Conflict understanding – turn resistance into followership
Constructive conflicts create innovation, propulsion and change. The project manager’s job is to ensure a good conflict environment, which prevents and handles unnecessary conflicts and promotes constructive disagreement
Human beings and their behavior are the most significant unpredictable factors in project work.
As a project manager, you operate in the wiring closet among defined settings, resources, and targets, as well as the ability to motivate and create interaction between the people who are going to carry out the project.
The concept of “conflict” is associated with something negative, and for many people, seems to be something you want to avoid. Conflicts and resistance are a dynamic resource that – appropriately handled – create development and bring new angles into the project. This requires conflict understanding, leadership, and courage to develop relationships by diving into conflicts and handling the resistance.
Projects are “conflict magnets,” and in that sense, it is important to understand and accept that conflicts are a living condition. It is only the way you handle the conflicts that determines if they become constructive and developing or predatory and conductive.
“Conflicts are a living condition.They are neither good nor bad. The way we handle them determines if they are constructive or predatory.
What is a conflict?
A conflict can be defined as: “A divergence that creates internal and external tensions among human beings”. As divergences refer to a case such as a project or project content (the item of the conflict), tensions refer to your own inner condition and the relationships between the involved parties (how the conflict can affect the cooperation or the relationship between the project’s stakeholders).
The experience when and whether it deals with a conflict is thus individual. A concrete challenge or potential conflict situation can therefore be perceived fully differently from person to person, and thus also affects the individual and his or her behavior in different ways. A conflict should always be considered seriously; also when it is only one out of more parties who experiences the conflict.
Threat or opportunity?
The behavior that the project manager puts in his or her approach to conflicts has a direct significance for the way they develop. When the project manager avoids resistance and misunderstandings in the project or among the project’s stakeholders, the situation falls to the interpretation of the individual. In this way, innocent misunderstandings can become a threat to the cooperation because they can develop into conflicts.
By taking active responsibility when resistance and misunderstandings arise, the project manager can control and turn a potential conflict into common action. To take active responsibility also signifies being aware of and preventing situations that can lead to an unnecessary misunderstanding or conflict.
The following situations can lead to conflicts that constitute risk for the project:
- A lack of trust among the parties
- Alliances and conflict intensification
- Hidden agendas
- Internal power struggles
- Avoiding conflict behavior
- Indistinct or a lack of communication
- Ambiguity about settings, roles, targets and resources
- Ambiguity about the expected effort
As a project manager, you can prevent and reduce predatory conflicts and instead channel the energy into a constructive disagreement field with room for development. This is done through mastery and natural authority, by setting clear boundaries.
Concretely, it’s about creating a good conflict environment where there is clarity in expectations and behavior, and the involved parties know how to act when resistance and the unavoidable challenges and conflicts arise.
The project manager’s behavior and responsibility
Some project managers only have their eyes focused on the project’s propulsion. Even though this is a good quality, this focus can – when it starts – escalate conflict. Imagine a situation where a supplier cannot deliver timely and where the schedule therefore is affected. Here, as a project manager, you can go three different ways in your answer to this conflict:
HIT – answer aggressively:
“Attack, threaten, use sarcasm”
GO AWAY– avoid the conflict:
“Run away, veer off, distract, ignore, supersede, use irony, apologize”
STAND – meet the conflict openly:
“Acknowledge disagreement, investigate, show courage, seek dialogue, dare to ask, handle”
All of the three approaches can have their value – depending on the situation, but are not necessarily equally appropriate. The irritation about the fact that the schedule has to be deferred and the project targets have to be changed can, naturally enough, make a project manager “hit” back. This often escalates conflict, however, because the remaining parties do not feel that they are being listened to or seen or understood by the project manager, whereby both the relationship and further negotiations about a possible solution gets complicated. This can obviously be directly harmful to the project.
By instead meeting the conflict openly, making room for the disagreement, and finding out what went wrong and why, the project manager opens up for negotiation. It keeps the relationship intact and creates space and trust to find a common way to a sustainable solution. (Moreover, take a look at tThe Relation Triangle from the article “Create win-win decisions in your projects” that you can find here.
Create a good conflict environment
A classic dilemma for project managers is that there is no direct managerial right. From those persons, who are a part of the projects. It challenges the project manager as to create a cooperation environment that motivates the involved parties in the project to active and constructive work.
A good conflict environment is characterized by trust, and the fact that there is room for disagreement with respect for different opinions and positions. This signifies a common understanding framework and acceptance for conflicts and the handling of it. The bigger degree of trust, the more safety it gives to the individual to express his or her opinions and contribute with alternative and different suggestions. See the figure.
