Workplace Conflict: 3 Surprising Ways it Escalates

Workplace Conflict Always Stinks

Nothing lets conflict marinate better than being stuck in the car with someone for a long drive. For most of us, that someone has probably been our spouse or significant other. If that scenario isn’t unpleasant enough, this time it was my boss.

The two of us had just finished delivering a 2-day off site workshop with a new client. With it being our first job with them, we were especially motivated to deliver exceptional results. Overall, things started well. We began with some fun team-building activities, before moving into the strategic planning sessions. The team was lively and looked engaged, but I could tell my boss was anxious. However, during the afternoon on the first day, I noticed the atmosphere starting to shift.

Have you ever walked into your house and noticed a strange new smell? Suddenly your awareness is drawn to this unfamiliar scent, and despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to locate where it is originating from. Until one day you discover a piece of food which fell behind your couch and God knows how long it has been rotting there. This kind of felt like that. I could not tell where it was coming from, but I knew something was different with my boss. Mixed in the with anxiousness, I was detecting a faint aura of frustration. It also felt like it was directed at me for some reason.

This sensation kept building throughout the next day and a half, until finally during our drive home, it felt like the car was saturated with it. My boss started the conversation with what I thought would be a simple debrief of our workshop. Yet, upon diving into things, the source of his frustration became clear.

During the afternoon of the first day, my boss wanted me to present some results from a preliminary survey we had the participants complete beforehand. However, I did not feel the data we had captured actually supported the recommendations we were trying to make, and thus I challenged him on it. That was the moment the floodgates opened. Upon revisiting this moment in the car, our calm debate turned into an all-out verbal onslaught. Both sides attacking and defending without any curiosity or empathy towards the other side. Communication had fully broken down, and now the goal was only to win.

I felt that he had set me up to fail by not giving me any notice ahead of time. He felt that I was being uncooperative and not seeing the big picture. In reality both perspectives had merit. After a long and messy argument, we identified that we had not prepared well for that portion of the workshop. My boss also helped me see how the survey results actually did support our recommendation. Had we addressed it sooner, we could have resolved this in a much more calm and composed manner.

Instead, we let food fall behind the couch.

Building a System for Workplace Conflict

While this dispute between my boss and I may have seemed like an isolated incident, in reality there were probably a number of different issues lurking beneath the surface that fed into it. Did we have enough transparent conversation about the plan ahead of time? Did I feel comfortable enough to speak up when my gut was telling me something was off?

These kinds of problems are happening every day in organizations, but just like those pesky food particles behind the couch, often we can’t tell something is wrong until the rot begins. And by then, the office if filled with the stench of it, and everyone notices. That’s the sinister thing about workplace conflict, it creeps up on us so quietly.

Many of us picture conflict as explicit, mean-spirited attacks, such as lashing out in anger at a colleague. While this can and does certainly still happen, during my many years working with organizations, I have observed that often conflict behaviors are much more subtle. Things like gossip, sarcasm, sabotage, resentment and avoidance tend to be much more prevalent. The problem is that these subtle behaviors are not as easy to identify as say shouting or name-calling. Furthermore, it’s even more difficult to identify the root causes like a lack of trust or unclear communication. That’s part of the reason why we struggle so much with managing conflict in a productive way.

In a recent study conducted by CPP Global:

• 89% of respondents had witnessed conflicts escalate in their workplace.

• 67% took extra measures to avoid their colleagues with whom they disagreed.

• 29% took several days to resolve the conflict.

• 16% had still not resolved a conflict which may have gotten worse over time.

Clearly, we need better systems and tools to help us manage conflict in our workplaces. This is one of the things I help organizations do; build out an effective system for managing these disputes and protecting relationships.

So in today’s article, I wanted to help you build your system by unpacking a few of the surprising ways conflict can escalate, and provide a practical tool to resolve and/or prevent each one.

3 Surprising Ways Conflict Escalates

#1 Personification – It’s not me, it’s YOU!

This refers to the tendency human beings have to attribute the source of a conflict to another’s personality (never our own of course.) For example: Kevin has been late to the last 2 weekly check-ins with his team, therefore Kevin is “lazy.” Little does his team know that Kevin’s wife injured her leg and therefore can’t drive the kids to school in the mornings. This sudden change of routine has Kevin scrambling. In reality, the problem was a practical one. However, his team assumes it’s his personality.

This is a very common problem in conflict, and the strange thing is that it can even happen when we know the source of the conflict is not the other’s personality. However, if we don’t have the trust and confidence to confront the issue early, over time we start to forget important details. Then in the absence of information, our brain will assign the problem to a personality trait, usually a judgement.

