Conflict mismanaged

Typical question in project management interview either with a situation and role playing or direct - have you managed conflict? There are many definitions of conflict and well defined techniques to deal with it. Despite that this is well mismanaged :). I don't think we can avoid conflict in profession and personal life - no way, so it is better to learn how to deal with this in a simplified way.

Root of conflict, I feel, is lack of clarity, mismatch of expectation, eagerness to win, jealousy, scarcity etc. There are many methods of managing / arresting these and those can be found in management books. My idea is not reiterating the same theory again as most of the time those are forgotten in our day to day activities and we mismanage more.

I rely of simple practice in professional management which rotates around planning of work, people, quality, time and other aspects of project management. I also consider the fact conflict bound to happen and my job is to minimize that toward everyone's benefit. Generally, there should be a goal on every project we work on - big or small. Needless to say, there will be some critical success factor(s) too in any project which is / are derived from voice of customer. One of the practical way to handle things ahead to integrating the team towards common goal and offer independent space for each individual to achieve a slice of the goal. Hummm... pretty simple in words but tough to implement. Anyhow, once individual achievement is planned out, alignment of that towards the goal to be verified on regular basis in the framework of management. I am dead sure this would stimulate any individual for contributing to larger achievement than his own small achievement but sense of pride and clarity in his own work would keep him focused than getting into conflicting situation - sort a lakshman rekha (a boundary). Everyone wants to be successful, aspires to grow and add value to the goal so let's stimulate that by identifying right place in the project organization / pyramid. Not that, everything will go smooth but at least it would help better handling by managing the sentiment of doing well. I will advice to focus on interest of the person than the person !!

With basic understanding of above, I go on creating clarity and set the expectation. It is iterative process which tightly coupled with strategic agenda of accomplishing goals. Participation from every member without colliding with each other, is possible when everyone is trying to fulfill the expected outcome set by the lead beginning of the project or work. Let's work on their interest so they are interested to work for common interest rather than someone else's interset to breed conflict - makes sense? However, there should be an infrastructure for handling mistakes which bound to happen. Mistakes are welcome but repeated mistakes are *not* which should be loud and clear and that in turn set the mood to learning. This framework of team management if used effectively, albeit tailored to the need of the work, we would observe less mismanagement of conflict with an integrated team.

So, it is clear that collaborative approach is one of the most effective technique of managing conflict and in fact this approach always improves team productivity by gluing the team to achieve common goal.

I have always been inspired by a famous quote of Colin Powell, I thought it would be good to share if you have not seen this yet. A great leader, negotiator, mentor who managed many conflicts. I think following statement is great to set expectation, bring collaboration and integrating team towards common goal.

“When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I'll like it or not. Disagreement, at this stage, stimulates me. But once a decision has been made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.”
Colin Powell quotes (Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93). At present, US Secretary of State, 1937)