AIRA Newsletter

Consultants by nature and job description work with conflicts. The ability to assist clients in recognizing, understanding, coping with and moving beyond the stranglehold of conflicts is a skill that every consultant should want in his or her “tool box.” In particular, turnaround professionals must manage conflicts among their clients staff who are under the added emotional strain that the financial crisis creates. Conflict management, which is so easy to learn, can also make the difference between a successful engagement and an unsuccessful engagement, between billing 90% of your available hours and billing 25% of your available hours.

Conflicts find fertile ground as management, staff and line workers deal with seemingly unending demands for increased productivity, efficiency and profitability. Any time demands are made by one person or group, which are perceived differently by others, conflict is bound to occur. When conflict occurs you have clashes, confrontations, disagreements, arguments, struggles, and fights. These company problems occur between people supposedly on the same side, and need to be resolved for the company to run effectively.

Knowing how to resolve these conflicts is truly a valuable skill. It’s essential for moving ahead with minimal stress and maximum success!

Unfortunately, executives and managers are rarely trained to skillfully resolve the many small and large conflicts they encounter daily. Despite the benefits each could gain by being skilled at conflict resolution, most struggle through the toughest situations in their lives on their own, without a road map.

But there is Good News:

Conflict resolution is a basic, step-by-step skill anyone can learn and master.
Consultants are ideally qualified to initiate and provide such training.
Consultants can assist any organization’s executives and managers develop expertise with the following five steps to resolve any conflict.

To resolve any conflict, the steps to focus on are

1. Defining the cause
2. Understanding different or various points of view
3. Clarifying preferences
4. Examining alternatives
5. Gaining commitments

By following these five steps (or questions), always in the same order, the Consultant can move seamlessly from the point where a conflict has been identified, level by level, to the resolution of the conflict. As you learn the answers to the questions, you will also discover you can remove a great majority of the emotion from the process, which always hampers the conflict resolution process and generally is not constructive.

It would help, at this point, to identify a hypothetical conflict so we can apply the questions to it, but we won’t. Why? Because being able to say we resolved the hypothetical conflict is not as important as learning the five questions, the order they need to be posed in and how to manage the process. Let’s focus just on details. It probably is safe to wager that each of us can think of a conflict and apply the routine to it.

During this process, the Consultant should write down every comment and response. (It is best if this can be done on a large board, so the person offering the comment/data can see what is being written and can assess if what is written down is a fair representation of their comment/data offered.)

STEP 1: Before “saying” anything, or offering a word of advice (“telling” anything), Question #1 needs to be asked.

Question 1: How about if we take some time looking at the facts in this situation, what are they?

Question #1 generates information. Its purpose is to fill in factual details, as many as are available. You are offering an opportunity for everybody involved to tell you what he or she thinks created the current impasse. With this one question you are likely to learn a lot. From the outset, question #1 establishes that you value knowing both parties’ opinion.

Make sure you ask open ended questions, which help elicit maximum information. (Open-ended questions usually begin with words such as What, How, Why, Explain, Tell me, etc.)

Make sure you use language that is a comfortable fit with the audience, who they are, their state of mind, and their on-going relationship with you. Build comfort!

Other equally effective opening questions could be:

“What’s the situation?”
“What’s happening?”
“What’s been going on?”
“How have things changed since the last time we talked?”
“What are the facts?”
“Tell me the whole story.”
“Fill me in.”

The goal is for all parties to give you facts you can soak up and use. Sometimes the same question asked differently gets those facts to you. At this point, you should know the perceived causes of the conflict.

It is critical at this point to not respond. Write down what was told to you, period. No advice, no comments. Then proceed to Question #2.

Here the questioning shifts to “inside the mind” realm where personal emotions, feelings, reactions and thoughts about the outside circumstances are found. Question #2 focuses on the personal opinions others have about the conflict.

These “private thoughts” are frequently the most difficult to uncover, because they are usually related to some person’s “vested interest.” They could be labeled as negative. They are linked to strong emotional preferences that may be at odds with someone else’s agenda. These thoughts, opinions, and/or feelings will be vigorously defended.

Using up all the “pent up” negative energy with Question #2 is extremely important. If you skipped this question and went directly to Question #3 – which starts looking at steps to solve the problem – you would miss a great deal of essential personal input. People are more willing to work on solutions, if they feel they are being heard. This is the best time for Question #2.

Question 2: In your personal opinion, what are the main issues here?

Variations of Question #2 could be:
“How do you personally see it?”
“What’s your point of view?”
“How do you feel about the situation?”
“What do you make of it?”
“What bothers you the most about this?”
“What are the most significant aspects of this?”
“As far as you’re concerned, what’s really going on?”

Here, the groups that need to work together are providing valuable information about their personal viewpoints. It’s information that doesn’t need to be “dealt with” or “solved.” It exists – that’s enough. Merely acknowledging the input with nods and “Uh-huh’s” is all that is required before moving on. Question #2 has provided you with “what the causes of the conflict are” and “how the individuals in conflict feel about their situation.”

