Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Don't let conflicts stew

broken mug, per Southern CalI've tried to collect a summary of good information about conflict resolution as part of the Rhetoric for Engineers e-book. When I look at conflict resolution, however, it's not with the point of view of an expert, oh no. And it's not with the detachment of a scholar, either. I'm a conflict survivor.

Once, at NASA, I got into an argument with an office-mate. He was dissatisfied with the work he was doing. I tried to counsel patience. He said that the work we were doing was simplistic, compared to what could be done in our discipline. (Only what was said was a bit more crude. Do I have to describe it in more detail?) I took the remark personally. So I escalated the argument, finally saying he never did anything around there anyway.

Well, he winged his coffee mug at me. He broke a picture of my wife and me that was on my desk. (I was lucky he didn't hit me.) I marched past him, down the hall to the management office, and demanded that my boss be dragged out of a meeting to resolve this, with the co-worker close behind wanting the same thing. The boss says "what the hell is going on here?"

OK, the co-worker was suspended from work for a couple of days and made to take an anger management course. I was made to take a conflict management course. You might say I was slapped on the wrist; you might say I didn't deserve any punishment at all. But for me the bottom line was what I learned: the self-esteem of the people you work with isn't some kind of immeasurable soft quantity that you can ignore if you want to succeed as a team. People have feelings, whether we think there is room for that in the workplace or not. Big companies can afford on-site shrinks and other programs to help take care of our sensitivities; entrepreneurs can't. We have to heal the hurts ourselves.

Better not to give those hurts in the first place.
  • Don't let conflicts stew inside of you, giving them a chance to grow and take shape.
  • Don't assume anything done to hurt you was intentional.
  • Do try to talk things out privately with those who offend you.
  • Go to the boss if a private talk gets nowhere. Bosses can be experienced arbitrators.
  • Remember that your co-workers were people before they were your co-workers. They may have outside factors influencing inside behavior.
  • Do what Solomon says: with all your getting, get understanding. :-)

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posted by Ron @ 10:07 PM

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