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Hollywood pioneer Samuel Goldwyn once said: “Ninety percent of the art of living consists of getting along with people you cannot stand.” Although the figure Goldwyn quoted seems a little high, this can never feel more true than when experiencing conflict in the workplace.
“Conflict is a feature of working with other humans,” says Sylvie Thrush Marsh, Chief Evangelist at human resources services provider and RBA partner MyHR. “Even if you are the most skilled, well-meaning human who is working with a bunch of other skilled, well-meaning humans, you will experience conflicts. It’s just a feature of working alongside people while trying to get stuff done.”
A few weeks ago, Sylvie facilitated a fascinating workshop for the RBA on managing workplace conflict. She says that since occasional conflict between human beings is unavoidable, having the skills to resolve or manage those conflicts is essential – and should extend well beyond the tools of employment law.
“Performance improvement plans, letters of expectation, disciplinaries – they’re all quite formal, and often aren’t the most appropriate tool for every situation,” says Sylvie. “Sometimes, you really just need to have a person-to-person conversation about what’s going on.”
And that, she says, begins with an understanding of what conflict is – and what it isn’t.
“Interpersonal conflict is where there is a persistent issue, a persistent dynamic, or an intractable difference in working styles or in personality that is making it hard to get things done,” she says. “On the other hand, feedback is not conflict in itself. Handling different approaches to solving the same problem is another feature of working with humans, and that’s not necessarily conflict.”
Nor is bullying or harassment considered conflict in this context. “Bullying and harassment are not situations that you can effectively communicate your way out of. That requires a careful, organisational approach to resolve.”
Forty to 60 percent of the time, says Sylvie, the root cause of workplace conflict boils down to differences in the way individuals like to communicate, structure their day, and approach tasks.
“Where someone is more task focused,” elaborates Sylvie, “they might come in on a Monday morning and want to get straight into emails, figure out what the day and their week looks like, and sort out anything that’s on fire. Then, later in the afternoon, they feel enough in control of their tasks and their workload to say to their colleague, ‘Hey, how was your weekend?’ and all that chat.
“Whereas someone who’s more people focused needs to feel connected to the people around them before they can jump into the workload. They need that conversation and connection before they can settle into their tasks.”
While neither style is right or wrong, says Sylvie, it becomes easy to see how tensions could mount. Different personality types, as per the Big Five model or Myers-Briggs, as well as neurodivergence can also play a part. “Any behaviour that doesn’t fit the mould or the expectations of the culture of the business can be a cause for conflict.”
Another element stoking the fires can be poor leadership.
“Sometimes the working environment is ripe for conflict if there isn’t clear direction or leadership from the business owner or the business managers. For example, if there are overlapping responsibilities, or if it’s not clear what the expectations are and people are trying to make sense of their department or their role, you can see how that can get messy.”
To work through a workplace conflict, or to support your team members in doing so, Sylvie says the first thing to know is what exactly is happening to people – or, more specifically, to people’s brains – when situations become inflamed.
“Very, very broadly speaking, we’ve got three different sections of our brain which manage different functions. The oldest part of our brain is the brain stem, or ‘lizard brain’; it’s what controls our physiological functioning, like heartbeat and breathing. Then we’ve got our limbic system – our ‘monkey brain’ – which is where our emotional and social functioning lives: reading faces, feeling feelings, and kind of tracking how we’re doing in our in our peer group or in our group of friends.
“Then there’s the front part of our brain, which is the youngest in terms of the timeline of human evolution, so we can call it our ‘human brain.’ That’s what takes care of our executive functioning, and it’s where in the brain we use logic to understand things, govern our emotions, and plan ahead.”
“So we actually can’t make logical, carefully-thought-out, rational decisions when we’re experiencing conflict and in that state of alertness or distress.”
Sylvie’s first step for working through conflict with “a 20,000 BC brain in a 21st century world” is to recognise that the heat of the moment is not the right time to resolve the situation at large.
“We need to be able to take ourselves out of that headspace and into a calm space before we can choose how to respond in a way that’s constructive for the relationship and constructive for the business. The moment of conflict is usually not the moment to try and resolve it; the moment of conflict is where you need to deescalate the situation.”
