Conflict Management: Reasons For Employee Conflict

An Observation of a Cycle

Pretty early on in my studies of the principles of management, I came to a realization.

Every conflict between a manager and an employee--in fact, every interpersonal conflict, whether it was in the workplace, the home, sports teams, volunteer groups, or anything else--could be traced to one source.

A lack of trust.

If two people were not getting along, somehow they had come to stop trusting each other. For whatever reason, they now thought the other person was no longer acting with their best interests in mind.

If you think about it, this is always true. Whether it's a husband and wife drifting apart, a parent and a child fighting, or a manager who is in conflict with an employee, at the core of the conflict is the fact that they've become afraid that the other person isn't acting in their best interests any more.

I also noticed the way that lack of trust could begin to perpetuate itself. Because the manager, for example, was now afraid that the employee wasn't acting in the manager or the company's best interests, the manager would be hesitant to accept the employee's requests, complaints, or suggestions.

This hesitancy would cause the employee to further mistrust the manager. If he's not taking my requests, complaints, or suggestions, he must not be taking me seriously, the employee would think. Consequently, the employee would be hesitant to accept assignments, critcisms, and direction from a manager he felt wasn't really concerned about him.

Which leads to increased mistrust from the manager. Which leads to increased mistrust from the employee.

You see the cycle. It was always obvious to me, as an outsider, when I'd see the cycle develop.

The solution, to me, was obvious. Since this cycle was continuous, either one of them could break it. If I could just persuade one of them about the truth of what was going on, we could break the cycle.

A Problem With The Solution

But here was the problem: neither my observation or terminology helped me persuade them at all.

You see, my observation didn't change the fact that they were both right. The other person was acting in a way that did not merit trust. No matter which person you were, the fact was the other person was focused entirely on themselves and their own self interests. Their mistrust of you was that you would not do what they wanted. The other person wasn't thinking about your concerns at all.

Nor did my observation that there was a lack of trust. You can't spontaneously generate trust for someone who has honestly been demonstrating over time that they aren't thinking about how avoid injuring you, but has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to disregard your interests.

Despite my observations, I still felt powerless.

Help From The Arbinger Institute

Then I began reading some of the works of the Arbinger Institute, and found a much more sophisticated, useful view of the cycle I observed. They'd even given a name to it: collusion.

Normally, collusion means two people conspiring for a common goal, but in a twisted sort of way, it perfectly describes the way two people in conflict manage to exactly act in a way that justifies the other person's feelings towards them.

The manger, in his attempt to manage the untrustworthy employee, manages to act in exactly the controlling, resistant way the employee needs in order to tell himself his manager is oppressive and doesn't care about his employees.

And the employee, in an effort to stand up for himself and fight for his rights, acts in exactly the rebellious, resistant way the manager needs in order to tell himself the employee is difficult and doesn't care about the company.

But Arbringer doesn't label the thing flowing so freely back and forth between the two as mistrust. They label the thing flowing back and forth between them as blame.

Now that was a word I could use.

The Problem With Blame

If you asked the manager what the problem was, he would blame the employee. But if you asked the employee who the problem was, he would blame the manager.

But what was the real problem?

The problem was the blame.

The manager was actually reacting negatively to the things the employee was trying to do to "deal" with his oppressive manager. but the employee was only reacting negatively to the things the manager was doing to "deal" with his rebellious employee.

When one of them blames the other, in word or in deed, it provokes defensiveness and blame back. And that returned blame invites more blame and defensiveness.

And, even worse, at that point, they both begin to focus on proving themselves right rather than on solving the problem. In their book, Leadership and Self-Deception, Arbringer writes:

However bitterly I complain about someones poor behavior toward me and about the trouble it causes me, I also find it strangely delicious. It's my proof that others are as blameworthy as I've claimed them to be--and that I'm as innocent as I claim myself to be. The behavior I complain about is the very behavior that justifies me.

The eye-opening revelation is that blame is a divisive force that creates more problems than it solves.

Blame is a recourse for those who are more interested in justifying themselves than in getting results.

Blame is a weapon, but a twisted sort of weapon that seeks to transform the one it hits into an attacker, and the one who fires it into a victim. It is designed to elicit certain feelings towards the one leveling the blame and the one the blame is directed towards.

This is not to say that there are not responsibilities, and that in any given situation, some people may be more responsible than others. It is not to say

Blame is not about solving problems, but is simply about creating perceptions. Imagine if your doctor was more concerned about creating a certain appearance than about finding out what was really wrong with you. He would be inclined to overlook certain obvious symptoms, as he was continually reaching for hard-to-diagnose cases that would make him look like an insightful, knowledgeable doctor. He would be slow to diagnose things that should be easy for him, like simple colds, as he continually reached for diagnoses that were more in line with his own ambitions. His worries about perceptions over problem solving would hinder his diagnosis.

