The Manager's Guide to Mediating Conflict: Learn how to confidently mediate conflicts in the workplace

At its core, conflict is very simply a different point of view; the differences being due to our varied experiences, views of the world, and cultures or values. All of these elements give us different perspectives and influence how we see things.

Conflict is not about who is right or who is wrong. It is about the different way that we see and interpret things. Individuals often get stuck in conflict situations because they get caught up in questions around truth, intentions, and blame. In terms of resolving conflict, then, who is right and wrong isn't important; what is fundamental is understanding and accepting differing perspectives. Your role as a mediator is to facilitate the parties in achieving this; it is about helping the parties to better understand each other sufficiently rather than getting the parties to agree with each other.

In the vast majority of the mediations that I have been involved in, the specific facts and issues of a dispute often fall away very quickly and become irrelevant. What's left are differing perspectives and hurt feelings fuelled by misunderstanding, miscommunication, distrust, and speculation over the intentions of others. As a mediator, you need to tackle all of these things and not be afraid to do so. Resolution can only come from the emotional aspects of disputes being aired and understood.

Helping parties to shift their focus away from establishing who is right and who is wrong towards acknowledging the impact of the conflict on each other and understanding each other's perspective is a key principle in resolving conflict. This can range from giving the individuals themselves the support and skills to resolve conflict positively to interventions from others, including informal action by you as the line manager or by adopting the role of a mediator.

If you find yourself spending increasing amounts of time dealing with workplace conflicts, managing the impact on an individual's performance, and being dragged into formal processes that are rarely helpful, then you are not alone! Numerous surveys report that there has been a considerable increase in workplace conflict in recent years and the time taken to resolve these conflicts using formal processes (disciplinary and grievance processes) has also increased. In addition, employment tribunal claims continue to rise year on year. The rise in conflict does vary from sector to sector with the public sector in the UK experiencing considerably higher numbers of disputes than in the private sector. One study suggests that the IT and Construction sectors have the lowest levels and organizational culture, management accountability, and conflict management skills all have an impact. Over 40 percent of conflicts are said to relate to relationship issues and this is consistent across all sectors (CIPD Employee Relations Survey 2011 and Workplace (UK) Conflict Survey 2011). While the context and extent of conflict can vary, it can arise anywhere and the skills and processes to positively resolve conflict, which we will discuss in later chapters, are in themselves important in promoting a culture that reduces the levels of destructive conflict and costly disputes.

So why is there so much conflict in the modern workplace? The reasons are incredibly diverse, but all circulate around the central issue of different perspectives, as the following figure illustrates. Some of these problems are explored in more detail in the following list.

While you may have little influence over many of these issues, you can still do a lot to prevent these causes damaging working relationships and creating ongoing conflict. The details on how conflict can be prevented in these situations is beyond the remit of this book, but some useful tips to bear in mind are as follows:

Prevention, as they say, is always better than cure, so these steps are essential to prevent conflict escalating and to tackle any issues that may require mediation later down the road. The techniques and skills used in mediation, however, are useful in more informal settings, so don't think that mediation is only an option once an issue or situation has escalated.

Bringing different perspectives and different points of view together should be a positive thing, and it should help promote creativity and innovation. So while we tend to think of conflict in negative terms, it can be a force for good. If conflict is managed positively or the culture is such that it promotes a healthy exchange of viewpoints, this promotes understanding and allows individuals to express opinions in a constructive way that achieves collaboration and engagement; all of which is positive. Patrick Lencioni, in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, lists the fear of conflict as one of the five dysfunctions of a team and that teams who develop the ability to engage in healthy conflict and open debate will move towards high performance. Indeed it could be argued that a fear of conflict and reluctance to challenge may well have contributed to some of the dramatic corporate scandals of recent history, such as Enron, Goldman Sachs, and HBOS.

Lencioni suggests that teams that fear conflict will tend to have boring meetings, engage in personal attacks and power politics, ignore controversial topics, fail to tap into all opinions, and waste time and energy with posturing and interpersonal risk management. I am sure we can all relate to this and have witnessed this to varying degrees. A team that engages in conflict positively will in contrast have lively and interesting meetings, exploit ideas from all, solve problems quickly, minimize politics, and put critical topics on the table for discussion (rather than avoid them).

A manager's style of leadership will have a big influence on whether a team can engage in healthy conflict. If a manager leads by example, they themselves encourage open debate and manage conflict in a positive way; this will influence others to do likewise. Also, in a team or culture where there is healthy conflict, the individuals will be empowered to take responsibility to resolve issues between themselves. Lencioni suggests that team members should have the confidence to identify buried disagreements and encourage the team to resolve them. Understanding others' typical responses to conflict can also help here. Ideally the manager should not be called on or be required to intervene in every issue; if the parties can resolve matters themselves then they should be given the opportunity to do so. It is only where this is not possible or successful that the manager will need to take action. The trick is of course to identify when this is necessary. To put yourself into a position where you can spot when this is required, it is necessary to take the time and effort to really know and understand those who work with you and be alert to differences in behaviors, communications, relationships, and engagement.

Problems arise when the culture does not encourage healthy conflict, conflict is not managed positively, or it remains unresolved for long periods of time. In these situations conflict becomes damaging; in turn, this creates a relational crisis that destabilizes people. As a result, people act and react in ways that produce unproductive and destructive dynamics.

Unfortunately, conflict remains unresolved or is simply avoided in far too many situations; it is estimated that 60 percent of line managers tend to avoid conflict rather than seek to tackle and resolve it (CIPD Leadership and Management of Conflict Survey 2008). As we all know from our own personal experiences, ignoring or avoiding conflict does not produce a positive result; rather, it worsens the situation. Resentments fester, communication diminishes, and individuals begin to get stuck in the conflict situation so that the need for some third-party intervention (such as mediation) increases.

