Does your Team Suck at Workplace Conflict?
By: Wes Cochrane
Back in late 2012, in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, in the shadows of the Pakistan border, at a remote U.S. combat outpost, a simmering workplace conflict was about to reach a boil – and I was the culprit.
I’ve only written about this story one other time. I penned a 2016 article, anonymously, for Rob Shaul’s website – Mountain Tactical Institute.
I was a handful of months into a new job as the Executive Officer for an Infantry Company. Not unlike a mini Chief Operating Officer, my role was to oversee company operations like: logistical support, vehicle maintenance, and stockpiling of critical supplies. Also, I stood ready to command the company in the absence of the Company Commander (an officer that outranked me).
The problem was that in those first four to five months on the job, I didn’t have a grasp on any of this. I had no idea what I was doing. Four years at West Point, sixteen weeks at the Infantry Officer Basic Course, two months at Ranger School, and a year of leading a rifle platoon had all made me fairly competent at being a Platoon Leader. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to add value as a Company Executive Officer when I stepped into that new role.
None of this would have been problematic if I’d just asked some pretty experienced people around me for help. But, I didn’t.
To my colleagues – especially our company First Sergeant, who was the senior Non-Commissioned Officer in the rifle company and principal advisor to my Company Commander – the cracks showed. Early on, my First Sergeant (a decorated and experienced soldier and keen leader) realized I was struggling.
He started by asking questions of me. Many questions.
Regrettably, I chafed at his questions and interpreted them as “sharpshooting me” or harshly nitpicking. I was a fool, who thought himself the victim of an overbearing colleague. I lacked the humility to see that he was trying to help me. All the while, I grew increasingly stressed and concerned that I was failing my company.
It didn’t take long for this to drive a wedge between us. I’ll never know how much consternation I caused my First Sergeant or how much of a distraction I was to my commander in those early months.
That said, things came to a head in late 2012 inside our company's tactical operations center (TOC; think command and control room). I can’t even tell you what provoked the explosion, but I had pressed one too many buttons, and my First Sergeant finally couldn’t contain his anger.
He took me to task publicly.
I didn’t relent. Instead, I doubled down and responded dismissively or arrogantly, prompting him to storm out of the TOC and leave me to face the embarrassment of a public scuffle.
My commander, to his credit, never [visibly] took sides. He immediately called us into his office and urged us to resolve our conflict. You didn’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to conclude that I was at fault.
Finally humbled, I apologized profusely. It was exactly what the situation needed. We needed a relief valve to open and unleash months of pent-up pressure. This come-to-Jesus meeting with my First Sergeant was the turnaround point in what proved to be a strong personal and professional relationship. Again, you can read more about it here.
It’s easy to forget that military units, despite their unique missions, share many common denominators with civilian organizations. Workplace conflict takes its toll in both worlds.
Workplace conflict is sapping our organizational strength week after week
Workplace conflict is ubiquitous. A 2008 global study that researched data from nine separate countries, from Europe to the Americas, questioned 5,000 full-time employees and found that employees spend 2.1 hours per week, on average, dealing with workplace conflict. For the United States, that number was even higher at 2.8 hours per week.
That’s more than an entire work-day per month…spent managing conflict.
I’d venture that most readers’ anecdotal experiences back these statistics up. If anything, for some, 2.8 hours per week navigating workplace conflict may strike them as an underestimate.
The negative impacts of this reality are self-evident. Players have to take their eyes off the ball as they deal with office tension, drama, and politics. Teams suffer the double whammy of delays in reaching their goals or benchmarks and the drain on their energy and resources as they battle what author Liz Wiseman refers to as the “phantom workload” or “ambient problems.”
In her book, Impact Players, Wiseman describes ambient problems as “the non-glaring, low-grade issues where the status quo is suboptimal but tolerable.” She points out that “[m]ost people learn to live with these problems, but ambient problems erode performance over time. They are particularly damaging because they are easy to ignore.” Wiseman characterizes them as “white noise” in the organization that persists until someone decides to take notice and do something about them.
Lest I contribute to the false notion that conflict, in and of itself, is a bad thing, let’s get something straight – conflict is a necessity; how leaders and organizations handle it makes all the difference.
We need to embrace conflict and leverage the conflict continuum
A leading voice in the organizational health movement, author and leadership consultant Pat Lencioni, writes and teaches on the concept of the conflict continuum.
Lencioni describes two ends of a spectrum. On the one hand is what he refers to as “artificial harmony.” Artificial harmony is a state of no conflict. People seem to be getting along, but they’re not truly being honest with each other. On the other end of the spectrum is negative, mean spirited, harsh conflict – really, a living hell. Lencioni describes this as “destructive conflict.”
According to Lencioni, most teams and organizations dwell on the artificial harmony side of the spectrum, afraid that any step toward the destructive end would be hell.
The result is that the vast majority of organizations have too little conflict.
Predictably, Lencioni teaches teams to search for a sweet spot – move further away from artificial harmony, closer to the other side, right up to the point where another step in that direction would be to tread into destructive conflict.
Great teams, he says, move toward constructive conflict. Inevitably they sometimes stray into destructive conflict, but they courageously recover and return to the sweet spot.
The leaders and players on those teams know how to own their mistakes. They know how to apologize sincerely and quickly. They know how to swallow their pride and ask for help.
This is actually a hallmark of what Lencioni and his team teach – cultivate conflict around ideas, not people, and do so quickly! Better to get to the heart of an issue or disagreement so you can adjust and move in a more efficient or productive direction. When done well, conflict can be a bridge to success. When done poorly, conflict drains your organization and contributes to the depressing stats about the phantom workload and the ambient problems that Liz Wiseman warns of.
We don’t need to be stuck with the status quo
Whether we’re in a formal leadership position or not, all of us can benefit from understanding how to navigate conflict in a productive way. There is no reason that we need to trudge through an average of 2.8 hours of exhausting workplace conflict per week.
My experience contributing to that sort of workplace conflict back in 2012 was a painful one. While it was nearly a decade ago, I’m still embarrassed by that professional failure. However, constructive conflict saved the day and turned things around. My commander had the presence of mind to handle the distracting workplace drama with maturity. My First Sergeant had enough patience to speak truth to me and give me a chance to respond, even though I hadn’t given him much reason to believe I’d handle his feedback like an adult. Those first five months in a challenging new job still remain a powerful cautionary tale to me as I not only lead myself but continue to lead teams.
Questions for You
What conflict is simmering in your organization or team right now? As a leader or player on that team, what will you do about resolving it this week?
What side of the conflict continuum would you locate your team on? What dynamic, if any, needs to change to get to the sweet spot?
Leave a comment below and let us know what has worked for you and your team in cultivating a healthy approach to workplace conflict.
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