 Tool #1 – Principles over Personalities

So whether this problem happens with someone else or ourselves, we first need to pay careful attention to the thoughts and words of each party. Listen for personality judgements like lazy, inconsiderate, stupid, unprofessional, emotional etc. These kinds of words are not helpful because they don’t lead us to any practical solution. They do not define a specific behavior we want to see changed, and even if they were true, you will never influence someone else by judging them. It will only trigger defensiveness.

Therefore, we need to direct the conversation in a way that talks about the practical issue in a very specific way. What exactly is the behavior, problem or outcome that I want to see changed? This could look like:

• If you feel someone else is “lazy”, force yourself to think of exactly why? What specifically is the behavior they are engaging in that I feel is lazy? Then talk about that behavior, rather than using a subjective word like lazy.

• If someone else is accusing you in this way, such as “you were inconsiderate there!” Direct the conversation in a way that once again, speaks specifically to the issue. “What exactly did I do that you felt was inconsiderate? How can we fix this?”

Communicating in this way will move the conversation away from personalities to principles, which is much easier to resolve and will often produce better outcomes moving forward.

#2 Goal Shift – I will Teach you a Lesson

Goal shift describes how the original intent behind engaging in a conflict, will change over time; usually not for the better. The most common way this happens is from doing well, to winning, to hurting the other party.

Usually when a conflict starts, we simply want to fix a problem. Stephanie has a habit of not filling up the coffee pot after using it, and I simply want there to be fresh coffee when I have my break. At first it only feels like a minor inconvenience. However perhaps I kindly ask Stephanie to start doing this, and she gets defensive and is not taking responsibility. Now I get angry and proceed to try and lecture or coax her into seeing things my way. I am winning this argument! Finally as things ramp up, I abandon all hope of productive dialogue and now I simply want to hurt her back. Perhaps I resort to passive-aggressive behaviors like using up all the coffee before her, or being less cooperative when she needs my help on projects.

Tool #2 – Define Success

In sports, if the goal posts kept shifting, it would be very hard to have any kind of productive game plan. This is what makes goal shift so difficult to deal with. That is why we need to bring the conversation back to objective criteria, or some kind of shared definition of success.

Ask yourself, and/or the other person “what does success look like for us? What outcomes would we like to see happen?” Then build off any areas of common ground. If you sense the other party is already in an unhealthy place, then focus on their needs and desires first. This will help de-escalate the conflict and will make you more persuasive in your communication.

The most important thing, is that you have some kind of overarching value or principle you can appeal to. Furthermore, its good to try and find a solution that involves shared ownership for both parties. Everyone is committing to some kind of action.

#3 Forming Factions – The Nightmare Team

Finally, one surprising way workplace conflict can escalate is when the parties involved try to enlist others to their side. This is especially common in the workplace, and it can be intentional or unintentional. One person feels wronged and starts gossiping or venting to others in the office who really shouldn’t be involved. Then even though others were not a part of the conflict and probably have very little knowledge of what actually happened, they can start forming opinions or judgments and this can cascade into a series of subsequent mini-conflicts. Eventually warring factions are formed within the workplace that pervade even after the original conflict is resolved.

Tool #3 – Conflict Management System

Unfortunately, this kind of escalation is better addressed before it happens. It’s the old adage, “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.” This is where having an established conflict management system is very helpful. There are many pieces that can go into this, but 2 important ones are:

• An clear set of conflict resolution steps. In other’s words, what the different steps that happen when 2 employees have a conflict? The first could be the expectation that they try and resolve it on heir own. Step 2 could be then reaching out to their supervisor if they were unsuccessful with the first step. Maybe step 3 is engaging a 3rd party. The point is that the steps are clear and relevant to your organization.

• Having a clear conflict etiquette is also important. What behaviors during conflict are ok, and which are not? This can empower others within the office to help their peers accountable if they notice someone is trying to enlist them.

A Workplace with the Right Tools

So there you have it! 3 surprising ways conflict can escalate and some practical tools to resolve them. There are many other items that go into building an effective conflict management system, however these tools are a good place to start. Some of these may seem simple, however research has shown that just having 1 or 2 go-to tools for resolving disputes will drastically increase your team’s confidence and effectiveness in having these difficult and important conversation.

Furthermore, if you would like some continued support in helping your organization resolve conflict, I would recommend checking out my Conflict Reboot Program. During this training, I help you and your team learn to rewire the types of responses they have during conflict so they can approach it in a more productive way.

So feel free to check that out, or you can also book a free discovery call with me if you want to learn more about the various services I offer to help organizations optimize their performance.