Conflict Hazards of Helping (Part 4 of 4)
If you are going to help people resolve conflict, you should be aware of potential pitfalls that can undermine the entire process.
The most dangerous pitfall is that your clients may expect you to single-handedly design and implement a solution that will fix everything. The next most dangerous pitfall is for you to try to meet those expectations.
Successful conflict intervention professionals do not “fix” things for their clients. Instead, they lead clients through the process of resolving their own issues in a supportive and effective manner.
Avoid the Traps
You will have to avoid many traps to successfully help others to resolve conflict.
The first trap is often an invitation to accept at face value the client’s definition of the problem and what is needed to solve it, for instance, the client’s belief that more training is needed in cases where the real issue is suppressed or unidentified conflict.
You will need to look behind the explanation you are offered. You’ll need to discover the needs, issues and values the explanation represents, if you are to assist clients in finding creative, appropriate options for solving their problems.
Another trap may be your eagerness to assist your clients without first determining whether they really want to solve their problems. Help your client explore the implications and risks, as well as the benefits, of dealing with potentially painful issues. This helps your client make a solid commitment to working with fundamental issues and letting go of problems that may have provided secret benefits.
A third trap you may face is the invitation to take sides and judge the rightness or wrongness of someone’s position in a conflict situation. It is important to stay impartial and help clarify possible effects of various actions.
Be particularly wary of attempts to get rid of troublemakers in various ways.
Often the “troublemaker” has a great deal of energy available to help resolve the problem. A person who cares enough to “make trouble” really cares about the prob1em and needs to be included in the resolution process.
Another pitfall is the possibility that you will move too quickly into areas that clients consider risky. If you scare your client, even accidentally, you may get hostility instead of cooperation
Your ability to be of value in the conflict situation depends upon your not being thrown out by an angry client. If you stay sensitive to your client’s fears, you may be able to avoid this hazard.
Stay Focused: Avoid the Drama
Getting involved in the drama of a conflict situation can also be a trap.
All drama involves victims, persecutors and rescuers. You may be greatly tempted to rescue your clients by proposing solutions prematurely, before they have brought their own information and resources to bear on the problem.
Rescues usually lead to dramatic role switches in which the consultant more often than not winds up in the victim position, criticized or even fired.
You will be a far more effective helper if you look for the needs, interests and values behind the roles and clarify them for everyone involved. Stimulate a search for options, instead of giving in to the temptation to reach a dramatic solution.
Accepting your role as a conflict intervention professional is a challenge. Your larger challenge as an executive, manager or HRD professional may be to change the perception of conflict from an unpleasant problem to an opportunity for change and growth.
Communicate skillfully about sensitive subjects in business situations. Have the challenging conversations that lead to cooperation and success. http://www.DareToSayIt.com/blog
Laurie Weiss, Ph.D. is a Master Certified Coach and communication expert. Dr. Weiss has spent 35 years helping clients resolve conflict in business and personal relationships. Email feedback@laurieweiss.com
Building the Trust in Your Employees – 12 Easy Tips
In Stephen Covey’s great book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People“, he talks about the ‘emotional bank account’, where you have to build a credit in your relationship with the individuals who you work with (and everyone else as well!).
If what you do isn’t ‘trustworthy’, then all you have done in your gentle listening and asking great and interested questions to build, is to ‘debit’ your account. And if you do more of this than the credit you build, then you will never get your folks on your side. But what is trust?
You can’t invest more wisely than by listening fully to what interests the person you are in conversation with. So, ask more questions about what they tell you. Easy as that – it’s a simple tool, but really builds trust too.
Here are a few other things which generate their trust in you:-
- Tell the truth
Sounds simple, yet often it is done without thinking. On busy days what you say does get taken in, yet you forget. Don’t! People hang on what you say – so it must be the truth!
- Keep promises (or don’t make them)
A biggy this. What you say holds a far greater importance to the person you say it to than maybe you, who say so much stuff all day long. If you say you will do something for someone, then do it – or don’t say you will.
- Follow through on what you say you will do
And separate from promises. Actions. Your people look on you to facilitate their delivery of the business. You can smooth things out, make things happen, provide resources. So if you say you are going to fix things, then please do it! Hey, even more, do a little more!
- Don’t be interrupted – give yourself fully in a conversation
When you are talking with your people make sure you give them full attention and the courtesy of enough time. Put them first not second (or even third). Switch your phone or pager off. Put off other interruptions.
- Be fair to all
By ensuring that you treat all of your people the same, you will build their trust hugely. It is a sense of sharing and caring that comes from everyone, even you, being equal in an emotional sense, so building a common bond.
- Have no favourites
You need to be disciplined enough that you have no closer ‘friends’ than everyone. If you treat some people more ‘equally’ than others, it sure gets noticed, creates divisions and loses that pulling together which you need.
- Be consistent
Your folks get twitchy if you are erratic in your behaviour and attitudes. By modifying your behaviours to be consistent (and if you aren’t have someone tell you).
- Stick to your own rules – model behaviours
And in the thing about consistency and fairness and no favourites, remember you. You cannot be different. You cannot afford to behave in a way that shows favouritism to yourself.
- Understand mistakes and help others learn and not be afraid
Your people who you want onside need to be nurtured and cared for. Encouraged and engaged. It needs you to be able to relieve their fear of getting things wrong. Your people can make mistakes. It’s OK! Then you will get them experimenting and trying stuff – all of which will be generating great solutions. Let them!
- Realise what’s important to others may not be apparent
People always have things which are important to them – and it isn’t always their work! So find out what it is and honour that – it builds their trust in you, because you value them.
- Face people with issues rather than tell others
If you have issues or problems with people, be honest with them and let them know. It’s about what they do and not about them as people – but be honest enough to work with them and not talk about them behind their back
- Let go sometimes – trust them to do their best
Your people try their best – by acknowledging them for this, they will trust you more and more.
Building trust is not only the most valuable thing that you can do with your people, but it is the most important thing that you must do.
© 2005 Martin Haworth is a Business and Management Coach. He works worldwide,
mainly by phone, with small business owners, executives and corporate leaders. He
has hundreds of hints, tips and ideas at his website,
http://www.coaching-businesses-to-success.com.
(Note to editors. Feel free to use this article, wherever you think it might be of value – it would be good if you could include a live link)
…helping you, to help your people, to help your business grow…