I don’t have conflict, but…I had an first meeting with someone earlier this week who apologized at the outset. They apologized was sorry because she doesn’t have conflict per se, but was hoping I could help anyway. So, I asked what was on their mind. They run a business with a team and a lot of clients. . No one was overtly at odds. No unprofessional behaviour. People showed up, did their work, and even pitched in when needed. But like most businesses, there was a lot of change in the last 1-2 years. People left and others joined. When people left, there was stress while those who remained picked up the slack. That stress persisted as new people joined and navigated a learning curve. There were exit interviews, onboarding sessions but no real insight into why people came or went. There was an apparent generational gap between the people who left and those who stayed. More senior staff engaged less with the newer junior staff. One senior employee voiced concern that they were just hiring more people who would leave and the cycle would start all over again. Now, clients were starting to speak up. Nothing major, but responsiveness was a little slower, deliverables took a bit longer, and they needed more revisions than usual before finalized. In my world, conflict is any issue that disrupts work flow. This team had disruption. This group didn’t know why people joined, why they left, or why they stayed. They didn’t know one another’s career goals or how they viewed work as part of their broader life. Individual team members seemingly didn’t “get” one another based on generational differences. Thankfully, the demystification process is relatively simple. First, they need to know what the issues are. Then, they need to talk about them. I’ll help them do that, but you can do this too. The most important part is to ask questions with a genuine willingness to hear the answers. In this case, it will start with the business leader. They have to invite a candid conversation. And they have to do it in a way that makes clear they are willing to learn, willing to be critiqued, and willing to lean in to doing something new or differently. That’s where we will start. And admittedly, that might be the hardest part. But once it’s started, the opportunities will begin to emerge. While conflict resolution is better late than never, it’s easier to into it when it’s at that stage where we aren’t even sure it’s actual conflict. When we know for sure we have conflict, that first step always feels like a much bigger one.
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