Conflict… It comes into your workplace and starts to stink up the place. What do you do? Do you thrive in situations of conflict, or do you turn the other way and pretend it doesn’t exist? How do the people on your team react? There are many ways people deal with conflict, and you’re not going to like all the ways others deal with conflict.
We all, at some point, deal with people at work we don’t get along with or for whatever reason we just don’t like. We try to make it work again and again and just can’t seem to find a resolution that feels good to both parties. When this happens, there tends to be a snowball effect. Our individual work suffers, our work environment becomes tense, and our stress levels shoot up. You may not know it at the time, but the damage extends to your team, showing up in strained relationships and diminished results.
Having an awareness of how you handle conflict and how those around you handle conflict will make work and life much more enjoyable. This won’t remove conflict from the workplace, but it will make it feel more manageable.
Whether you prefer the enneagram, the MBTI, the DISC, or another personality assessment, they can each provide great insights for work teams. Taking the time to dig in and truly understand each person’s preferences, strengths, and weaknesses, will help your team reach new heights together.
I am most familiar with the enneagram, so I’m going to provide you with some high-level conflict resolution tips using the enneagram types. To preface you, the following three groups are formed based on how each enneagram type handles conflict as well as disappointment:
The Competency Group (Types 1, 3, 5)
- Tip #1 – remember that problems can’t always be solved with rules and logic
- Tip #2 – realize that dealing with your feelings to full process problems can be beneficial
- Tip #3 – learn to approach problems with honest feelings, finding the silver lining
–
The Reactive Group (Types 4, 6, 8)
- Tips #1 – remember that problems can’t always be solved with feelings and that conflict isn’t the end of the world
- Tip #2 – realize that monitoring your displays of emotion is important
- Tip #3 – learn to approach problems with problem-solving skills, finding the silver lining
–
The Positive Outlook Group (Types 2, 7, 9)
- Tip #1 – remember that problems don’t always go away on their own
- Tip #2 – realize that facing a problem and working through it can be necessary and beneficial
- Tip #3 – learn to approach problems with honest feelings and problem-solving skills
–
I barely scratched the surface on this topic but know that awareness and action should be top priorities for you when dealing with conflict at work. Understand your own personality type and how that contributes to your conflict management style, then try to understand others around you in that way. Doing so will help you create an environment of cooperation and satisfaction even when conflict is present.
l
l
If you want to dive deeper into the world of personality types within your team… Chat with a CoreCounts Consultant about our options to help you and your team level up together!