Conflict, then, can be both productive and harmful. Some of the ways in which conflict can have a positive effect are as follows:

Of course, there is always another side to this, and often it is the inverse that leads to bad conflict. So, bad conflict could be the result of a lack of innovation in a workplace. If there is no sense of progression, or a desire to improve, this will lead to frustration and even stress, which, in turn, leads to bad conflict. One might consider conflict as being buried within any situation; think for example, of a good friendship—the best friendships often feature some kind of antagonism or conflict which make them interesting and stimulating. The problem happens when this conflict or what might be called productive antagonism becomes stifled. It's then redirected, producing frustration, irritation, and as I will now explore, stress.

As indicated in the preceding section, stress caused by such things as organizational change or increasing workloads can in itself contribute to conflict arising. In addition, where individuals are in conflict, one or usually both parties will almost always be in a state of stress so the situation will worsen. Understanding how stress impacts individuals and how this impacts the ability to deal with conflict situations is important to understand. I now look back on disputes that I was involved in litigating and appreciate why parties acted in the way that they did. Had I understood this at the time, I am sure that this would have helped me advise people better and influence the way that matters were handled.

Essentially, stress makes us stupid. The neurological impact of stress is that blood in our brains moves from the frontal area which is the logical thinking part of our brains to the subcortical area, which is the emotional part where the flight or fight response modes are activated.

This means that the logical thinking parts of our brain are blocked by the instinctive flight or fight response modes. The following are some of the consequences of this:

It is important to appreciate that individuals will be reacting in these ways throughout a mediation process. In order to help them return to a position where they can listen and respond appropriately, it is first necessary to help individuals to get out of their state of stress. There are very simple exercises that you can encourage others to do to relieve stress. For example, concentrating on breathing deeply is highly effective; an excellent way to do this is to practice 7/11 breathing. This is where you breathe in for seven and breathe out for eleven. It is the ratio that is important so that you are breathing in for less time that you breathe out. Another technique is to improve your posture by imagining a balloon on a string from the top of your head. It may sound a bit odd but these two very simple exercises are highly effective. If in doubt, try it next time you feel stressed; I guarantee you will start to feel calmer.

Also as a mediator, you can help reduce stress by acknowledging the emotions of the parties, being empathetic and understanding, demonstrating real deep listening, giving individuals sufficient time, having patience, and establishing and maintaining calmness throughout. Remember that your mood as the mediator will affect the parties.

Whether you are in an active mediation process or simply managing the stresses and strains of your employees, dealing with stress effectively is essential, and the skills that you will use in a mediation scenario can be used every day to help your employees and colleagues.

Where there is a workplace dispute, there are a number of options that can be used to deal with it. These range from allowing parties to resolve it themselves through to litigation, as set out in the conflict resolution road map.

The differences between mediation and other options are shown in the following image:

With all options other than mediation, the focus will be on the party's rights and the outcome will depend on a decision from a third-party as to whose rights are preferred; the emotional aspect is completely ignored as it is irrelevant to the process. Particularly where there is an ongoing relationship, this will rarely result in a positive outcome. Individuals will become defensive, communication will either cease all together or be very guarded and the gap between them will widen. I have seen many grievance processes resulting in further damaging relations, making an already bad situation a million times worse.

Mediation, unlike other formal processes or litigation, addresses the underlying emotions and in practice it is important to do so and to avoid shying away from this. In mediation who is right and who is wrong is entirely irrelevant and it puts the power to resolve matters in the hands of the parties. In this way, mediation is far more likely to produce a positive result, either allowing employees to work together in a better way or enabling an exit on better terms. As Kenneth Cloke puts it brilliantly in his book Mediating Dangerously, "the purpose of the search for truth in conflict resolution is twofold; first, to help the parties achieve a substantially fair result; and second, to help them feel a result is fair, allowing the wounds to heal."

Although mediation is a far better option, in the vast majority of cases it will not always be appropriate. The following table illustrates when to consider using mediation and when it will not be appropriate.

In terms of timing, I would urge you to always consider using mediation at the earliest possible stage. If you believe a situation is likely to result in some kind of formal process then mediation should begin prior to that process. Not only does this increase the chances of the mediation being successful, it also reduces the time and cost expended. Many of the mediations I have conducted have followed a lengthy and painful formal process, which has exacerbated the situation and could have been avoided in its entirety.

Ideally I would suggest that mediation be considered as a first option in the vast majority of cases, with formal procedures being the exception to the rule. In order to encourage parties to enter into mediation in preference to formal processes, you may need to work at explaining what mediation is and highlight the benefits. It is also helpful to have mediation written into policies as a first step. You might think that as a mediator I would say that, wouldn't you!

Mediation is part of a bigger picture of conflict resolution. It is always useful to have this in mind to gain some sense of perspective and context as to how mediation fits into the larger process of resolving conflict, as this will enable you to gain a greater handle on the conflict and where you are trying to get to with the mediation. The following figure represents a road map of conflict resolution. This should enable you to successfully manage any conflict situation in a way that is appropriate and effective.

You should now have a better understanding of how and why a conflict arises in workplace situations and also the impact that this has on individuals and relationships. This should give you an appreciation of why mediation can be so effective in resolving conflicts. This in itself gives you a head start in becoming an effective mediator. Finally, you should now be able to identify and spot those situations where conflict may arise and when to take action.

The next chapter builds on this by looking at the specific skills required to be an effective mediator.