How Stepping Up To Conflict Boosts Your Leadership Effectiveness

Unless you’re a practitioner of mixed martial arts, you probably don’t like conflict. Most people don’t. Oh, they may be okay watching conflict in a movie, but they avoid it in real life.

Even office bullies—the my-way-or-the-highway people—don’t like conflict. Shutting down discussion is simply their way of avoiding the discomfort of sorting through competing views.

Of course, unresolved workplace conflict comes at a high price: wasted time, increased stress, missed opportunities, anemic business performance.

And here’s the thing: Even if you can ace a test on the “skills” of managing conflict, you’re likely to fail unless and until you master your “inner game”—the self-awareness and emotional integrity required to translate your desire and willingness into successful interactions.

Marlene Chism offers smart tips in From Conflict to Courage: How to Stop Avoiding and Start Leading.

Effective leaders don’t shy away from conflict. In fact, they step up and deal with it head-on by modeling behaviors that promote trust, collaboration, and inclusion. They regard “difficult conversations” as opportunities to help people—including themselves—improve.

Rodger Dean Duncan: Many people seem to deal with conflict by simply trying to avoid it. Why do they get stuck in that approach?

Marlene Chism: Two reasons people avoid—Lack of skills and aversion to the strong emotions that accompany conflict.

Conflict brings feelings of frustration, anger, resentment, or guilt. These feelings are driven by our narrative about the situation or about the other person. For example, a leader knows they need to initiate a conversation about behavior or performance but they’re afraid the employee might cry. Or they’re worried that they might get triggered into verbal ping pong and get off course. Or they’re afraid of anger getting the best of them. Skills training helps to a degree, but without the ability to self-regulate, it’s difficult to withstand the emotional aspects of conflict.

Duncan: What are the costs of conflict mismanagement?

Chism: It’s estimated that employees spend almost three hours per week arguing, and those arguments amount to $359 billion in hours that are focused on conflict instead of productivity.

While the leader thinks everyone should just get back to work, deeper roots of conflict are growing exponentially. For example, an employee feels they aren’t being treated fairly and they constantly complain. The manager moves this employee to another location. The employee complains to the next level of leadership with no resolution. The employee feels discriminated against and claims retaliation.

Now there’s the cost of legal fees, the cost to collaboration, well-being, and productivity, not to mention the emotional and mental toll on workers. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) had 67,448 charges of workplace discrimination in the 2020 fiscal year, with retaliation cited as the largest percentage of all charges filed. An employee discrimination case can take upwards of two years to resolve, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Every major conflict, including cases that land in court, can be traced back to a conversation that should have happened but didn’t. Conflict is never the problem. Mismanagement is.

Duncan: The increased use of social media seems to encourage an “Us versus Them” mentality. What effect does that have on people’s willingness to deal productively—and civilly—with conflict?

Chism: The power of technology and social media combined with a lack of critical thinking and lack of curiosity is likely to cause more conflict than we can imagine. We are becoming desensitized to disruptive behavior on social media, and this type of “entertainment” and exposure is building a platform for more intense and unpredictable conflict.

If you’re on social media during an election year you’ll see identity politics that leads to name-calling, judgment, accusations, and misunderstandings based only on a partial understanding of the issues at hand. There’s no longer a space between stimulus and response. We’ve lost our ability to be curious and to withstand a different point of view. My prediction is that this behavior is a forewarning of what’s to come in face-to-face conversations in the workplace, at the grocery store, in airports, and beyond. We fail to realize that disagreement doesn’t ruin relationships, disrespect does.

Duncan: What role does self-awareness (or the lack thereof) play in a person’s ability to handle conflict well?

Chism: You can’t fix what you don’t acknowledge, and you can be only as honest as your level of self-awareness. Without self-awareness, you’ll always think that the problem is the other person or the situation. Self-awareness helps you take responsibility for your interpretation, your perceptions, your experience, and your choices. If everything is someone else’s fault, or if the same problems keep happening to you over and over again, there’s a good chance you need to increase your self-awareness.

