Why Your Team Needs Conflict Resolution Training
Summary: Conflict at work is inevitable. But here's the thing most leaders miss. It's not about avoiding conflict altogether; it's about how your team handles it when it shows up. Without the right tools and training, small disagreements can snowball into major problems that cost you time, money, and your best people. In this article, I'll walk you through why conflict resolution training isn't just a nice-to-have anymore. It's a critical investment in your team's success.
Conflict Resolution Training Should Not Be Reactive
Perhaps one of the most popular topics I work with clients on is conflict. It's no surprise, as conflict truly has the power to make or break a team, depending on how it's handled. However, while conflict is one of the most common topics I work on, it often comes in a reactive way rather than a proactive one. Usually, clients come to me after conflict has been brewing underneath the surface for quite some time. Then one day it finally bubbles up to the surface, and a good employee of 10 years up and leaves the company.
By that time, the roots of mistrust, cynicism, and an "us vs. them" mentality have already entrenched themselves in the company culture, and it's a lot messier to deal with. This is why I stress the importance for organizations to build a conflict management system, and part of that is regular training.
I once had a client tell me, "Old habits die hard. If we want our team to adopt new habits, they need the repetition of these new skills." He had a philosophy of having me work with his team on a regular basis, even if it meant repeating some material I had already done. He was building a system for his team. Funny how most leaders understand the importance of regular training for safety or compliance, but not for how we treat our people.
The Business Case for Conflict Resolution Training
In recent years, there has been a growing body of literature on the cost of conflict, and many leaders are starting to take notice:
A 2008 study by CPP Inc. showed that US employees spent an average of 2.8 hours per week dealing with conflict. This equates to $359 billion annually in salary.
Similarly, research from The Myers-Briggs Company found that managers spend an average of 4 hours a week dealing with conflict.
Despite this, many organizations still treat conflict resolution as something that is nice to have and approach it in a very reactionary way. I would like to suggest that we should no longer think of conflict resolution as a "soft skill" but an essential leadership competency.
Nonetheless, it's hard to measure the effects of conflict, which is why it is often allowed to fester for too long until the effects become too hard to ignore. Most companies simply do not have the time and resources available to turn conflict resolution into a KPI. This is where leaders need to take a step up the chain and approach conflict from a proactive stance. In other words, what kind of behaviors do organizations that manage conflict well do? That becomes the measurement.
So what would some of those behaviors look like? Here are some of the things we would see in organizations that effectively manage conflict:
They communicate their expectations around conflict clearly and regularly
They have organizational values that speak to the importance of wellness and relationships
They have an established process for engaging, reporting, and resolving conflict
They stress the importance of having difficult conversations
They promote people based on emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills
They equip their team with tools and language to resolve conflict through regular training
These are just a few of the ways we can begin to wrap our heads around conflict KPIs, or as I like to call them, KSIs (key success indicators). The great news is that conflict resolution training can improve all these points I mentioned. How exactly? Let's look at it in more detail.
Three Key Benefits of Conflict Training
1. Creating a Common Language
One of the benefits I highlight surrounding any kind of training for organizations is that it creates a common language. This is certainly true for conflict. What I mean by this is that your team learns to row in the same direction by adopting the same tools, values, and vocabulary around a certain topic. In this case, conflict. That way, everyone knows what the expectations are, and it creates a shared etiquette and eventually a culture. Assuming leadership properly supports the training.
2. A Self-Help System
Another great benefit of conflict resolution training is that it empowers your team to resolve issues on their own. Typically, leaders get overloaded dealing with interpersonal issues among the team and don't have time or energy to focus on strategic initiatives. While I believe it is important to be involved in these kinds of issues (such as conflict), teams are always most effective when they are equipped with a self-help system. Conflict resolution training creates that by giving your team some go-to tools that will increase their confidence and effectiveness in handling conflict. In doing this, team members are also more likely to attempt to resolve conflicts on their own rather than escalating them to a manager.
A study in 1992 found that after students received peer mediation and conflict resolution training, the frequency of student-student conflicts that teachers had to manage dropped by a staggering 80%. Furthermore, the number of conflicts referred to the principal was reduced to zero in that study. These are the kinds of benefits we can see from building a self-help system through conflict management training.
3. More Effective Leaders
If your team is more confident and effective in handling conflict, it means that disputes get resolved more quickly and don't have the chance to grow. Your team is more likely to have difficult conversations early before small issues become big ones. Furthermore, even if your team is unable or unwilling to resolve it themselves, training will also help leaders mediate and de-escalate conflict. All this means more capacity for leaders to focus on what is most important, like caring for their team and strategic vision. And when leaders can lead well, it has a trickle-down effect on their teams, leading to increased engagement, retention, and ultimately performance.
Building Your Conflict Management System
It's no secret that all the things I mentioned above lead to greater organizational performance. We have seen that conflict costs organizations an incredible amount of time and money. That is why it is crucial for organizations to create a system for handling conflict if they want to perform at their best, and training is a foundational piece of that. I offer a number of programs to help leaders and teams engage conflict in a better way, such as my Conflict Reboot Program. This training will help you and your team by:
Building a common language in your organization around appropriate conflict behavior
Deepening your understanding of self and others in conflict
Understanding and recognizing destructive conflict behaviors
Applying techniques to redirect destructive behaviors into more productive responses
In addition to training, I also offer 1:1 Leadership Coaching for leaders so they can identify their blind spots surrounding conflict management and improve their performance. If you are looking to equip your team to better manage conflict, I would love to have a conversation about how I can help.
Go ahead and book a free 30-minute Discovery Call with me to get the process started.
Related Resources:
Keywords: conflict resolution training, workplace conflict management, leadership development, team performance, organizational culture, conflict management system, employee retention, leadership coaching
