Rooting Out Conflict
By: Sorin Dumitrascu
Tags: Conflict Management, Management, Organization, Ledership, Conflict Resolution

Rooting Out Conflict

Photo by mcarrel on depositphotos

One of the most obvious ways of preventing conflict lies in attempting to eliminate the causes of conflict in the workplace. This simple recipe is based on the assumption that if you remove the causes of conflict, then it will not occur.

Causes of conflict

But despite its apparent simplicity, eradicating the causes of conflict is in fact a more complex process. As a manager, you need to be analytical and practical in deciding which causes of conflict you can and should attempt to remove.

The three categories of causes of conflict are:

causes that result in beneficial conflict, causes that you cannot control as a manager, and causes that you can control and do want to eradicate because they lead to negative conflict

The first two categories you either should not or cannot eliminate. You should not try to eliminate the causes of conflict that have a positive value. This sort of conflict, caused by high professional standards, for example, challenges complacency and slipshod working practices.

Some causes of conflict you cannot eliminate because they are outside your sphere of influence. For example, you cannot remove conflict caused by pay comparisons among workers if you do not set the company pay rates.

Eradicating negative conflict

Instead you need to concentrate on the third category: causes you control and want to eradicate. In this category, the major factor is role conflict. Role conflict occurs when duties performed by a worker clash with those of other workers.

1. Getting roles right

As a manager, you can expect to exercise a considerable amount of control over the roles your employees play, so you can have great influence in eradicating this cause of conflict. You need to avoid the following problems associated with roles:

Role uncertainty — role ambiguity occurs when workers are uncertain of their actual duties. A task may not be completed because no one knows who is responsible for it, or workers may argue with each other over who is responsible.

Role too demanding — when workers have either too many or too few expectations placed on them, they may end up in conflict situations because they cannot complete the tasks assigned to them or because they feel unchallenged.

Role incompatibility — occurs when contradictory expectations are placed on workers. They are expected to perform certain tasks, but at the same time conflicting demands are placed upon them. This usually results in poor performance.

As manager, it is your responsibility to sort out these problems.

2. Resolving role ambiguity

You can resolve role ambiguity by precisely defining all roles and making sure that individual responsibilities are clearly communicated. Roles develop spontaneously, so you need to update this information on a regular basis.

3. Resolving excessively demanding roles

To ensure that roles are not too demanding, you need to examine each employee’s quantity of work and distribute it evenly. You must explain the way that tasks have to be prioritized and insist that workers stick to this pattern.

4. Resolving role incompatibility

To safeguard against role incompatibility, you need to make sure that A always knows what B is doing — so get them talking about what they expect of each other. Then you will know what the hidden problems are, and you will be able to sort them out.

By tackling role conflict head-on, you can eliminate one of the major causes of conflict that lies in your direct sphere of influence as a manager.