The project manager’s behavior and responsibility
Some project managers only have their eyes focused on the project’s progress. Even though this is a good quality, this focus can be conflict-escalating. Imagine a situation where a supplier cannot deliver on time and where the schedule is affected. As a project manager, you can go three different ways in your answer to this conflict:
HIT – answer aggressively:
“Attack, threaten, use sarcasm”
GO AWAY– avoid the conflict:
“Run away, veer off, make the mistakes good, distract, ignore, supersede, use irony, apologize”
STAND – meet the conflict openly:
“Acknowledge disagreement, investigate, show courage, seek dialogue, dare to ask, handle”
All of the three approaches can have their validity, depending on the situation, but are not necessarily equally appropriate. The irritation stemming from the schedule needing to be pushed back and the project target having to be changed can naturally make a project manager “hit” back. This often escalates conflict, however, because the remaining parties do not feel that they are being listened to or seen or understood by the project manager, whereby both the relationship and further negotiation for a possible solution are complicated. This can obviously be directly harmful for the project.
By instead meeting the conflict openly, making room for the disagreement and finding out what went wrong and why, the project manager opens up for negotiation. It keeps the relationship intact and creates space and trust to find a common path to a sustainable solution. (Moreover, take a look at the parallel to the tool The Relation Triangle from the article “Create win-win decisions in your projects” as you will find here.
Create a good conflict environment
A classic project manager’s dilemma is that there is no direct managerial right. From those persons, who are a part of the projects. It challenges the project manager to create a cooperative environment that motivates the involved parties to do active and constructive work.
A good conflict environment is characterized by trust and allowing room for disagreement with respect for different opinions and positions. This signifies a common understanding frame and acceptance of conflicts and how they are handled. The larger degree of trust, the more safety it offers to the individual to express his or her opinions and contribute alternative suggestions. See the graphic.
This matrix can be utilized to get an overview on where a group potentially spoken is in proportion to the conflict environment. The single field is not a diagnosis, but can be seen as a risk or an opportunity, that should be analyzed. For example, there is no need of hidden conflicts if the environment in the group is marked by mistrust and immediate agreement, but there is a breeding ground that they occur.
Disagreement leads to innovation
The disagreement creates positive energy when the settings are safe. As mentioned, the degree of the conflict experience is individual. Some have a hard time with disagreement, others thrive with or motivated by it. In other words, we have our individual “aggravation limit” when we see a conflict as destructive or constructive. In a group context, it becomes the project manager’s job to create awareness about the group’s common aggravation limit (the actual lowest common denominator). With this awareness, the project manager can develop the trust and safety that moves the common aggravation limit into a constructive field with legitimate room for any disagreement that can lead to learning and pushing the project forward.
A group on the constructive side of the aggravation limit experiences that conflicts:
- help to highlight problems and needs for solutions
- focus on and contribute to necessary solutions
- strengthen motivation and unity
- stimulate creativity
- have learning potential
- are necessary for innovation
For a group on the destructive side of the aggravation limit, conflict implies:
- insecurity and observance to each other
- lacking motivation and the willingness to cooperate
- retention of information, knowledge and resources
- delays and increasing costs and/or
- employee flit by long-lasting, unsolved conflicts
Impact on the bottom line
When the upper mastery in an organization creates the settings for healthy conflicts and the project managers are professionally and humanely able to control and handle conflicts, then it leads to development in an organization. Namely, the foundation for an innovation culture is created here. The major innovations, such as, for example, the iPad do not come by itself or during a “problem solving meeting”. They appear from an environment where there is room for disagreeimentand where lots of good, bad and crazy ideas come up all the time.
“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.”
Margaret Heffernan
Having an innovation culture does not mean that all usual work for the project has to be put on stand-by. It means that there should be room for disagreeing in the projects and between the projects, and upper management earnestly appreciates when employees come up with ideas – including the bad and the crazy ones!
This article is written in cooperation with Charlotte Bæk Risbjerg and is originally published in Tidsskriftet nr. 02.2016 fra Dansk Projektledelse.
Most project manager training and certifications emphasize the importance of stakeholder and conflict handling. The available practical material that includes training on how a project manager becomes good at mastering this is, on the other hand, limited. Charlotte Risbjerg and Kristian Sørensen are currently working on the development of the book “Projektlederen som konfliktknuser” – find more information and follow their progress on www.konfliktknuser.dk
