Conflicts – a driving force to help your team evolve?
You don’t like conflict?
That is quite normal. While some people appreciate confrontation, many others prefer to avoid conflict. This is even more pronounced in a professional environment where you don’t necessarily want to “make waves”. In fact, people tend to play down or even suppress conflicts within a team. This strategy is risky. However, confronting them can be too. But if a conflict is handled correctly, it also brings positive elements with it.
Yes, conflict can be positive!
Contrary to all expectations, conflict can be positive. When conflict arises in your team, it means that the team members are reacting to each other, contributing and getting involved. From this perspective, it is therefore positive. Of course, the biggest challenge is to manage the conflict successfully. This is also the reason why many of us dislike conflict: dealing with it can be painful. It is never pleasant to “put your finger where it hurts”.
Get the keys to managing conflict
Through situational role-plays, the teaching of specific methods and the transfer of best practices, OTP supports your teams and managers in successfully managing conflicts as part of training courses.
First, the team’s situation is examined in a reflection phase, the team members are listened to and the severity of the conflict is analyzed. Is the conflict emerging? Is it already entrenched? Is it recurring? These are questions that make it possible to defuse the conflict as early as possible or to deal with it if it has already become entrenched.
The manager then has to choose the right course of action. Depending on the scenario and configuration of the conflict, they will sometimes adopt a more mediating stance (mediator). Sometimes they will take on more of a leadership role that sets the direction. If the leader is part of the conflict, the intervention of a third party is recommended.
A case from practice
Our case takes place in a medium-sized company. Within this organization, several teams from different departments work together. The managing director calls us and reports recognizable tensions between two very heterogeneous teams. The conflict is already deadlocked. Communication between the two teams is deteriorating. Individuals are finding it difficult to work with others and the actual business mission is being undermined. In this context, we intervene by offering a one-and-a-half day workshop on team building.
As a player outside the conflict, the role of the OTP consultant is to act as a facilitator, so that things that cause anger can be said. By providing a framework and avoiding certain excesses.
The consultant also shares keys to communication, enabling participants to take a step back and realise that each person has different needs in terms of interaction and expresses themselves in a different way.
The second part of the day focuses on summarising the conflict situation, and above all on finding solutions, first individually or in sub-groups, and then together. The aim of this first day is to produce a plan with concrete, measurable actions.
It is advisable to schedule another half day several weeks or months after this first day to take stock of the situation in terms of managing the conflict and how it is evolving. And potentially to make relevant adjustments to the actions decided upon. During this final stage, it is interesting for the teams to take a step back and observe the progress made. It can be rewarding for the team to see that it has been able to move forward, evolve and progress.
Your benefit: An approach tailored to the respective situation
To prevent conflict situations and provide managers with tools, we can design training workshops that will not provide “turnkey” solutions, but will be fine-tuned according to your own structure, and to the needs of your company and your team.
In the case of a proven and established conflict situation, we can also intervene in the form of “team-building” days, as explained in the case study above.
Whatever the nature and format of the conflict, we’ll take the time to put together an appropriate package to meet your specific needs. So don’t hesitate to contact us.
So that the conflict can be positive and help your team to progress.