Preventing and Managing conflicts and disputes

• "I hate victims who respect their executioners" - Jean Paul Sartre - French Philosopher.

One major problem at the workplace we all face is conflicts. It appears to be an increasingly universal problem considering the number of articles on the subject. I wrote an article on the subject way back in 1999. I have given a brief outline from it below.

Prevention of conflicts and disputes is one of the sub topics under Interpersonal or People skills. All of us have reasonable people skills to manage 80% of the people. The problem is remaining 20%. This is highlighted by the following quote: "But what do you do if someone is difficult? If they just refuse to see your point of view? If they are totally irrational?” This type of situation often leads to misunderstandings, conflicts and disputes. In all of our workshops on Interpersonal skills, the participants invariably raise this issue and it appears to be a universal problem, irrespective of which part of the world they work.

According to leading psychologists, we are all victims of such behavior at some point of time. Many of us react and start behaving like villains setting of a vicious cycle. We have to get out of this Victim or Villain syndrome. The first manifestation of this type of behavior is "Ragging" in Army officer’s training schools, Elite Public schools, Engineering and Medical colleges. It is found that the second year students indulge in the most severe form of ragging to take out their pent up frustrations, built up during their first year when they are called "Freshers". The more senior students mature fast and most become the saviors of these freshers. The one way to escape this syndrome is to avoid is being a victim first. Most of the time this happens unknowingly and it is not easy to escape this cycle when young. It has been found that most bullies are cowards. They try to bully others to hide their own weaknesses and such behavior gives them a sadistic pleasure. The more you cow down before them, the more is the bullying. What start of as fun in schools and colleges becomes a bad habit and a minority few carry it on to the workplace. Such people have not matured. They form only 20% of the workforce in all organizations but can be a pain in the backside, if they are the bosses. When this happens at the top, the followers also adopt this style. This leads to dissipation of energy, loss of morale and poor performance. There was a time when it was thought that one has to be necessarily mean to get results. Such people exist even today in many organizations. These people are the followers of McGregor's theory X. You ought to break this vicious cycle. You have to avoid being a victim by Centering or Grounding yourself.

Grounding means centering yourself like a Compass, looking firmly in the eye, say what you mean and mean what you say. This does not mean one has to be obnoxious. Many people do not understand the difference between 'Aggressiveness' and 'Assertiveness'. When you are the boss, your position and authority enables you to be assertive or aggressive, depending on your personality and style of management. But this does not mean that a subordinate cannot be assertive. They say that discretion is better part of valor. That is true. Choosing when to be discrete or not, is an art, but it does not help much in the workplace to be discrete all the time. It is better to be frank and express your views at critical moments to avoid future misunderstandings and mutual recriminations. The skill is to put it across politely but firmly. This calls for good communication skills. There are some situations when you must say 'enough is enough'.

Often it is found that lack of such frank communication has led to problems at a later date. The reason for not being frank in such situations is fear of being rebuked or ridiculed. Frankness is not encouraged or tolerated by many poor people managers as they take it as an affront, challenge to their authority and react irrationally. Such people don't go very far in life. Majority of the people in the world have to bear such injustices just to make their ends meet and that is out of compulsion. This is a bitter fact of life.

© Copyright. Written on June 2, 2008. Without prejudice. All rights reserved

Preventing and Managing conflicts and disputes - To learn more about this author, visit Madhavan T Gopalachary's Website.

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