Agree Dispute Resolution, Conflict management stems from internal discipline

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Conflict management stems from internal discipline

by Muriel Draaisma

Managing conflict in the workplace is draining and human resources professionals need to know how to replenish their energy to stay effective as mediators, says an expert in dispute resolution.

Rick Russell, a full-time chartered mediator who teaches disspute resolution courses at Conrad Grebel College in Waterloo, Ont., says HR professionals should be good to themselves after dealing with workplace conflict.

"Good conflict management requires a lot of internal discipline. It takes a lot out of you to do this stuff well. You need to find out what recharges your engines," says Russell, also a lawyer, facilitator and trainer.

Russell, who teaches a new course in conflict management skills to working people, says he believes it is useful for HR professionals to be aware of how they respond and react to conflict.

Russell says one of the most important goals of resolving workplace conflict is to improve working relationships. He says employees react differently to different stimuli, depending on their past history. Managers would benefit from knowing more about themselves and how they react to various stimuli so they will better understand and appreciate the behaviour of others.

"What makes a big difference is who you are," Russell says.

Conflict in the workplace can beat the macro level - teams, work units or departments at odds with each other -- or it can at the micro level -- individuals, such as co-workers or a worker and supervisor in dispute. The approach and skills of the mediator play a big role in how successfully a conflict is resolved.

Russell says if a manager brings curiosity to a workplace, that person is more likely to ask openended questions and listen to complaints with genuine concern.

But, he says, if a manager has a need to control the outcome of situations and imposes that need on disputes, then that person will likely see their job as judging and assessing, determining what is legitimate and what is not and deciding whether a complaint is valid or invalid. This makes a manager a less effective mediator.

A curious manager can empower the employees he or she supervises and is driven by a sense of what is possible, whereas the controlling manager can engender rebellion in employees and operates by the use of fear.

"If you are trying to control behaviour, then you don't trust that person and the implicit message is that person is not trustworthy," he says. "Then a schoolboy mentality takes over and a person begins to wonder how much can he or she get away with."

In the three-day course, instructors use a variety of exercises to make students aware of the forces that shape their behaviour, learn communication skills and build on their ability to negotiate. Forces shaping behaviour include personality type, past experiences, deeply rooted conflicts, beliefs, biases and perceptions.

In addition to Russell, course instructors are Sy Landau, president of Organizational Strategies Group, a management consulting firm in Toronto, and Barbara Landau, a family mediator, psychologist, lawyer and trainer in Toronto.

The course is targeted at HR professionals, people with managerial or supervisory responsibilities and management consultants who are often brought into a workplace to resolve disputes.

In the course, instructors ask the students to take a personal style inventory designed by R. Craig Hogan and David W. Champagne to establish their personality type. Later, they play roles in four separate scenarios, to think about possible deeply rooted conflicts and to take part in an "Alligator River exercise."

"People react, but they don't always know why. We make participants aware that people bring all kinds of stuff to any conflict. Stuff is going on for the managers too," says Russell.

There are three ways to resolve disputes: using an interest-based process, such as mediation; using a rights-based process, such as adjudication or labour arbitration; and using a power-based process, such as a vote, strike or open warfare.

He says an interest-based process is helpful in the workplace because it focuses on the interests or needs of the parties in conflict. It's done by consensus, and is more satisfying to the parties because they are involved.

A rights-based process is usually more costly than an interest-based process because a third party intervenes to settle the dispute. The parties are frequently not satisfied because a decision is imposed on them and it often does not get at the root of the problem.

As for a power-based process, the cost is very high because so much damage can be done to achieve the end goal. Usually one party is extremely dissatisfied with the result, having had a solution imposed on them by force and having been left with little or nothing.

Russell says it helps to understand how each of these approaches work together when trying to understand how to resolve workplace disputes. The course focuses on the interests-based approach, which they believe is most suitable to the workplace.

The course, Dispute Resolution in the Workplace, is part of the Certificate Program in Conflict Management, which is offered by the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel College.