Startupik

When an entrepreneur starts a business, he or she is just like the captain of a ship and should manage all kind of interactions between people whom they work with.  An obvious part of working with people is facing different point of view. Conflicts may arise in any team and collaboration should be done to lead company toward bigger goals and conflict management skills are essential for all startups.

Conflicts, breakups and clashes may arise within any startup and it’s the duty of a manager to manage any conflict between employees and coworkers. Managers can have two approaches toward conflict management: dominate and control or foster participation and putting employee’s feelings into consideration. It’s obvious that second option is the better way because it may identify the conflict at early stages.

Conflicts will arise based on any human interaction and if any manager can understand this fact then he or she may be able to lead the team to a more creative and innovative path. In this article we analyze conflict management in 3 steps which are reason behind conflict, result of conflict and solution.

Reason behind conflict

If you keep your eyes on your work place then you can find plenty of reasons which might lead to all kind of conflict between your people. Conflicts have their own reasons and we list some of them for you:

• First type of conflict happens when we have incompatible goals and attitude with the ones which are defined for the team. People’s job might not be in line with their ideas and goals and that’s why we see these type of conflicts.
• When people have the feeling that they have given a task which is too general or their inputs are not accepted by the team, then they might end up having conflicts with others. If managers ignore ideas and inputs from the others and don’t give them any importance then we, then they might fuel the rage and lead to conflict.
• If managers don’t evaluate performance of employees in a fair way and don’t have any concrete way of evaluating everyone in the same way, then we have a recipe for conflict.
• Unrealistic expectations and giving tasks to people before evaluating their capacity and skills may also lead to conflict because we can’t handle more than our capacity for long.
• Feedback is a key element of a healthy work space and if any manager ignores this fact, then they are calling for conflict.

Result of a conflict

Result of conflict is quiet bitter and we might find the following results out of their conflicts. They might end up ignoring others or giving in to what they believe is not right, next thing is getting forces to satisfy the others desires. Next one is adjusting to the situation and the last and best way is collaboration between both sides of conflicts.

Solution

We might have the following solutions to calm things done and sort them in our startup:

– keeping distance for short amount of time might help sides to cool down, rethink the situation and solve the problem in the process.

– having an evaluation system and allotting scores to people works as a manager or supervisor will be helpful. You can create reward system and create score cards for each employee. Then leader can solve conflict by referring to these cards and evaluate the situation.

–  Third method is getting feedback from both sides and team leaders. In this case manager can identify situation and discuss the issue with each individual involved. In the worst case you can change the teams and let people with the same attitude, work together.

– Sometimes you can remind people that their conflict affected the whole team and sense of guilt might kick in and let them end the conflict. And then you can slowly consider adding their input to prevent the same conflict.

– Last resort is a harsh one but sometimes it’s necessary. You can fine or even dismiss people who caused conflict.