Running a team is demanding and ensuring business needs are met takes up more time than you have allotted to the job. In kind, conflict is demanding and can take a physical and mental toll on the individuals involved, be they on the ground level of the dispute or at the point of intervention. It seems reasonable then to consider outsourcing mediation and resolution support to those who are better equipped in both time and skill. Should you hire a conflict resolution company so you can focus on your core responsibilities and allow the conflict professionals to do what they do best?
Should You Hire a Conflict Resolution Company?
Conflict can delay productivity, cause long-term relational tensions between employees, and decrease employee retention. It can also create costly legal setbacks and leave you losing some of your best talent for all the wrong reasons. Allowing conflict to invade your organization and leave long-lasting negative impacts is not an option, but sacrificing your time and resources to it might not be either. So should you hire a conflict resolution company? If you’ve been wondering about that already, here are some additional questions to ask yourself to find out for sure.
Do You Feel In Control of Your Emotions?
Do you feel like you have a good grasp on your own emotions? Can you ensure you won’t become escalated yourself in anxiety or anger if you try to intervene in an already-escalated situation? Many managers step into conflicts happening between their employees assuming their authority will give them the upper hand and allow them to assert a sense of calm and resolution. But human emotions don’t necessarily respond to authority with calm and resolution and your presence could, in fact, make things more heated. It’s important that you don’t get triggered in that instance because things could get worse. Ensure you have a good sense of what dysregulates you and have tools to keep calm, otherwise getting a neutral third party to intervene may be the better option.
Do You Have the Skills?
Do you understand how to step inside of someone else’s distress and actively listen to what they’re saying and what they’re not saying? Conflict isn’t always about the actual content being discussed. While someone may be frustrated about the way someone else spoke to them or an unfair expectation placed upon them, oftentimes what they’re upset about is something deeper. Are you up to the challenge of listening to the unmet need underneath the anger? Can you validate and dialogue effectively, calmly, with the right containment and patience needed for such emotional needs? If not, that is understandable. Managers aren’t usually in their position because they’re good at handling emotional needs of others. You got to where you are because you’re good at the other aspects of your job. So focus on those and let the conflict specialists handle what they’re good at.
Do You Want to Expand Your Skill Set?
Maybe you don’t have some of these skills but you would like to. In that case, you wouldn’t necessarily need someone to resolve an active conflict but would rather want someone to provide education and training on how to be prepared for conflict when it does arise. If you’re open to conflict coaching or skills development in the area of conflict, hiring a conflict resolution company can do just that. In this case, conflict resolution specialists can put together a customized training program for your organization that will provide you and your team with insights on how to stay one step ahead of conflict. This can include communication skills, de-escalation skills, how to create policies and procedures in favor of diversity and inclusion, and how to identify and amend other systemic issues that may be contributing to conflict within your organization.
Can You Remain Neutral
In order to resolve misunderstandings in the workplace, you should be able to remove yourself from the outcome. This can be challenging for anyone who works within the environment or team in which the conflict is occurring. That’s because whether you’re personally involved or not, you have a vested interested in the outcome, even if it’s just the outcome of the conflict ending. But managers may also have preferences or sentiments toward employees that they like better or they may feel upset toward employees that they have also had conflict with in the past. In this case, your lack of objectivity may come through in subtle ways that will prove problematic in not-so-subtle ways. A neutral third-party will not have this issue and will be able to resolve the matter with unbiased nonpartisanship.
Hiring a conflict resolution company can help you in the trenches when dealing with employee conflict and avoiding the costly impacts of it. Let the professionals guide you in this critical leadership function. Contact Pollack Peacebuilding Systems today to get the right solutions for your team.
