Do a bit of research to find out changes they enacted. Are you a tech company that prioritizes a flat hierarchy? Or are you more of top-down organization, like a government agency? Draw parallels from similarly-constructed organizations. By demonstrating a similar situation, you are building a bridge between their current emotional state to the place you’re hoping to guide them towards.Īscertain the type of organization you have. Nearly every change in a company takes an adjustment period. This tells employees that they are not alone in facing a new change. If you have history in other company policy changes, bring up how people also felt hesitant, frustrated, or angry. Tell them about someone else having similar emotions. Therefore, think of the emotional reaction of a new change for employees. Their research found that is the strong predictor, explaining 58% of workplace successes. TalentSmart tested emotional intelligence along with 33 other workplace skills in predicting strong performance. In order to accurately ascertain how people are feeling, work on your emotional intelligence. But because they use it incredibly often, one can see empathy is the gateway to resolving conflict. The word “empathy” is used so frequently in the manual, it’s nearly mind numbing. Start with recognizing their emotion (“I can see why you all are hesitant in adopting the policy”), then link the emotion to their current issue (“It does take a bit more time to clear security I felt similarly”), and then end it with how what you gained from it (“Though I found that because of the new system, we have a more secured workplace”). Begin by telling them “I understand how you feel”. They want managers to understand their duress or hesitation. EmpathizeĮmployees want to know they’ve been heard. The standard method of the “Feel, Felt, Found” is comprised of three phases: 1. What’s the formula to solve employee conflict? With target customers as wide and varied as Fortune 500 companies, public schools, and your tech-adverse great-aunt, Apple has nailed down a conflict resolution method that can translate across a myriad forms of situations. Straight of Apple’s “ Genius Training Student Workbook” is the “Feel, Felt, Found” method. The most effective, unifying method comes from the billion-dollar company based out of Cupertino, California. The communication style that may work for a Baby Boomer will not work for a fresh-out-of-college Millennial. Your effort to resolve the issues may become doubly complex by the diversity within the workforce. Besides daydreaming about the on-coming robot workforce, what do you do to solve employee conflict? The in-coming system keeps facing resistance. You’re rolling out a new department structure.

Employee conflict examples