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 is the biggest unpredictable factor in the 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 to carry out the project.
The concept “conflict” is connected with something negative and appears for many people as something you want to avoid. Conflicts and resistance are whilst a dynamic resource that – appropriately handled – contribute to create development and bring new angles into the project. This requires conflict understanding, leadership and courage to develop relations by diving into conflicts and handle the resistance.
Projects are “conflict magnets” and in that connection it is important to understand and accept that conflicts are a living condition. It is only the way you handle the conflicts that decides 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 decides if they are constructive or predatory.
What is a conflict?
A conflict can shortly be defined as: “A divergence that gives tensions inside and among human beings”. As divergences refer to the case e.g. the project or the project content (the item of the conflict), tensions refer to respectively your own inner condition and the relations 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 different from person to person, and thus also affect 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 importance for the way they develop. When the project manager avoids resistance and misunderstandings in the project or among the project’s stakeholders, the situation seizes the interpretation of the individual. Hereby, innocent misunderstandings can become a threatening for 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 active. To take active responsibility signifies similarly to be aware of and prevent situations that can lead to an unnecessary misunderstanding or conflict.
The following situations can lead to conflicts that constitute risks for the project:
- Missing trust among the parties
- Alliances and conflict intensification
- Hidden agendas
- Internal power struggles
- Avoiding conflict behavior
- Indistinct or missing communication
- Turbidity about settings, roles, targets and resources
- Turbidity about expected effort
As a project manager you can prevent and reduce predatory conflicts and instead canalize the energy to a constructive disagreement field with room for development. This is done through mastery and natural authority, by setting clear settings.
Concretely it is about creating a good conflict environment, where there is clarity in expectations and behavior and that 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 stiffly targeted to the project’s propulsion. Even though this is a good quality, this focus can – when it takes on – in itself be conflict escalating. Imagine a situation, where a supplier cannot supply timely and where the schedule therefore is affected. Here you can as a project manager go three different ways in your answer to this conflict:
HIT – answer aggressively:
“Attack, threaten, use sarcasm”
GO AWAY– avoid the conflict:
“Run away, bend 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 eligibility – 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 becomes conflict escalating though, because the remaining parties do not feel that they are being listened to neither seen or understood by the project manager, whereby both the relation and further negotiation about a possible solution is being complicated. This can obviously be directly harmful for the project.
By meeting the conflict openly instead, make room for the disagreement and find out what goes wrong – and why, the project manager opens up for negotiation. It keeps the relation intact and makes space and trust to find a common way 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 dilemma for the 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 frame and accept about 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 stiffly targeted to the project’s propulsion. Even though this is a good quality, this focus can – when it takes on – in itself be conflict escalating. Imagine a situation, where a supplier cannot supply timely and where the schedule therefore is affected. Here you can as a project manager go three different ways in your answer to this conflict:
HIT – answer aggressively:
“Attack, threaten, use sarcasm”
GO AWAY– avoid the conflict:
“Run away, bend 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 eligibility – 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 becomes conflict escalating though, because the remaining parties do not feel that they are being listened to neither seen or understood by the project manager, whereby both the relation and further negotiation about a possible solution is being complicated. This can obviously be directly harmful for the project.
By meeting the conflict openly instead, make room for the disagreement and find out what goes wrong – and why, the project manager opens up for negotiation. It keeps the relation intact and makes space and trust to find a common way 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 dilemma for the 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 frame and accept about 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.
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 are thrived or motivated by it. Said in another way – we have our individual “aggravation limit” for 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 denominator). With this awareness the project manager can develop the trust and safety that move the common aggravation limit into a constructive field with a legit room for the disagreement that can lead to learning and push the project forward.
A group on the constructive side of the aggravation limit witnesses that conflicts:
- help highlighting problems and needs for solutions
- focus on and contributes to necessary solutions
- strengthen motivation and unity
- stimulate creativity
- have learning potential
- are necessary for innovation
For a group on the destructiveside of the aggravation limit conflicts implies:
- insecurity and observance to each other
- missing motivation and willingness to cooperate
- retention of information, knowledge and resources
- delay and increasing costs and/or
- employee flit by long-lasting, unsolved conflicts
Impact on the bottom line
When the upper mastery in an organization contributes in creating the settings for the good conflicts and the project managers professionally and humanly are able to control and handle conflicts, then it opens up for development in an organization. Namely, here the foundation for an innovation culture is created. The major innovations as for example iPad do not come by itself or during a “problem solving meeting”. They appear from an environment where there is room for disagreeing and 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
The fact that having an innovation culture does not mean that all usual work in the project has to be put on stand-by. It means that there should be room for disagreeing in the projects, between the projects and that it from the upper mastery is earnestly appreciated, when the employees come up with ideas. Also 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.
The most project manager educations and –certifications emphasize the importance of the stakeholder and –conflict handling. The offering of practical oriented material with education in how you as 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” – get further information and follow the work on www.konfliktknuser.dk
