Sun • Jan 10th, 2010 • by Tom Nees • Comments 2
advice from a university president,
a business leader and an executive coach
I know several leaders who at the moment are engaged in vexing organizational conflicts. In fact, some leaders have told me that most of their time is spent mediating conflict.
Much of the leadership discussion is about big ideas, vision, and leading change. Yet leaders are unavoidably caught up in less lofty responsibilities, immersed as they often are in conflict resolution. Conflict seems to be on the increase. Why?
I asked three leader friends – a university president, a business CEO, and an executive coach with many years in the corporate and public sector – these questions:
1. How much of your time has been or is given to conflict resolution?
2. Are the conflicts mostly internal or external?
3. What advice do you give for dealing with conflicts?
Loren Gresham, president of Southern Nazarene University near Oklahoma City, estimates that he spends at least ten percent of his time resolving conflict. “While that’s not a very large percentage,” he says, “when those times come along they are often draining emotionally and physically.”
“Pettiness and smallness” in his experience, “often contribute to conflict.” “Good people disagreeing over pretty small things are the most frustrating to me.” It’s “sad,” he says, when “the mission is forgotten and personal tastes and preferences prevail.”
Gerald Smith, CEO and owner of Premier Studios, a media development company, says that while he doesn’t keep track, he spends a significant amount of time helping his clients resolve conflict. The challenges, he says, “include some level of conflict resolution related to their brand, products and services.”
Internal conflicts, which he observes result primarily from a lack of information, can be avoided by “formalizing ongoing expectations and measurements.”
Deal with it quickly, he advises. “I can’t recall an internal issue where I wished I had waited longer to address the conflict. Conflict is like a virus or poison, it infects everything around it. The longer you wait to address conflict, the greater and more complex the issues become.”
Richard Schubert, now an executive coach, has spent a lifetime in significant leadership positions including the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor, the president of Bethlehem Steel and president of the American Red Cross. He notices a significant increase in the amount of conflict leaders must deal with.
In the past, he says, with authoritarian top-down organizations there was very little tolerance for personal disputes. “Employees didn’t want their bosses to know that they couldn’t handle the assignment. There was a very stable work force. Things were generally worked out before they came to leadership’s attention. Deep down underneath there certainly were conflicts with respect to things like turf and responsibility and prestige, growth opportunities, etc.” Earlier in his career personal conflicts were less likely to surface than they are now.
That has changed. Now, he says we live in a “very different time with a lot of personal expression and a lot less authoritarianism at play in the workplace.” He believes that some of the increased conflict in organizations is due to a generational shift.
“Today young people have an entitlement concept as a part of their lives.” The problem is that “entitlement then runs into someone else’s entitlement and that’s where the conflicts often occur.”
In an interview (available upon request), he reflected on what he has learned as an executive coach about the conflicts facing leaders in large companies.
A contributing cause of conflict, he claims, is change itself.
“A significant portion of a leader’s time addresses change. Below the surface of change is conflict or potential conflict caused by insecurity, the lack of communication and understanding of what’s happening within the organization.”
He estimates that change management requires “35-40 percent of leadership attention and focus and within that component comes the conflict,” and, he says “it’s particularly intensified in a matrix organization where there is no clear line of responsibility.”
In a matrix organization, he observes, “there are so many reporting relationships – dotted lines, even several solid lines, so that it gets very complex and the complexity leads to conflicts: What am I supposed to do? Whom am I supposed to respond to first and how?”
His advice for resolving conflict – “First, understanding; second, try to find some common ground; and third, call people to a higher level.”
Too often he notes, leaders don’t “really understand where a person who is in conflict with another person is coming from, and why — what’s the background.”
Years ago I learned an important lesson about resolving conflict. The organization for which I was responsible was facing a potentially destructive conflict. As I worked my way through it with a competent conflict resolution team, I learned that how you handle conflict is as important as the conflict itself.
Conflict resolution is an increasingly demanding, if not disturbing leadership responsibility. Conflict will happen. The question is, how will it be addressed.
January 12th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Tom,
I find that people who hate conflict spend more time trying to avoid it, allowing the issue to fester and ultimately breed more tension and loss of time and relationship.
One obviously can’t trump Scriptural advice. If you have a problem with someone, go to them. If one wants to solve problems, you’ll follow that advice. If you want to cause problems, you go to anyone but the person with whom you have conflict.
R
January 12th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Conflict is often caused by confusion. Most of the time people don’t know how to address issues creating conflict. In my experience as a government worker, leaders needed and required to resolve conflict are not properly trained.
The freedom and openness of our society seems to encourage conflict resulting from misbehavior, cleverness, and arrogance.
Until good manners, loyality, kindness and good faith with good intentions become the focal point in one’s career and the general workforce, no matter the color, age, sex, etc., conflict will continue. Intelligence and status should not be the only factors used to evaluate a person’s required capability for serving the best interests of a company and resolving conflict.