Turning Resistance into Collaboration – how to avoid confrontation to work better together

Confrontation, Communication Breakdowns, and Conflict happens in the workplace. These conversations often involve resistance and challenging behaviours and attitudes.

When conflict, communication breakdowns and difficult conversations are not addressed in a timely and effective manner we often see trust start to break down, relationships can fall apart, teams become frustrated and fragmented, and HR professionals and leaders then need to start working with the team to pick up the pieces to put the team back together again by rebuilding and resetting culture and relationships.

As a former mediator of workplace conflicts and disputes, I often heard that conflict in the workplace was a challenge for leaders, managers and human resource professionals who were called in to help employees resolve differences and disagreements. When I was a mediator facilitating the resolution of workplace conflicts, the number one reason people stated they ended up in mediation was “I didn’t know what to say or how to fix it” quickly followed by “I didn’t want to make it worse.”

While conflict and providing development and constructive feedback can be uncomfortable, the good news is that feedback, communication and conflict resolution is a teachable skill.

I recently did a presentation on Running Smoother Meetings as part of our collaboration with The Expert Talk in our Professional Development Summer Camp. One of the key foundations was that of creating meeting courtesies to create safe meeting and communication environments. This can help reduce some of the resistance that may be accompanying the conversation and instead create a more collaborative meeting. You can check out the training and access recordings and resources for Running Smoother Meetings, and Meeting Courtesies here: https://www.theexperttalk.com/product/running-smoother-meetings/

In those hard conversations, we often see individuals who are reluctant to address the issues, and may event resist any internal assistance such as conflict coaching support. If left unaddressed these disagreements can turn into confrontations and conflicts, and could engage people who do not need to be a part of the situation. The longer the situation goes on, the harder it is to resolve. It takes on a life of its own. And all the while, people’s stress goes up and resilience goes down.

After mediating hundreds and hundreds of workplace conflicts with thousands of people, I have seen the positive impacts of respectful conflict resolution: improved trust, increased morale and stronger culture, less turnover, more time for leaders to focus on leading the team and vision instead of intervening in conflict.

Here's what doesn't work:

1.?????? Minimizing or avoiding the conflict or saying things like "they're adults... they'll work it out."? Often the situation does not get worked through... it just gets worse.

2.?????? Making subtle threats or ultimatums to elicit their participation.

3.?????? Transferring the person to another shift or team (without attempts to work issues through), that's basically just transferring the problem/issue. ? The problem still remains unresolved and there is a good chance that there is a great deal of emotion built up related to the issue.? Transferring simply adds to the emotion, deepens the distrust and makes for other problems to be solved.

Here's a couple of tips to help:

1.?????? Be curious. Ask open ended questions (who, what, where, when, why and how).? There is a tendency to ask leading or closed ended questions which will never help you understand where the resistance is coming from.? Ask questions like "what is making you reluctant to address this conflict?" or "what is the best outcome that could result from resolving these issues?" or "what impact is NOT having the conflict resolved having on you, your team, and your family?" Open ended questions will help you and the parties better understand the situation and provide the opportunity for the individual to consider different ways of looking at the situation that they may not have thought of yet. It is important to determine if there are any safety (physical or psychological) concerns to ensure the conversation can happen safely and respectfully.

2.?????? Provide conflict coaching or skills training to help the employee build confidence, skills and comfort to effectively resolve the situation and to ensure preparedness for the conflict resolution conversation. Join us for Professional Development Summer Camp, even if you can't join us live online, the training will be recorded so you can access the training, worksheets and resources at your convenience. https://www.theexperttalk.com/product/all-in-experience/ My colleague Kimberly Van Ryn just did a great session on neurodiversity at work and emotional regulation. She shared such valuable information to support leaders, teams and human resource professionals. And she'll be doing a very helpful session on creating safe workplaces. August 1 I'll be covering Giving Feedback, and August 8 I'll be speaking on Receiving Feedback. https://www.theexperttalk.com/product/giving-feedback-august-1st/

Remember that some conversations may involved a degree of resistance but the steps in this article, and meeting courtesies will be powerful tools to turn these conversations into more of a collaborative dialogue

About Charmaine Hammond:

Charmaine (she/her) has an MA in conflict management, and has spent more than 25 years working in mediation, negotiation, and crisis response. She has owned her business for more than 25 years, and in this time has trained more than half million people on dealing with difficult people and situations. She has helped clients in many industries build collaborative, resilient and engaged workplaces, develop high trust/high accountability relationships, and solve workplace issues and conflict that gets in the way of success and profitability. She is respected as a “no fluff” and “rich content” speaker who delivers tangible tools to put into action immediately.

This former Correctional Officer, and Corporate Dispute Resolution Expert now travels the country teaching the principles of collaboration, communication, conflict resolution and resilience. She has an extensive background facilitating collaborations and workplace/team relationships when they go sideways.