Emerging Leaders Feel Unprepared for Conflict Management

A conflict between two employees can feel like a minor hiccup at first, but you might blink and find your entire workforce suddenly polarized, having taken sides on which employee’s perspectives they support. In the midst of this chaos, the leader’s conflict management skills come into play, with all eyes on how they manage to diffuse the situation and help things die down. Managing conflict as a leader is not always complicated, but regardless of the intensity of the conflict, it demands that the leader take on an active role in diffusing the situation.

Recent surveys have revealed that leaders are not as certain about their conflict resolution skills as one might expect, giving us a clear area of training and improvement for future leaders.

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Emerging Leaders Are Not Confident About Their Conflict Management Skills

Managing conflict as a leader is not a simple task. If all it required was to tell the two warring parties to just stop fighting, anyone could claim to be an expert at conflict resolution. In truth, the task of conflict management is a tricky one for leaders as it requires them to be very careful about their approach, ensuring that they listen to both employees fairly and provide them with a resolution that allows peace to prevail within the workforce. 

Unfortunately, due to the sensitivity of the task and the skill it requires, many new leaders lack the confidence to manage conflict in the workplace. A DDI survey of emerging leaders on conflict management found that over 49% of manager candidates lack the skills necessary to manage conflict. Only 12% demonstrate high proficiency in this area, signaling the arrival of a worrying trend.

The leadership skills surrounding workplace conflict is a multifaceted ability, not just a single of managing situations well. The DDI study was able to break down and study the skill, and it found that 61% of leaders have difficulty clarifying and understanding the conflict’s core issue. For 21% of mid-level leaders, understanding the root cause of the problem is among the biggest challenges. Without understanding the problem, it can be nearly impossible to work toward a resolution and that’s where the problem begins. 

Additionally, 65% of leaders struggle with providing the necessary support and resources during conflict management while 60% of leaders struggle with involving team members in the process of developing solutions. As you can tell, different leaders struggle with different parts of the conflict management process. 

Tips for Leaders on Building Conflict Resolution Skills

The survey of emerging leaders on conflict management puts a lot of workplace issues into perspective and shows us that management teams are not sufficiently prepared to handle an evolving workforce. With the diverse makeup of most organizations conflicts are inevitable. 

Especially with the multigenerational teams we are seeing now, there is an obvious divide in terms of each group’s approach to work. Managers and leaders need to be prepared to understand and navigate these differences and bridge the gap between workers wherever possible. Here are some tips for leaders who want to develop conflict-resolution skills.

• Listen to all the parties involved in the conflict patiently with an open mind
• Do not assume you understand the situation without all the facts
• Show empathy for the parties and not judgment or contempt for them
• Set ground rules for resolving the conflict and ensure both parties remain respectful throughout
• Establish what violations are non-negotiable and set consequences for violating the rules
• Remain objective and don’t pick sides or hand out favors
• Facilitate peaceful discussion of the issues and ensure that all parties feel heard
• Ask both parties how they would like to resolve the conflict and find a middle ground
• Ensure that both parties are clear about their side of the bargain and how they need to proceed next
• Attend training on conflict resolution and constantly work on updating the skills to suit the modern workforce
• Once a conflict is resolved, check in regularly to see how the workers are doing and ensure there are no lasting impacts of the conflict that need to be addressed 

Leaders who feel unprepared for conflict management need to start practicing and preparing for the application of the skill quickly. Conflicts are best addressed and resolved immediately as they occur so the faster that individuals spruce up their skills, the sooner they will be able to find and address a problem.

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