MABELLE MARIE C.

CUTARA, LPT, MBA UNIVERSITY OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Let Your Team Have That Heated Conversation

by Liane Davey

PART I. SUMMARY

As a manager, you might have your own stories of unpleasant or unproductive

emotional conflicts that cause you to steer your team away from contentious or

confrontational discussions. Unfortunately, your team might be one of many that

foregoes the benefits of healthy conflict because they are unwilling or unable to deal with

the emotions that conflict often elicits. When you or your team members are not

comfortable or adept at managing emotions, your team is likely to avoid issues and wind

up in serious conflict debt stifled by the sum of all the undiscussed and unresolved issues

that stand in the way of progress.

When you say or do things that threaten your inclusion in your group, you

experience an emotional reaction that's similar to when you experience physical pain.

Once you understand that emotions play a role in decision-making, it's your job as a

manager to understand the source of the emotions so you can learn from them. If you

are seeing an emotional outburst, it's likely that there is some injury being done to the

person. What do I need to understand?" The wording is significant because you do not

want to make the person feel embarrassed or stigmatized as you might if you said, "You

are crying. Why are you crying?" "This is important" also works because it does not

presume that you know what the person is thinking or how they are feeling as in, "You

are upset, tell me what's wrong". I am often asked whether it's best to continue with the

conversation that's become emotional or to adjourn and return to the emotional subject

later. If the person is crying or screaming to the point that they cannot catch their breath,

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you can say, "This is important. As you listen to the person's response, reflect what you

are hearing. Your role as a manager is to guide your team into and through the most

contentious discussions that your business faces. If you sense trepidation as you get

close to a difficult topic, reassure the team that it's worth addressing the issue to get to a

resolution. Set the tone that the discussion might get emotional and that's ok you will keep

working on it until you come to the best answer.

PART II. INSIGHTS

The main point in this article is that as managers, we should not limit what we can

do just because we want to avoid heated conversations. Not all organizational conflicts

are bad. The article argues that what is important is on how we learn to handle our

emotions, and on how we are able to convert our emotional outbursts into healthy

discussions. The article wasn’t made up of extraordinary thoughts, anyway. I found the

author’s contentions as true yet very plain, somehow the entire article for me, was not a

powerful one.

In all fairness, though, I totally agree with the author’s thoughts regarding on how

we engage with emotions, such that, emotions are influential cues in a team. It is not

good to judge nor punish anybody just because of showing emotion. That includes not

criticizing them, not responding to emotion with more emotion, and not avoiding them.

The very first reason why many companies hate having conflicts among their employees

is because they consider all conflicts as unhealthy; as if they wanted to avoid any form of

arguments.

I believe, some of the best ideas in the world are products of emotional conflicts,

and heated conversations. Smart people usually would take firmly on their stand and

make sure that their suggestions are heard, and even so, followed. However, we cannot

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deny the fact that, despite the saying “more heads are better than one, sometimes, too

much of an individual’s thoughts may be detrimental to an organization.

Through conflicts, we can also be able to know the real thing about others; we can

assess a person’s attitude whenever we also see their “not so good” side. We all have

probably experienced enough conflict in our lives enough to evaluate what’s healthy or

unhealthy when we are in the situation. Sometimes, what I don’t like in organizational

conflicts, is when the mediators, are not genuine mediators. It is better to know both

sides, of course, a mediator should at first be neutral in knowing the whole story, before

coming up with a decision, and in patching things up.

As what we have studied before, we’ve learned that Western people handle their

people differently compared to Asian people. Filipinos, for instance, are generally

emotional people. Most Filipinos, easily get humiliated, get hurt when they hear bad

things about them. Usually, they also avoid real confrontations; they tend to murmur and

sometimes complain about many things. Finally, I believe that a conflict and/or heated

conversation can either be bad or good, depending on how the person views the situation.

What experts would always say is that there is no such thing as to “totally eliminating

tension in your workplace”, in fact it isn’t practicable nor healthy for your organization in

the long run.

