De-escalate conflict at work with these communication skills

If conflict is putting a negative spin on your otherwise positive work environment, it’s important to take action to resolve it. Here are five ways you can use communication skills to help root out workplace issues and restore a sense of camaraderie and mutual respect.

Author and team effectiveness advisor Liane Davey says that for a competitive, innovative company, having tensions between different roles and departments is not just normal, but healthy—especially when everyone understands how these tensions can yield positive outcomes.

To help employees embrace conflict, she recommends that leaders take their team through this step-by-step exercise:

According to Davey, this activity helps coworkers see that conflicts exist for a reason; they serve a purpose for their respective positions, helping to move employees forward.

“With heightened awareness and a shared language, your team will start to realize that much of what they have been interpreting as interpersonal friction has actually been perfectly healthy role-based tension,” Davey says. “They’ll realize that conflict and tensions are not the antithesis of cross-functional teams; they’re one of the main benefits of them.”

Just as people have communication style preferences, they also have unique ways of coping with conflict. Amy Gallo, a contributing editor at the Harvard Business Review, says there are “avoiders” who abstain from confrontations, and “seekers” who love brutal honesty and a great debate. Her advice for dealing with these different personality types includes the following:

“Knowing how the other person typically reacts in a tense situation is useful information,” Gallo says. “So assess your coworker’s style, if you’re not already familiar with it.”

If you’re directly involved in conflict at work—or have to step in as a manager to mediate—it’s more important to listen than to talk, and to ask questions instead of providing answers.

“Resist the urge to get defensive and instead ask questions that clear some ground for the other party to express themselves,” writes emotional intelligence expert Harvey Deutschendorf. “By allowing the other person to simply feel heard, you can head off a nasty fight and open up a conversation.”

Cinnie Noble, an executive coach and the founder of Cinergy, agrees. In an interview with Forbes, she outlines a few steps that every leader should take if they find themselves embroiled in conflict:

Workplace conflicts inevitably arise in workplace contexts; so sometimes, the most effective solution for two feuding colleagues is for them to have a conversation away from the confines and triggers of the work environment. They may find that, in a casual setting, they have more in common than they think.

That was the experience for John Rampton, an investor, entrepreneur and founder of Due, an online invoicing and payment services platform. “I decided to invite a colleague I was clashing with out after work to see if talking outside of the work environment would help us work through things,” Rampton writes. “By the end of the evening we were laughing together like old friends. This camaraderie actually stuck with us the rest of the time we worked together. It turned out all we needed was time alone to get to figure out where we each were coming from.”

One of the most powerful communication skills for managing conflict is to provide an empathetic ear and give colleagues the benefit of the doubt. After all, you never know what’s going on with other people.

“The truth is that everyone’s privately fighting a battle nobody else is fully aware of … and emotionally intelligent people are aware that others may be having problems they themselves have no way to gain access to,” Deutschendorf writes.

Even if you find a colleague’s words or actions offensive, he suggests showing empathy by following these simple steps:

Conflict can help make your company stronger, but only if it’s not sowing hostility and negativity among your team. When things get tense, reach into your toolbox of productive and empathetic communication skills to address it, rather than contribute to the tension yourself.

Source: Slackhq.com

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