When It Comes To Conflict in Workplace – Hidden Behaviors Provide Early Warning Clues
Is it possible that our behaviors are a tip off that conflict is present in our organization, undercover conflict, what I call “double secret” conflict?
It’s double secret because everyone goes around smiling at each other, even actually liking one another, playing on the softball team together – while at the same time they’re just waiting for the right moment to submarine your plans, and sabotage your strategies.
I have found it to be true, I bet you have too, that no matter what I say and no matter how I say I feel about a coworker, supervisor, or boss – it’s what I end up doing that proves what I actually believe.
We think we can tell from someone’s non-verbal communications when they are conflicted, upset, etc.
We might sense it in their posture of aggression, their hostile gestures, their unwillingness to make eye contact, or maybe the silent treatment when we’re around.
We think we’re pretty good at figuring out who’s on the team and who is ready to drop the big one. Too bad, another myth busted.
The really difficult people are those that smile and say how are you – then slip the knife in when you’re not looking.
For instance one of your coworkers says that they want to be cooperative, they want to share in the information gathering, they want to be part of the team willingly pitching in to help in the accumulation of information around which important plans for the businesses future are being made.
But in reality they withhold critical information until you come begging for it, they incorporate the famous “if they don’t ask, I won’t tell” policy. Until, that is, they can demonstrate their superiority by questioning the final decision in light of what they know nobody else knows.
It doesn’t matter to them that the organization has wasted time, energy, and money coming to an erroneous conclusion because of the missing information.
Or they can smile and go along with the planning process, never telling anyone this key information. The decisions are flawed and the organization loses money as a result.
Decisions made without all relevant input can be devastatingly costly. In addition the cost of decisions not made or directions not taken can never be accurately calculated.
We pay dearly when members of our teams put their desire for power, their interest in getting over on the company or the boss ahead of doing what’s right.
When the boss thinks they have a saboteur in their midst, they often try to appease them rather than fire them, discipline them, or even have a constructive conflict resolution intended discussion with them.
Our organizations are full of people we can not fire , and almost no one has a preemptive workplace conflict resolution strategy designed to seek out conflicts when they are still blips just barely visible on the screen.
The manipulators among us will try to get the boss to take their side in the matter. Or maybe they will report their findings to their supervisor in a way to suggest that only they were capable of ferreting out this information and bring it to them.
Unfortunately the boss, who always sees through the ploy, will go along with it just to keep things moving forward.
Every organization is made up of steps, the “critical path” – where something must be done by someone else in order for you to do your job and you must do your job in order for the next person to do theirs.
Manipulators understand this all too well – so they work their game on their fellow employees, knowing that their power is in the ability to blockade the process. Their coworkers, again always knowing what’s happening – will go along so the process can move along.
How much time do you think is consumed needlessly with these maneuvers? How much money, actual dollars off the bottom line and out the door is this “double secret” conflict costing your organization?
Is there anything you can do about it?
The answer, it depends. It depends on whether or not the person is sacred (can not be dealt with in any productive way) because of their position in the business or the family. If this is true your choices are limited to those with the power in the organization are willing to exert. Often the business collapse because of situations like this.
On the other hand if they are, as is usually the case, good people who want to do better – but have behavioral issues or other issues that conspire to put them in the role of problem instigator, there is hope.
And that hope comes from the organization’s leaders willingness to put in place a conflict prevention strategy around the principle that we are all different and that the key to our long term success is our willingness to work hard at managing those differences whenever they exist .
