Resolve Your Professional Disputes Professionally

With all the political turmoil in the country today, it’s difficult to know which side is right and which is wrong. Everyone is up in arms and pointing fingers. Unfortunately, controversy isn’t the private domain of the powers in Washington.

As a small business owner or manager there will likely be times when you find yourself or your employees in the middle of a debate. That is when knowing how to handle disputes in a professional manner could be the difference between winding up with happy employees and ending up with a law suit.

Listen, Assess the Situation and Seek a Consensus

As the leader of your organization there may come a time when you will need to step into the role of mediator. Your goal should be to facilitate, not judge. To do this you need to remain impartial and not belittle the problem or those involved in the conflict.

In Stephen Covey’s best seller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, habit number five is, “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” People may be coming at you from all directions with their view of what is going on. Your goal is to ask questions, listen in order to understand each point of view and to find commonalities.

About two years ago, I was on jury duty. What was interesting about the case was that when you broke the evidence down, both sides were in agreement on everything – date, time, people present, clothing worn, action taken – except for one crucial item: $100 had exchanged hands. Each side had a different version as to why. Ultimately, that was the only thing we, as the jury, had to decide. Yet we had spent over a week listening to both sides try and confuse the argument.

As a small business owner, leader and mediator, if you approach problems incrementally (from easy to hard), break problems down into smaller, manageable pieces and don’t become fixated on one issue, you can help your team work out differences.

Understand the Benefit of Conflict in the Workplace

Without conflict the work environment would be a very vanilla place. There would be no creativity, no exchange of ideas and no opportunity for discovery. This is not to say you need to go around firing people up.  However, constructive conflict allows groups to engage in useful dispute in order to work out problems.

Conflict is a natural part of people working together. However, it’s all about how you and your team deal with the conflict. While conflict offers the potential to turn your workplace into a highly productive environment, handled incorrectly – like our leaders in Washington – and it can become a never-ending nightmare of arguments, hatred, anger, distrust and more.

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