Fix Your Team

Chapter 14 THE FIX: ADDRESS UNHEALTHY CONFLICT

CREATE UNDERSTANDING AND RESTORE TRUST AND COHESIVENESS

The Tools in this section include facilitated discussion within the team about the dysfunction, the more formal methodologies of mediation and conflict coaching, and training everyone to have important conversations. If your aim is to resolve conflict in your team, build understanding, and restore trust and cohesiveness in how team members work together, start here.

TOOL #1 TRAIN EVERYONE TO HAVE IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS

It’s natural to feel nervous or even dread about having conversations on important issues with our colleagues. Many of us will go out of our way to avoid them! Speaking with a colleague about issues such as performance concerns, a complaint against them, inappropriate behaviour, organisational change or redundancy can be confronting and challenging.

There’s an art to having these conversations, and it’s worth learning by everyone in the team. Equipping your employees with these skills will give them confidence, reduce stress and engender a culture of tackling difficult issues in a measured and timely way. Of course, these are skills that are relevant in other areas of life — your family and friends will be beneficiaries too.

Failure to conduct these conversations well, or even to have them at all, can be incredibly damaging to the team. It allows the ...