The best approach is to redirect the attention wasted on petty fighting toward a

positive pursuit. Most of the great leaders in the world believe that a conflict doesn’t need

to be destructive; a conflict should be leveraged rather than controlled. Conflicts can also

be dealt with the right amount of compassion, as well. Likewise, let’s ponder that

happiness is always a choice, after all.

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 RELATED STUDIES/ARTICLES

Let me also mention some related studies and articles, both international and local

that are relevant to the argument being stood up by the author.

First, a 2016 descriptive research which aimed to explore supervision group

leaders’ conflict management strategies in Turkey, revealed that their conflict

management strategies used by group leaders were respectively problem solving,

compromising, dominating and avoiding. Subordinates who perceived their superiors as

primarily utilizing dominating and avoiding style viewed them as incompetent in

supervision and thus lowering their level of job satisfaction. Dominating was most related

to avoiding style.

Second, a mixed design study, still in Turkey, regarding Conflicts Management

Model in School, concluded that the reasons for conflicts occurring in school has been

diversified based on the way of doing things, individual differences and school

management. The strategies for conflict solution used by the teachers vary according to

school shareholders in which they experience conflict. Furthermore, findings have been

obtained regarding that there is not any common management policy in the school. In

this context, “Management Model for Conflict in School” for building conflict management

culture in the school has been made.

Third, an online article back in December 23, 2019 written by Phillip Sandahl and

Alexis Phillips brought out a stand that is for me, is just right and perfect. They did not

focus only on the fact that we need to accept that heated conversation can sometimes

be okay, but rather believed that having a team conflict is normal and avoiding conflict is

also normal. Further, their article stressed that harnessing conflict's inherent energy and

turning it into creativity leads to a stronger team and better team results.

In the Philippine setting, a research entitled Conflict Management Styles of

Secondary School Administrators in Cagayan Province, Philippines by Wilma P. Azurin

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views that if a school administrator manifests a positive work value he or she is likely to

perform better in the job as least occurrence of problems that could pave the way for

collaborative efforts towards the attainment of organizational goals. Data also revealed

that solution-oriented style of conflict management is perceived to be employed by more

dynamic and democratic school administrators.

SIGNIFICANCE TO PRESENT WORK SITUATION

The insights from the article relate to my present situation at work knowing that

any workplace is not excused from any form of conflicts. Conflict between team members

can seem to be an inevitable result of different people working closely together. Often, it

can lead to productive change. But at other times, it can damage teams and dramatically

lower morale. Knowing how we can manage and resolve conflict successfully can

increase understanding within our own team, and improve people’s relationships with one

another.

I think what’s important is to accept the reality that people are really diverse; we

have different behaviors and levels of patience. In my workplace, teachers always get

irate when faced by a lot of pressures; they even shout at each other. I personally don’t

like unhealthy discussions, because obviously they are pointless. But if we raise

arguments that are relevant, then I believe that’s ok. There’s a big disparity between

what’s acceptable and what’s not. We need to respect people's individual differences,

while helping them avoid becoming too fixed in their position. We should make sure our

relationships take top priority because having good long-term relationships with co-

workers is critically important. Always treat everybody involved in the conflict with respect.

Also, we need to keep people and problems separate. For example, it can be

tempting to brush off someone's points because we think they're just being difficult or

picky, especially if our relationship with them isn't great. But they're speaking up for a

reason. So focus on the issue not the person. And, make sure we listen first before talking.

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It was a good thing that I have a vast experience of being a debater; I was a former

debating team captain in college. As a teacher, I became the founder of the Society of

Enlightened and Eloquent Debaters (SEED) in our town.

Heated but healthy conversations with a mix of sarcasm are very common

nowadays, if we don’t keep our cool, we can easily get away and get to the point of

shouting at our office mates; for me this is the unhealthy and unprofessional way of

dealing with emotional conflicts. But if we positively increase our patience and

understanding while going through the process of resolving conflict we can be able to

expand our awareness of the real problem, and eventually gain insight into achieving

goals with undermining our co-workers.