Contextual Causes of Conflict: II

For teams or groups, achieving high performance often requires skill in resolving destructive conflict. Unlike fine wine, destructive conflict does not improve with age. Left alone, it can consume resources essential to organizational success. But even when we resolve a destructive conflict, it's an expensive distraction. Prevention is better than resolution.

To prevent destructive conflict, we must know its causes. Here's Part II of a little catalog of practices and situations that tend to generate destructive conflict.

Sudden change

Change is almost always difficult. Suddenness makes Change even more difficult, but it does more. It creates general insecurity, by creating doubt that we understand the world around us.

When Change is elective, release as much information about it as you can as early as you can. Prepare the people of the organization.

Zero-sum recognition practices

Recognition programs that have a zero-sum structure can inhibit cooperative behavior and create intense rivalries. In a group of N people, creating one winner creates N-1 losers, and that undermines teamwork. For example, an organization that designates only one "Engineer of the Year" might experience erosion in the overall sense of teamwork and group loyalty.

Modern organizations depend for success on contributions from employees in a wide range of positions, working as individuals and in groups or teams. Surely we can find ways to recognize all. Recognizing everyone for something reduces the incidence of destructive conflict. Recognizing everyone is an honest acknowledgment of the reality of modern work life.

Rank-based performance management

Some performance management systems rate individual performance according to several levels across several dimensions. They use that rating for compensation adjustment, promotion, disciplinary action, and termination. This methodology can be a fertile source of destructive conflict when combined with quotas, in a framework often called "forced ranking" or "stack ranking."

In today's highly interconnected workplaces, the concept of individual performance is itself questionable. We cannot always determine who contributed what, and a contribution that seems constructive today might not seem so constructive next month, even if we could realistically determine its value. Given these uncertainties, risking destructive conflict by using quota-based performance management systems would seem counter-productive on its face.

Hierarchical conflict

Manifestations of destructive Sudden Change creates general
insecurity, by creating doubt that we
understand the world around usconflict among executives and/or senior managers can appear throughout the organization. As subordinates interact, some can fear that mutual respect or cooperation with the subordinates of rival senior managers might be interpreted as behavior disloyal to their own senior managers.

Seek complete resolution of feuds between senior managers, recognizing that a truce is not resolution. Abandon the illusion that such feuds can be "private." The secret always escapes.

Think of root causes of destructive conflict as masters of camouflage, intent on surviving by remaining unnoticed. Then search for them where you think they aren't.   First issue in this series   Top    Next Issue

Are you fed up with tense, explosive meetings? Are you or a colleague the target of a bully? Destructive conflict can ruin organizations. But if we believe that all conflict is destructive, and that we can somehow eliminate conflict, or that conflict is an enemy of productivity, then we're in conflict with Conflict itself. Read 101 Tips for Managing Conflict to learn how to make peace with conflict and make it an organizational asset. Order Now!

For much more about the effects of recognition practices on performance, see No Contest: The Case Against Competition, by Alfie Kohn. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1986. Especially chapter 6.

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More articles on Conflict Management:

Responding to Threats: III

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Handling Heat: II

Heated exchanges in meetings can compromise both the organizational mission and the careers of the meeting's participants. Here are some tactics for people who aren't chairing the meeting.

Contextual Causes of Conflict: I

When destructive conflict erupts, we usually hold responsible only the people directly involved. But the choices of others, and general circumstances, can be the real causes of destructive conflict.

Characterization Risk

To characterize is to offer a description of a person, event, or concept. Characterizations are usually judgmental, and usually serve one side of a debate. And they often make trouble.

Toxic Disrupters: Responses

Some people tend to disrupt meetings. Their motives vary, but their techniques are predictable. If we've identified someone as using these techniques we have available a set of effective actions that can guide him or her toward a more productive role.

See also Conflict Management and Conflict Management for more related articles.

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