Conflicts and Combat during Project Management

 â€œConflict is inevitable, combat is optional” – Max Lucado

Team behavior and management has bothered royalty, common folk and philosophers since time immemorial. All great philosophers have had their share of writings on this topic.

Plato said "Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."

While Aristotle was quoted with saying “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

The subject in focus of these is the understanding of core human relations – specifically the complex human interrelations.

One very important aspect of human interrelations is the propensity to fight. There is always some conflict in even the best managed projects.

In this article, we will look at what causes conflicts and the most common methods of how to resolve conflicts – only as it pertains to managing conflicts during project management.

Disclaimer: There are many thoughts, philosophies and tools to resolve conflicts and below are my views on this topic.

What causes Conflicts?

As it pertains to managing projects, below are the most common sources of conflict:

1.    Change – Resistance to change is an expected reaction of most people under normal circumstances. So much that it is fairly common to expect resistance to change. Almost all good projects have a detailed Change Management Plan included. In most cases, it is NOT the absence of change management plan that is the root cause of the issue. The issue mostly arises from the lack of a robust mechanism that helps the impacted people in Managing the Stress caused by the change.

E.g. - one factory shuts down to move to another city and the Change Management Plan covers a list of meetings with the employees, local administration and media coverage. Seldom is a plan to manage the stress included. One of the companies I worked with offered trainings on interviewing skills etc. to enable the staff to get a better chance at employment in another firm.

2.    Interpersonal Relationships – Interpersonal relationships and personality quirks cause a lot of friction especially between peers working closely with each other.

It didn’t take any convincing for you to agree to the statement above. Maybe because this is so commonly observed that it does not require any explanation. Some of the following points in this list may be considered a part of the Interpersonal relationships group, but they have been categorized differently due to the relative impact of each.

3.    Manager and employee relationship – Any discussion on team relationships usually revolves around the interaction between peers. The relationship of the manager and his team is getting neglected nowadays. The fundamental truth is that the manager and his relationship with each member of his team truly defines the team’s motivation levels, relationship of the team members with each other and has a deep impact on the overall organization’s performance. One bad manager will cause a domino effect of damage to your project. My advice : Remove the brilliant team member with a bad attitude. Negative impact from him to your project is not worth it.

4.    External Changes – Company’s performance in stock market, Changes in laws and statures, Market fluctuations, Political and Policy changes etc. have drawn a lot of organizations into a tight corner. Not addressing the issues or not taking the employees into confidence puts the rumor mill in high gear. Water cooler conversations start to culminate into conflicts within the team and with the overall “Management”

5.    Forced Ranking in evaluating performance – in almost all the organizations today, people are force-ranked against each other. It is not sufficient that your performance is good – your peers must be poor in their performance. This incentivizes unhealthy practices or behavior within the teams. Much time is wasted in the office ‘Politics’ that throws the entire team in disarray. It is great that most big organizations are moving away from this forced ranking. The change is coming albeit slowly.

6.    Harassment – the easiest to notice, the hardest to prove. In this article, I am not referring to racial or sexual harassment as they are not just project related and can happen in a wide variety of situations. I am only considering psychological harassment by treatment by superior or team.

We do not consider harassment (or bullying) the same way as workplace injury and I ask Why Not? In many organizations (yes – many! ) workplace harassment is still prevalent. Some organizations consider a foul-mouthed boss as just another thing that you have to deal with. Most HR teams almost consider the harassed as unable to deal with work pressure – and therefore Incompetent !

7.    Limited Resources – the death knell in projects. In each of your projects you will find yourself in a situation in which you are required to cut corners – either by cutting resources, OR, cutting costs. While any smart project needs to have a close tab on the expenses, overdoing the cost reduction with ill-advised or poorly planned cost cutting will result in large scale dissatisfaction among all team members. This will lead to conflicts as everyone is scambling for resources.

8.    Promotions / Role changes during a project – This is a very sensitive issue that must be dealt with carefully. Role changes within the team during a project lifecycle has it’s own challenges. Remember - I am NOT suggesting that deserving candidates should not be promoted during the execution of a project. I am suggesting that a lot of consideration should be assigned to the management of team as a repercussion of that.

