A google search for workplace conflict returns endless results about ‘healthy conflict’. But to me, ‘healthy conflict’ is an oxymoron. Conflict is inherently destructive. It’s a word most commonly affiliated with war, the connotations of which are hostility towards an enemy. There is no ‘healthy’ version of that. That is not an organisational environment in which ideas can build on one another or reasonable compromises can be reached; it’s a battleground in which adversaries seek victory, becoming more entrenched in their ideologies along the way.
Healthy disagreement, by contrast, is respectful, inclusive and collaborative. It ensures that diverse opinions are not only heard but allowed to build on one another in a constructive process that drives innovation and avoids issues of groupthink. That doesn’t mean it’s always harmonious, healthy disagreement can be passionate and sometimes heated; and it doesn’t mean decisions are made by consensus, but it’s an environment in which strong opinions can be lightly held and open to revision in the face of new information.
This distinction between conflict and disagreement might sound like semantics, but language is critical in how it influences our thinking and approach. A great demonstration of this is the series of experiments conducted by Paul Thibodeau and Lera Boroditsky in which students were given reports about crime, describing it as either a ‘wild beast preying on the city’, or a ‘virus infecting the city’. This simple change in framing around the same topic and dataset had huge impact on the proposed solutions, with those reading the ‘beast’ report much more likely to propose solutions focused on enforcement and punishment, and those reading the ‘virus’ report more likely to propose prevention and reform.
So framing and language matter, and in my opinion the framing of ‘conflict’ promotes interpersonal hostility, festering feuds, and decision-making based on force, at the expense of the behaviours that organisations who talk about ‘healthy conflict’ are actually trying to encourage i.e. open debate, respectful disagreement etc.; and the outcomes they are striving for i.e. innovation, growth and better decision-making.
As undesirable as it might be, some conflict is inevitable. If you take a group of people, all of whom have different work styles, personality types, roles and responsibilities; and place them in a high stress, high ambiguity environment, and then arm them with the world’s most potent weapon - the keyboard - then conflict will happen. The question then is how to resolve it?
Well let’s start with a hard truth - sometimes it can't be resolved. If one or more parties in conflict is unwilling to play their part in resolving it then the resolution might simply be to remove that party from the organisation, regardless of performance, there is no room for brilliant jerks. But if we assume that the parties involved have at least some desire for resolution, then there is a path forward.
Before jumping into a discussion on resolving interpersonal conflict, it’s worth taking a pause to reflect on what is really going on in the situation. The organisational development consultant, Noel Tichy, analysed team conflict and found that the vast majority could be traced upstream to an organisational issue - 80% of conflicts arising through unclear goals, a further 16% through unclear roles, a further 3.2% through unclear processes and finally less than 1% due to interpersonal relationship issues. So there is a key point here - more often than not, conflict arises from organisational issues as opposed to interpersonal ones, thus the path to resolution should be based on the root cause e.g. setting and communicating clear goals.
If there is an interpersonal issue at play then here are a few guiding lights for how to navigate it.
Taking responsibility for your part in it
No matter how much it might feel like the other person is the a**hole in the situation, it always takes two to tango. When emotion is raw then it’s often hard to see this but once things have settled then there are a couple of important questions for everyone involved to reflect on: