Conflict happens. Disputes can arise between employees, between business partners, between a company and a client. And if such issues are not settled, bad things can happen.
This has been true always, of course, but today the implications of conflict are more profound than ever before. Companies can locate anywhere. People can work anywhere. Clients can stay with you or go with a competitor halfway around the globe. So whether you manage employees or clients or both, it’s critical to learn the art of bringing harmony out of conflict.
Here are some insights and tricks of the trade I recommend:
• Let people tell their story. When a person is deeply upset about something, he really needs to get his story out. Yes, that can increase the level of conflict, but that’s OK. You have to get through the conflict phase to find the solution. Feeling that he finally has been heard can dramatically change an angry person’s outlook. Plus, new information may come to light that allows a solution to naturally emerge.
• If someone refuses to budge, take the spotlight off her. Isolation tends to create movement. When you are mediating a multiparty conflict, you often will discover that there is one person who insists on taking a hard-line approach, shooting down every solution that’s presented. My suggestion: Take the attention off the “last woman (or man) standing” and begin settling around her (or him). You’ll find that the holdout starts to anxiously call and send e-mails, trying to get things going again. When her perceived power is neutralized, she quickly sees the value of compromise.
• When someone seems “locked up,” dig for the emotion. A famous television producer was on the verge of being sued for plagiarism, accused of having “stolen” someone’s idea. When anyone talked to the plaintiff about his case, he gave short, robotic answers and showed no emotion. So I asked him, “What is it you really want to achieve here?”
The plaintiff almost broke down. He said, “I just want to break into television.” So I returned to the producer and said, “Is there any way you can help this guy out?” And the producer said, “Sure, let me talk to him.” So I got the plaintiff an audience with this well-respected producer, and the producer ended up offering him a development deal.
• When people are picking flyspecks out of pepper, come in with a reality check. Often in a conflict, the various parties are so focused on minutiae that they lose sight of the big picture. As the mediator, you need to bring people back to reality. Doing so may help resolution arrive at a startling speed.
• Identify the true impediment. Ask yourself, “What is really keeping this person from agreeing to a solution?” I worked on a case in which a man was suing an entertainment company for wrongful termination, and we could not resolve it. I happened to ask about the man’s family and found out that one of his children had cerebral palsy, and he couldn’t pay for the child’s very expensive treatments. Armed with that knowledge, we got the company to agree to pay the man’s insurance for five years.
• Think creatively about ways people can cooperate rather than clash. A grocer objected to being billed for a three-week “training cruise” taken by the employees of its computer consulting firm. From the grocer’s perspective, it looked like a vacation; the consultant insisted that its employees worked intensively during the cruise. The solution? I helped them form a whole new company which offered training services to other retailers. Suddenly, the money dispute became secondary to the created value of a new, mutually beneficial business venture.
• Edit the script. People tend to get “stuck” in their positions because they are telling what happened from a narrow viewpoint and in a negative and hopeless tone. As the mediator, retell their story about the dispute as a positive, forward-looking construction. In this way you literally give them the words to see their options in a new light.
• Avoid the “winner’s curse” by carefully pacing negotiation. We all have an inner clock that lets us know how long a negotiation should take. When a deal seems too easy, a kind of buyer’s remorse can set in. The parties wonder if they might have cut a better deal. Even when you know you can wrap things up quickly, it’s to everyone’s advantage to keep the negotiation proceeding for a reasonable amount of time.
• Realize that not every conflict can be resolved. What if you’ve tried and tried to help two warring factions find a fair solution and you just can’t? It may sound odd coming from a mediator, but some conflicts just aren’t winnable. Not every negotiation is going to have a win-win outcome. Not everyone can live together in harmony. Isolate the participants if possible and just move on.
All this talk of well-paced dances, inner clocks, and gut feelings may seem alien to “just-the-facts” business types, but you’d better get used to it. Negotiation is all about going with the flow and seizing opportunities as they arise. It can be an improvisational conversation. It’s organic. There are no limits on what can come out of mediation, and that’s what makes it such a powerful skill.
Jeffrey Krivis is the author of “Improvisational Negotiation: A Mediator’s Stories of Conflict about Love, Money, Anger – and the Strategies That Resolved Them.”