Now proceed to Question #3 where you are going to clarify preferences.

Question 3: As the managers/executives/supervisors at this site, how do you think we should proceed from here?

This question moves the situation into the more positive future, where improvement is possible. The conversation must shift from complaints to suggestions. Gripes should give way to constructive ideas. Practical problem solving should replace finger pointing.

Other effective versions of Question #3:

“What do you recommend?”
“How can this be improved?”
“What are your ideas?”
“What needs to be done?”
“What will it take to turn this around?”
“How should we proceed?”
“What actions make the most sense?”
“What are some solutions?”
“What changes need to be made?”

Not all ideas may sound equally useable. So what? The primary objective now is to get their contributions. Any contributions. The more ideas the better. As long as they continue to come forward, they are clarifying preferences. As the Consultant, don’t take sides yet.

This brings us to Question #4, where the facts expand to examining alternatives. This question increases the number of possible solutions, and you can become an active contributor. In other words, now you may participate by offering suggestions and ideas. Because you have listened and tried to fully understand the factual details, to learn everyone’s opinions and feelings and elicit first proposals, you don’t have to hold back your positive ideas any longer. Unfortunately, this meeting might have been the first time anyone has allowed the employees to open up and talk without being shot down, criticized or not allowed to tell their story. Take advantage of this for your and their benefit.

You are now ready to move the process to the next level, with an agreement each individual can buy into. You’ve cultivated enough trust, so you can help offering appropriate alternatives not directly stated by anyone else.

Question 4: Considering all sides in these very complex circumstances, and their different points of view, what other possible solutions might work so that everyone can feel he’s in a win-win situation and can give his or her full support, which will be needed if it’s going to succeed?

It wouldn’t be unusual to receive silence from the group after this question. Other ways to pose the question are:
“Looking at all of the elements, short term and long term, what other ideas can you think of that will bring everyone on board?”
“What are some realistic additional options that could move us forward together?”
“Since you want to come up with a positive end to this situation, what are the next steps could benefit everyone the most?”
“How could an effective compromise, one that’s OK for everyone, be reached here?”

Each of these questions introduces the concept of multiple solutions and suggests combining ideas to benefit all sides. The bottom line is that there have been lots of facts presented but probably also some griping. Now is the time for the participants to make something happen and if no one offers anything that is constructive, then there should also be the realization that they should not expect to get 100% of “their way”.

Since some of the time there may be instances with limited response, you have the opportunity to take charge and shine!

Simply ask the question again, using other words. Then repeat the question again, using other words. Do it enough times, so that everyone involved seriously considers the practical reality of not resolving the conflict (i.e., someone else will provide a solution without their input).

This is a time when it is logical for you as the Consultant to propose your ideas as how to resolve the conflict. This is a Consultant’s dream come true; hear the facts, identify the best solution, propose it, see it implemented. Dreams are great but this shouldn’t be the Consultants goal. The goal is to assist the company with resolving the conflict – it doesn’t have to be resolved with your solution. If the organization’s team can resolve the issue, then the probability of getting the solution implemented is far greater.

The great majority of the time, with the facts on the table, with everyone having had an opportunity to provide input, an acceptable resolution will be found. Many times there was a misinterpretation of the facts by the other party, sometimes timing changed the situation. By having this conflict resolution procedure available and used, the parties know that they will have their opportunity to affect the resolution. If they know that, someone else will resolve it, if they don’t, and quite possibly without their input, they might be motivated enough to bring the process to a successful conclusion.

Question #5 wraps up duties.

Question 5: Now that a resolution has been reached, who is going to be responsible for defining time schedules for the necessary events?

Other variations included:
“What are we going to do now?”
“How do you want to handle this agreement?”
“How are we going to monitor future results/”
“Who’s going to do what to make sure these goals are achieved?”
“How do we keep track of this?”
“How do we start working on this, and when do we report back?”

The value of the questions is the process. Once everyone has been through the process a few times, they should have an understanding that there is a conflict resolution process available to them. Conflict can then be looked at as inevitable, but constructive, since solutions can become positive results.

Another key to making the process work is to use it whenever any conflict between two parties arises. After a short period of time, one will find the organization’s leaders writing down the facts, void of emotion/personality, and team members considering the opposition’s points of view.

As the Consultant, you will be the leader who manages the process. You will learn a tremendous amount of information about the organization and about the people leading the organization. You don’t have to believe it now, but after you go through the process a few times, you will also find employees giving you a tremendous amount of the credit for the things that get done. Not a bad result to a conflict situation.

Mr. Stover has over Two decades of successful experience in the turnaround environment within a variety of industries and in various capacities, holding several senior level positions a companies that ranged from start-ups to Fortune 100 organizations. He earned a BS in Accounting from the University of Southern California, and a MBA in Management from Pepperdine University. He holds the following credentials: Certified Turnaround Professional, Certified Insolvency and Restructuring Advisor, Certified Fraud Examiner, Certified Management Consultant, Certified Confidentiality Officer and Certified Professional Consultant to Management.