Duncan: What are the most common dysfunctional behaviors in dealing with conflict?

Chism: Three behaviors that I call the Three A’s—avoidance, appeasing, and aggression are the most dysfunctional. In the end, these behaviors are some form of avoidance.

Avoiders know they don’t like conflict and they admit it. The rest of us don’t realize how much we chose comfort over accountability.

Appeasing is the behavior of telling people what they want to hear so that there’s no conflict. Appeasers say “yes” when they want to say “no” and they say “good idea” when they know the idea isn’t going to work.

Then there’s aggression. Aggression ranges from behaviors such as eye-rolling, silent treatment, innuendos, sarcasm, putting someone in their place in front of others, name-calling, voice-raising, fist-pounding, and violence. Aggressiveness is still a form of avoidance. Aggressive types avoid self-reflection, avoid increasing self-regulation, and avoid responsibility for the relationship. Aggression is used as a barrier instead of a bridge to better communication.

Duncan: For leaders, you suggest, there’s a “price for being too nice.” What do you mean by that, and how does it apply to conflict resolution?

Chism: Nice leaders want to people please more than they want to lead. A leader that wants to be liked is more invested in pleasing others even if it’s at the expense of the organization’s mission and goals. Decisions are made from the context of keeping everyone happy instead of what’s good for the organization or the client. As a result, nice leaders struggle with decision-making.

Duncan: In discussing emotional integrity, you suggest thinking of blame as a shortcut for avoiding responsibility. Please tell us more about that.

Chism: To the extent that you see every problem as someone else’s fault, is the degree to which you abdicate responsibility for fixing the problem. As long as it’s someone else’s fault you don’t have to take ownership. Responsibility is about ownership. When we blame, we are focused on what’s outside of us. When we take responsibility, we are focused on the next right steps—our choices in the moment.

Duncan: In an organizational setting, what can leaders do to help create a culture where people gain—and effectively use—good conflict resolution skills?

Chism: Executives and senior leaders have to model the behaviors and attitudes they want to see in their directors, managers, supervisors, and employees. Too often decision-makers think it’s about delegating down to the Learning and Development Director to deliver a workshop or initiative. But without support from the top, these initiatives aren’t sustainable. Development is not a checklist or a one-time event. It’s about embodiment. Top leaders must support their direct reports to embrace the same mindsets and skillsets by modeling behavior and offering the right resources to shape culture.

Duncan: How can a leader “test for resistance” when proposing a change initiative?

Chism: Willingness is the fulcrum point of change. Resistance is any barrier to willingness.

To test for willingness, use the phrase, “Would you be willing …” A strong “yes” means the person will take forward action. Resistance shows up in the “yes, but” or the “I’ll try, however …” Don’t make the mistake of thinking the other person is moving forward if they say, “I’ll try but it’s going to take a long time.” Taking a long time is their perceived barrier. (The first barrier is usually not the real barrier.) The real barrier might be a skills deficit, fear of failing, or something else. Leaders can uncover resistance using the phrase “would you be willing?” and then listen for what comes up in the conversation. The answers come through the conversation, not before the conversation. But anytime you sense resistance know this: Nothing happens without willingness.

Duncan: How does “intention setting” help get a difficult conversation off to a good start?

Chism: Setting strong intentions clarifies the direction of the conversation and keeps you out of emotional landmines and distractions.

If the conversation goes off course, use your originally stated intention to refocus the conversation. A good intention is forward moving, focused on a positive outcome, and provides emotional safety for the other person. I see intention as a goal with a soul. The intention speaks to both the outcome and the journey to get there.

Duncan: What if you’ve told an employee a thousand times that a behavior change is needed, but nothing changes?

Chism: That means you’ve allowed the behavior 999 times. People do what they do because it works for them. Employees will continue to be disruptive as long as no one has the courage to confront the behavior. Ask yourself if you’ve really told them a thousand times. You’ll find that you’ve thought it a thousand times, but you probably only hinted at the need for change. Your conversation was ineffective, or you didn’t have a follow-up conversation that created real accountability.