Similarly, let's say there is a person in our department who we want to blame for all the problems in that department. It doesn't matter if the person actually is as big a jerk as we think he is or not. What matters is that our focus on them, and our desire to isolate them as the cause of all our problems. Such a focus will make us as slow to diagnose seemingly simple problems as the doctor was in the example above.

Most particularly, it will render us almost completely impotent to diagnosing any problems in ourselves.

In fact, the blame becomes our proof that we're good, and that the problem is somewhere else. Whatever we do magically becomes okay. Sure, we'll acknowledge our own imperfections, and even work on them some, but we know they're not responsible for any of the big problems. What do our little imperfections matter, when there is such a problem person as so-and-so in my department?

But Isn't It Somebody's Fault?

The biggest reason to internally rebel against this idea is obvious: But what if it really is his fault? Or, perhaps, But it really is his fault.

And the answer to that is, it can be his fault without any need for the kind of bitter, vindictive blame I'm talking about.

What do I mean by that?

Chances are, you've been corrected once or twice in your life. You've made mistakes, and other people have seen fit to tell you about them.

I want you to think of two times you've been corrected.

For the first time, I want you to think of a time you've been corrected that provoked you to feel some type of emotion. The correction made you angry, or rebellious. This is a time when someone was blaming you.

Now, think of a second time. Think of a time when someone let you know something that you could do better. This time, think about when the correction was a good experience. You felt, if anything, grateful, or at the very least, none of the hostility you felt the first time.

If you think about the differences between the two times, chances are the difference wasn't in the correction. Chances are the difference was in how you thought the person who was talking to you felt about you.

In the first example, the person making the correction may have been trying to make themselves look smart (and, you felt, trying to make you look stupid to help them look smarter). They might have been trying to make you look bad (because they were trying to blame you for something). They might have been someone you saw as constantly butting in, because they didn't feel you were capable of figuring things out on your own.

Whatever the reason, chances are it was the person's attitude towards you that caused you to see the correction as being something you needed to resist.

Same thing in reverse in the second example. Chances are, you saw the second person as either willing or able to help you. You either didn't know them, and therefore didn't have any reason to believe they'd need to hurt you, or you did know them, and you knew they did care about you, and did want you to do well.

See how it works?

The problem is not in offering correction where correction is necessary. The problem is where we feel the correction is coming from.

The solution to eliminating harmful blame is not to eliminate accountability. People need to be held accountable. However, it is possible to hold someone responsible for something and work towards a solution without wanting harm, shame, or blame to fall on the person responsible.

No Need For A Bad Guy

If I asked you to beat Tiger Woods at golf, chances are you couldn't do it.

If I spent a lot of time training you, working with you, and coaching you, chances are you still couldn't do it.

No matter how important beating Tiger Woods was to me, or how naturally good at golf you are, or how good a coach I am, chances are we'll never get you to a point that you could beat Tiger Woods.

So whose fault is it? Who's to blame? You? Me? Woods?

Hopefully, the answer is obvious: It's nobody's fault. It's just not something that's within your power to achieve or my power to teach. He's got more natural ability, and he's been in the game longer.

Blaming would be useless here. There is no bad guy.

Now, remove Tiger Woods from the equation. Isn't there still a limit to how far your abilities and my coaching can take us? Once that limit was hit, would it really be anybody's fault?

Not at all. No amount of me blaming you or you blaming me would help. We've both tried our best, and both reached our limits.

There is no bad guy.

However, I might harbor an unspoken fear that I was the bad guy. Or you might harbor an unspoken fear that you were the bad guy. And in an effort to prove that wrong, we'd start gathering all the evidence we could against each other. We'd starting looking for every proof we could that the other guy hadn't tried hard enough, or put in enough hours, or did his best. We would want the other guy to be the bad guy, so that we didn't have to be.

And here's the sad irony: At this point, the only thing that would help is if I start to improve my ability as a coach, or if you start to improve your ability as a trainer. By spending all our time focusing on the other person, and ignoring ourselves, we have turned away from the only thing that can actually help improve the situation--working on ourselves. Until I start learning better coaching techniques, or more about play, or you start getting better conditioned or develop a better work schedule, nothing will change.

But as long as you're focused on my problems, and I'm focused on your problems, that will never happen.

Either one of us can break the cycle. If either one of us begins to think about what we can contribute to the relationship instead of what the other person is costing the relationship, our contribution will automatically begin to improve things.

However, this only works if our efforts, if our our contributions are sincere. The second example you imagined above, the one that you didn't feel the desire to resist, wasn't someone who was "working" you, or "giving so that you would give," or "practicing good people skills."

It was someone who cared.

Period.