying the system, instead of modifying people.