In my last blog post I discussed how leaders in today's organizations need to adapt their skill sets to the needs of a new and evolving workplace. I identified three leadership competencies essential to this evolving workplace: facilitative leadership, conflict resolution, and strategic communication, and discussed the first of these in last week's blog. In this blog post I will discuss the second of these, conflict resolution.
As power and decision-making continue migrating to the front-line of contemporary organizations, leaders have increased opportunities to prevent and mediate unhealthy conflict between newly empowered co-workers and overly-competitive teams. But this is certainly not an opportunity that is sought after, considering the tendency for most organizational leaders within the United States to eschew conflict, leaving employees disconnected and disgruntled. Leaders who continue to adopt a "conflict averse" persona, developing the conflict resolution skills neither within themselves nor their subordinates, become wholly destructive barriers to increased communication, innovation, and teamwork within their respective organizations. The first of two leadership development tactics for improving conflict resolutions skill is understanding the common approaches toward conflict.
The Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument has long established the five foundational approaches toward conflict that we see in organizations today. The approaches are: Competing (assertive, uncooperative), Avoiding (unassertive, uncooperative), Accommodating (unassertive, uncooperative), Collaborating (assertive, cooperative), and Compromising (intermediate assertiveness and cooperativeness). Leaders first start their development by understanding their preferred approach toward conflict in the workplace and their preferred approach out of the workplace. Once this understanding is in place, the leader will know which approach they are drawn to and which approach is their least preferred. With this realization in place, they can then turn their attention toward others with the same understanding and increased empathy. As these approaches all have situational utility, the last leadership development tactic is to increase one's ability to behaviorally shift into each style as appropriate and proactively attend to conflict when it arises.
Learning to shift into each conflict approach is based on development in two areas: situational understanding and behavioral practice. Situational understanding is the strategic awareness and accurate choice of applying the correct style to the correct situation in an organizational context. For instance, a team working through the process of making a series of quick decisions in rapid succession that were of moderate importance to the future of their organization would be out of line choosing the time and energy intensive collaborative approach toward conflict when the compromise approach would certainly do. Furthermore, behavioral practice comes from a deeper understanding of the central behaviors and characteristics for each approach (such as direct communication style and sarcasm being appropriate behaviors for the competing approach). Further development in this area can be had by reading the book, "The Conflict Resolution Toolbox" by Gary Furlong and by seeking out the assistance of a certified and experienced coach.
In my next blog post I will discuss the last of our three contemporary leadership competencies, strategic communication.
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