Development is, foremost, dependent on how much you get out of the one resource that is truly under your own command and control-namely, yourself.
Peter Drucker
Introduction
I am starting to notice a trend, anecdotal maybe, but nevertheless very noticeable countrywide in my own work, of business leaders and senior management teams gaining a modern, appropriate sense of the crucial importance of conflict in their businesses and careers. This includes the central place of conflict in every important aspect of business, as we will look at, and the modern tools, strategies and results that have become available to these business leaders as a result of developments in conflict studies and practice during the last few years.
The tale of the tape – the costs of workplace conflicts
While the tide is definitely changing, with conflict skills upgrades showing measurable and dramatic results, far too many South African workplaces still treat conflict, in all its manifestations from internal misconduct, poor work performance, customer complaints, or the commercial negotiations and processes involved in their businesses, as something to be avoided as far as possible, and for those inevitable conflicts to then begrudgingly be budgeted for, and borne with gritted teeth until it’s over. Harvard Business Review workplace conflict statistics give us a glimpse of some of the costs involved in a continuation of, indifference to, or an inadequate preparation for these conflicts. Unresolved conflict in the workplace, these figures show, can cost organizations up to $359 billion annually. Middle and senior managers spend up to 25% of their time dealing with workplace conflicts. Staff turnover can be as much as 50% higher if conflict is not managed skilfully. And these figures for the USA can easily, and conservatively, be transplanted to the South African workplace. To that we must add the direct costs involved in legal disputes, wasted time, deterioration of important relationships … the list seems rather endless, if often not properly assessed and included in comprehensive strategizing.
With this approach to conflict businesses carry unnecessary direct costs in internal disciplinary processes, eternal litigation at various levels, underperforming senior teams, toxic workplace cultures that they may not even be aware of, silos of power groupings internally, gossip, high staff turnover, brand damage and risk across a range of categories, to name but a few unnecessary results.
The golden thread
Too many current business programs and coaching paradigms still deal with the symptoms of our business lives, the problems that are cyclical in nature and that keep on bedevilling our best efforts and our profit margins. This dealing with the symptoms and not the causes, like a really bad doctor, remains popular even in some of the top business leader programs. It is helpful to understand that absolutely every aspect of the modern business landscape has conflict running through it like a golden thread.
Not the conflict of a constricted, limited view (where only wars and loud arguments are seen as conflict), but the far more appropriate view that understands that competition, excellence, high performance, high standards all bring about conflict with someone, even if it is a most constructive and even friendly conflict. We do ourselves a disservice, and severely limit our access to the range of modern conflict strategies and results if we limit our view of what conflict is. This more appropriate view and understanding of conflict has, in the commercial world, led to important synergies and new strategies in commercial negotiation, which can now rightly and more than ever, be studied and applied as a specific form of commercial conflict. Supply chain difficulties, brand damage, office polarization, underperforming star performers or teams, cultures of mediocrity are all examples of commercial conflict, just as the more classical examples of misconduct, disciplinary offences and conflict with competitors are. This expanded view of what conflict entails is by no means a negative view of the world or of business.
This upgraded view simply takes in and respects reality, fully recognizing the conflict even in friendly exchanges and competitions, in the essence of business and in much of what makes us human.
Modern best practices
Globally, and in Europe in particular, this simple but profound realization has brought about important changes in how senior management and teams are trained, how commercial strategies and negotiation planning are designed and implemented, with concomitant benefits and results. Conflict management (in the wide sense of the term) has also been infused with, and adopted a wide range of increasingly scientific influences and tools from a multi-disciplinary range of fields, including psychology, sociology, systems thinking, neuroscience and so on, bringing remarkably rapid and measurable improvements to the understanding and management or transformation of human conflict. Let’s look at ten specific developments and changed strategies caused by this modern approach to commercial conflict and negotiation, all of which the modern business leader and senior team should be aware of and make part of their commercial skills.
Ten direct practical business strategies
1. Training / coaching
The bad news here is that your conflict competence, like all worthwhile competencies, will take work. Work now, regular work over the years, and the occasional high-level upgrade of the moving parts. The better news is that you can, and should, take control of that content and process, and how much, and what you work on, what skills you train yourself in, are all fully customizable decisions that you get to make. Get a reputable and cutting-edge conflict coach to sit with you and design a detailed personal and / or team conflict program, discuss and decide on workshops, internal training programs for senior management teams or individuals, and get the foundational training done. Bear in mind that your aim here should be to become completely skilled in what we will be discussing here, and that after a full skills transfer this is an internal competency, with only periodical subsequent upgrades and consultancy work on specific levels of conflict.
Get to understand the levers and buttons of conflict, get to understand completely what your new options and solutions are. Once you have done the heavy lifting you will have transformed the way that you see and approach your business.
2. Endurance conflicts
An above-average level of conflict skill will allow you to see what conflicts to dispose of and which ones to stay with, and in what manner. Long, drawn out conflicts, where unavoidable, will become chess games that you now understand and can approach with a range of new options and strategies. You will stop harming your business by staying too long in certain conflicts and stepping back too soon from others.