Business owners and managers should lead by example, making an awareness of their own emotional state the first tool in their tool belt. Sylvie suggests honing your ability to recognise when you’ve entered a “stressed” state of mind, noticing cues like a rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, a sense of urgency, a fixation on one issue, or even confusion about what to focus on. From there, she says, use whatever works for you to get yourself out of that heightened state and into a calm state.
“That might be as simple as pausing and not hitting ‘Send’ on that bolshy Teams message that you’ve furiously typed out. It could be going on a walk and physically removing yourself from the environment and getting some fresh air. It might be journalling in your spare time or on your lunch break to process how you’re feeling. It could be talking through the issue with a trusted friend or colleague so you can engage with the facts of what’s happened. If you do yoga, if you meditate, use those tools to put some literal time and space between the thing that’s happened to stress you out, and you responding.”
Once emotions have cooled, Sylvie recommends reviewing what you know – and what you don’t know – before deciding how to respond to the situation. Once again, time can be an ally.
“Your first reaction is often not your final reaction. Take a minute, sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes a day, sometimes a few days if you possibly can, before responding.”
Another useful tool is giving the other party the benefit of the doubt – or at least abandoning the assumption that their actions were in bad faith.
“Don’t assume that the other person has malicious intent. Most people are just trying to do their best, and we find ourselves in conflict because we have misread the situation, or we’ve done something that is unacceptable to the other person for reasons we couldn’t foresee. Don’t assume that the other person is an unredeemable moron, either! Writing people off is a surefire path to more conflict later down the line.”
Sylvie’s final tip is to pick your battles. “Not every single niggle or bump needs a response. If a colleague or member of your team is otherwise amicable and great to work with, and they’re having an off week and they snap at you in a meeting, you don’t need to come down on them like a tonne of bricks and ask to have a conversation about it. Don’t have a one-strike policy.”
Those who manage people might be wondering: when should I let my team resolve conflicts between themselves, and when should I step in?
“As much as possible, trust that your staff are responsible for their individual relationships with each other,” says Sylvie. “Most of the time, you don’t want to be stepping in like the parent to make sure everyone is playing nicely. If someone does come to you with a gripe about their colleague, you might say: ‘It sounds like that comment has really gotten under your skin. I’m sorry that you’re having that experience. What support do you need from me to address this with Susan?’ The person might say, ‘Oh, actually I’m just having a whinge, don’t worry about it.’ This tactic can work for chronic complainers, too: hear them out, then redirect the conversation towards finding a solution and encouraging them to raise their frustrations with the actual people involved.”
Sylvie notes that some conflicts can become tricky when one or both sides aren’t invested in solving the issue, either amongst themselves or with a manager’s support. “Sometimes you have people who aren’t actually interested in resolving that conflict — for whatever reason, they quite enjoy feeling like they are at odds or that they are a victim in a dynamic which they have no interest in changing, or no belief that they can change. As a manager, ultimately you might need to call them out on that behaviour, and that can be quite a delicate conversation to have.”
(As an outsourced human resources provider, MyHR provides business owners and managers with support and coaching in those challenging situations. “We’re the support in the background,” says Sylvie, “coaching the business owner or the manager on how to provide support and guidance to their team. We can give you the tools, scripts or bullet points to be empowered to deal with people issues in your business.”)
Ultimately, says Sylvie, remember that conflict isn’t a failing, but a fact of human life – and appeasing others to avoid it can actually create more problems.
“People pleasing is a socially learned behaviour, slightly weighted more towards women, designed to protect the person from the social consequences of setting boundaries or saying ‘no,’ but I see it as well with people who are new to a team,” says Sylvie. “They’re really keen to show they’re a team player, happy to work with anyone and happy to put their hand up and get stuck in, so they say ‘yes’ to everything that’s asked of them. All of which are good things, but if left unchecked, that set of behaviours will lead to an unmanageable workload, letting people down, and not being able to get everything done.”
Better to be open, honest, and work through any inevitable friction – as long as you can take a breath and reassure your brain that the “sabre-toothed tiger” is only a very scary email.
Many thanks to Sylvie Thrush Marsh of MyHR. For more information about MyHR, visit www.myhr.works/nz/
By Beth Caunter
Roundabout Magazine
This article was published in Roundabout Magazine Issue 212 (October 2024).