Do you often wonder what causes conflict between two people? Different opinions, viewpoints and thought processes often result in conflict between two individuals, as no one is willing to compromise for the betterment of the situation. It can happen both in your personal and professional life. Conflict in professional life can not only negatively impact the workplace environment but also become a major hindrance in accomplishing business goals.
Many business leaders have a fight-or-flight reaction to conflict, which is not the wisest approach to handling conflict. By doing so, they drop the reason to square off for winning the conflict. However, the reason has a crucial role in conflict resolution. Dropping or fighting the conflict is never the solution. However, unfortunately, not many business leaders understand that.
Business leaders with poor conflict management skills can never run a successful business. Recently, many business leaders have improved their conflict resolution skills through executive coaching. Now, one question might be popping into your mind – how can executive coaching help me manage conflicts more effectively? Executive coaching can help business leaders handle situations that would otherwise result in increased distress or conflict.
Read this article to learn more about how executive coaching can help business leaders handle conflicts efficiently!
Signs of Poor Conflict Management Skills
Are you unsure of your poor conflict management skills? Here are a few sure signs that indicate you have poor conflict management skills:
- Always run away from it
- Can be overly accommodating
- Often fail to take a stand for yourself and your interests
- Avoid addressing disputes
- Jump into conflict and do everything to win
- Cannot stand the existence of conflict and try to settle it on less-than-ideal terms
Importance of Conflict Management Skills in Effective Leadership
When no one in the leadership team knows how to handle conflict, the chances are high that it will worsen. Resolving conflict in the workplace is one of the leader’s core duties. Employees expect their leader to step in and navigate conflict in a way that does not lead to full-fledged fights. If the leader fails to do so, employees will lose their trust in their leader.
Also, once the conflict worsens, it negatively impacts the employees’ productivity and makes it difficult for business leaders to stay focused. Therefore, to keep the work environment positive and employees motivated, a leader must have good conflict management skills.
How Can Executive Coaching Help Business Leaders Manage Conflicts Efficiently?
An executive coach will help business leaders reassess their conflict resolution skills and tweak them according to what they have planned to accomplish. Here are a few tactics that business leaders will learn through executive coaching to resolve conflicts effectively:
Identifying the Goal
When entering any session, an executive coach has one primary goal – understanding the client. Therefore, they will teach business leaders to focus on the same – understanding the other party. During a conflict, an executive coach will make business leaders understand where the other party is coming from, why they feel the way they do, and what outcome they want to achieve.
Most business leaders handle conflict with a clear goal of winning and protecting themselves, which often worsens the situation. However, with the right executive business coach, business leaders will try to understand the other party. It will defuse the emotion, reduce the anxiety and open the dialogue.
Agreeing to the Agenda
Executive coaching will help business leaders understand the need to discuss the conflict rather than avoid or deny it. Imagine a client walks into your office and says, “Your services are useless, and I’m quite mad at your company”. It will catch you off guard, making you defensive and angry.
However, imagine if, instead, the client walked into your office and said, “I have a few concerns about your services, and I would like to discuss them with you before I make my final decision”. Don’t you think the second case would have been much easier to handle? Because it gives both parties an equal chance of being heard and understood.
Therefore, business leaders must agree to the agenda as it will create an equal level playing field. Even if the client or employee aggressively approaches a business leader, they should not lose their cool and calm the other party down.
Asking Stronger Questions
Do you know what matters the most in resolving conflict? Asking the right questions. Albert Einstein famously said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask … for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.”
An executive coach will help business leaders identify the right questions to ask during the conflict. For example, instead of asking an employee, “Why did you do that?” business leaders should ask, “What data were you using to make that decision, or what was your thought process when making that decision”. By doing so, the other party will calmly answer the question instead of getting aggressive.
With executive coaching, business leaders will habitually take a moment to phrase a stronger question.
Listening Actively
Listening skills are one of the cornerstones of conflict resolution. Executive coaching will help business leaders strengthen their listening skills to resolve conflicts effectively. Sincere, active listening will help business leaders build a stronger connection and trust with the person they are talking to. Also, by doing so, business leaders will not miss out on any information crucial for resolving conflict.
Once business leaders become active listeners, they can gather more information and avoid jumping to conclusions.
Conclusion:
Conflicts are bound to happen in the business world. Denying their existence, of course, does not make them go away. Organisations that do not take conflict management seriously set themselves up for a big disaster, as it is obvious employees cannot stay productive in an environment of discontent.
Therefore, business leaders need to be best at resolving conflicts. In recent times, executive coaching has helped many business leaders improve their conflict resolution skills and is continuing to do so. If you are unable to find the best executive coaching service for yourself, contact ActionCoach.
Call us today at 01305 566150 or email westdorset@actioncoach.co.uk for the best executive coaching service. We will help you improve your conflict management skills!
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