3. Choose a few conflict strategies and techniques for everyday use
I spend at least a full day every week to just keep up with the latest developments in the various conflict fields that I study and consult in, so there is a tremendous volume of high quality work available to you. Once you have decided on a personalized conflict program you can stick with that, and do some extra work on a few selected conflict concepts and strategies that you find of particular ongoing value in your specific work. In my own coaching work I find that a high skill level in the strategic importance of conflict timing and sequence, of the fine art of conflict escalation and de-escalation, of persuasion and high-conflict environments are very useful and popular among senior business leaders.
4. Establish a conflict competent culture
Once you have the basics of your own program in place, consider working on the company culture in your business. Identify and eradicate toxic practices, separate power silos, drains on productivity and skill retention, and inculcate a business environment where you do not have less conflict, but better conflict, where people are confident to deal with their own conflicts, where the very business goals of the company are served by this golden thread of a new relationship with conflict. This should eventually filter through even to clients and service providers.
Weed out old, outdated and harmful disciplinary and dispute resolution practices that would have become a seemingly automatic part of the company furniture, keep the parts of the system that actually works and aid and support your new knowledge and skill, install an effective mediation level to minimize most of the conflict challenges that you will now understand better, get a dispute system design upgrade for your specific industry relevant conflicts, those seen and unseen. All of this sounds like a lot of work, and even costs, but when done skilfully such an entire overhaul can be designed and implemented in a month or two, for a fraction of the costs that you save in litigation fees, absence from other work when attending external dispute forums, productivity losses, risk of adverse awards, penalties and so on.
5. Change your relationship with conflict
This process will bring you into a helpful assessment of your own conflict style and patterns, such as aggression, conflict avoidance, an over-reliance on compromise and so on. Any conflict aversion or avoidance practices and habits (some of which are all but impossible to locate in oneself) will be identified and repaired or minimized. Conflict will become opportunities of reward, growth and increased exploration of yourself that will simply and undoubtedly add a wonderful depth and richness to your work.
6. Recalibrate your victories and successes
One of your new conflict insights will be to stop thinking about conflicts as events that have to be settled quickly, or avoided, by people who play nice and who are polite and calm. Modern conflict management is a skill focused on winning, on being able to skilfully handle yourself in the sophisticated range of conflicts that modern life throw our way. This may require a new understanding of what those victories and goals are, what avenues and options are newly available to you, and where your own conflict creativity can take you and your business.
7. Where necessary, redraw your conflict boundary lines
This new skill may convince you to change some of your habits and responses to commercial conflict. This may take some time to filter through to associates and competitors. Use this exciting, if brief, period, to rebuild incorrect or harmful perceptions those people may have of you, all in aid of your new strategies and goals.
8. Step away from unnecessary compromise
Compromise as conflict strategy is so ingrained in our society that it is difficult to see the harms we do to our own results and potential, to our experience of our conflicts. Compromise is often a lazy, inexperienced or ignorant strategy to get the deal done, the conflict to stop, the boxes to be ticked and for everyone to feel that they have achieved something worthwhile. The conflict competent leader will know how unsatisfying and incomplete a strategy that is, and what creative alternative solutions and new possibilities are available in any given conflict.
9. Build back better
There may be pockets of resistance in any organization to the change that increased conflict competency and the resultant skills will bring about. Not everyone wishes to be better at their conflicts, not everyone sees the marked benefits, or are prepared to put in even a minimal level of work in order to achieve that, so you can anticipate these small areas of resistance and deal with extreme instances on a long-term basis by the way you structure future appointments, programs and the skillsets that are valued and promoted internally.
10. Plough it back
For the lucky ones who truly understand and use the benefits of conflict competency, it becomes apparent that the entire business should be built on this foundation. Responsible modern leadership will combine a high degree of conflict competency in succession planning, mentorship programs, study finance assistance, promotions and ongoing skill advancement projects. Start internal named conflict workshops, award prizes and certificates, work conflict skill advancement into reward programs for employees and customers: have fun with the ploughing back of this asset.
Conclusion
From conflict competence comes conflict confidence. The work that you do on yourself and your business is a direct investment in a measurable skill and business asset, a life skill that you can take with you into your future career, your personal life and relationships, and your conflicts can become actual opportunities at improvement, gain, reward at some level, instead of dreaded, draining events that have to be faced and disposed of as soon as possible. Yes, there is some work to be done, and conflict skill maintenance should be seen as an ongoing investment, but the rewards are clear and inarguable.
Summary of main sources, references and suggested reading
1. Dangerous Magic: essays of conflict resolution in South Africa, by Andre Vlok, Paradigm Media (2022) (especially chapter 5)
2. The Dynamics of Conflict, by Bernard Mayer, John Wiley & Sons (2012)
3. Relevant articles for your consideration and their source material can be found at www.conflict-conversations.co.za
(Andre Vlok can be contacted on andre@conflictresolutioncentre.co.za for any further information)
(c) Andre Vlok
October 2024