In todays business world, it is very easy to find cross-cultural settings in many companies; people from all types of countries sitting together at a meeting or discussing the future of the company, but what happens when cultures collide and people find themselves trapped in a conflict situation?
On this blog, I will try to give some examples of other alternatives that might be effective when dealing with conflict situation, different from talking or the use of visual aids.
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- Simply Listen: as we have seen in many courses and probably in our personal lives (including work experiences), I think that the majority of the conflicts that arise in a company are because the manager, the CEOs or the people in charge dont even take the time to listen to their employees; they arent aware if they are sick, if they are having personal problems, if there family is ok, and son, they only see their employees (most of the time) as any other asset that has to make money for the company. As a personal experience, I had the chance to work in a cake factory, where the CEO was an uneducated man who had a lucky shot in life. He every single day entered the office and gave the "good morning" to everyone, but he never took the time to ask his employees (and their were only 20 employees by the way) how they felt or what was going on in their lifes. As a consequence, many of them quitted claiming mistreatment and the others work because they really need the money; was does this translate for the owners? a sad employee is a nonproducent employee (as we have seen, employees who are happy and motivated with their jobs tend to do better perfomance). So whats the message for the CEOs of a company: TAKE THE TIME TO LISTEN TO YOUR EMPLOYEES, THIS WILL PROBABLY ATTACK A CONFLICT AT ITS ROOTS.
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- Avoidance: some times, conflicts arise for stupid reasons or no reasons at all; inproper comments, a bad look, envy, jealousy, and so on can be the triggers to launch a conflict. In this case, it would be proper to keep an open mind and analyze everything before reacting (COGITO ERGO SUM, Descartes), that way, conflicts can be avoided at all costs. How can a CEO or a manager intervene in this? probably by turning fellow employees into FRIENDS, that way, they can integrate more and avoid resentment towards others.
- Measure Emotion Properly: even before thinking of involving some type of emotion into a work area, try to analyze and forecast what could be the probable results that can come from that. Sometimes conflict can arise because one party sees the other one as to cold or to mellow, so things start to escalate.
As a final conclusion, I think that talking can solve it all; maybe it can sometimes be a mistake and things could get resolved better by using other means, but solutions can also be obtained by simply discussing things out. It doesnt mean that we have to talk just to do it, we have to thnik hard what is the proper thing to say.
Bibliography
- Tourims Curriculum Framework, 2002. Deal with conflict situations. Accessed on 29/03/2011. http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/tourismb2003/THHGCS03B.pdf
- Bellafiore, Donna. Interpersonal conflict and effective comunication. DRB Alternatives, inc. Accessed on 30/03/2011. http://www.drbalternatives.com/articles/cc2.html
- Burton, Charlotte. Difficult relationships at work - dealing with workplace conflict. Conflict911. Accessed on 30/03/2011. http://conflict911.com/guestconflict/diff-relationships-work.htm
- McKee, John 2009. 10 tips and tactics for dealing with conflict. TechRepublic. Accessed on 30/03/2011. http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-tips-and-tactics-for-dealing-with-conflict/995
Images
- Accessed on 29/03/2011. http://mm89.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/different-cultures.jpg
- Accessed on 30/03/2011. http://thepeoplegroupllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/unhappy-employee-2-199x300.jpg
- Accessed on 30/03/2011. http://bestuff.com/images/images_of_stuff/210x600/cogito-ergo-sum-50505.jpg?1176161768
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