Every time I bestow a vacant office I make a hundred discontented persons and one ingrate - Louis XIV

Where does all this discussion on causes of conflict lead us to? Obviously to the discussion on Strategies to Address Conflict.

Disclaimer (yet again) : There are many strategies that work in conflicts outside the workplace, this article only refers to the strategies to address conflicts in a project.

Listed below the tried and tested strategies to address conflict that I recommend because they have worked for me in different situations. Remember that not all projects are equal and no strategy will ‘fit all’. In most cases, it is a clever combination of strategies that will eventually work out in your favor. When reading the strategies below, imagine that you are one of the parties in conflict and are looking for your strategy to resolve the situation.

Strategy 1 – Accommodating (also called “Whatever”)

This is the go-to strategy when you see more value in giving in to the opponent’s desire in order to maintain peace. (I can already hear “ But wait – how is this resolving the situation when I am conceding defeat?”). If you are reading this to ensure victory, you are chasing the wrong deer. This strategy is very effective in the following:

a.    Builds Trust and Bonding within the team

b.    Ensures co-operation between the parties

c.     Helps future interactions smoother with the other party

Where should this be used?

This strategy is very effective when:

1.    You want to let go of something of lesser value or consequence than the effort it will take in fighting it out – Sometimes the cost of victory is not worth it !

2.    You want to build up credit (for being the nice person) that you may be able to use later

3.    When the competition is just not worth it

Strategy 2 – Avoiding (also called – “I’ll address that later”)

This is an excellent strategy but is applicable in a very narrow set of scenarios. This can be used very effectively in the following situations :

a.    Situations of rather low importance

b.    Situations of absolute decision power or autonomy

Where should this be used?

1.    This is a very effective strategy whenever you are uncomfortable in sharing details

2.    The details are not relevant for the larger audience

3.    The details cannot be shared due to privacy or legal reasons (very rarely the case in projects)

Strategy 3 – Collaborating (also called – “Lets find the way that works for everyone”)

Collaboration is not just a strategy. It is also an attitude. Some people and teams are more collaborative than others when it comes to working together. Read more about my views on collaboration here.

Collaboration means providing a level field for everyone to share ideas and functions to help and assist each other especially to solve issues.

This strategy reduces the scope of conflicts and is very important to be celebrated in any organization. Having said that, may I also add that collaboration is one of the most over-rated if the strategies. Many a times, collaboration is mistakenly used for a variety of other actions. Read the details of that here.

Collaboration can be used very effectively in cases when:

1.    Multiple people or teams are working together to resolve an issue

2.    Resolution of issues beyond the individual capability of any one team

3.    Sharing skills, experiences and knowledge within the organization to improve current project

Where should this be used?

1.    Where the timelines allow for collaboration to be executed

2.    Where the team is empowered to generate careful consideration and evaluation of ideas and - most importantly – reach a consensus before moving on.

Strategy 4 – Compromise (also called “Win Some, Lose Some”)

The strategy of compromise is when teams let go of something for each other.

Please do not confuse between “Compromise” and “Accommodating”. Compromise is an exchange of wins while Accomodating is letting go.

Situations where compromise works well –

a.    When you can give up something and gain from the opposing party.

b.    Build a mutual rapport between teams for future interactions

Where should Compromise be used?

1.    When more is to be gained by teams by working with each other rather than winning the argument

2.    As the last resort to solve for a stalemate

Strategy 5 – Competing (also called “I will win and you must lose”)

This is not really a strategy in managing conflicts. This causes friction and does NOT help in maintaining cordial relationships between teams.

The only places where competing should be used:

a.    When chances of consensus are non-existent

Situations where Competing works:

1.    Where there can be only one decisive winner

2.    Concessions cannot be made

3.    Power Play (read more about it here)

FINAL VERDICT – DETECT EARLY, AVOID, MANAGE AND IF NECESSARY CRUSH CONFLICTS BEFORE THE CONFLICTS CRUSH YOUR PROJECT !!!