How can leaders resolve divisive conflict within their teams? When there's animosity and frustrations that are happening within a team, it's so easy for people to stop working with one another or even try a little bit less to work with one another. Team members start working in silos and your productivity drops.
It can cause people to feel frustrated, annoyed, scared, and uncertain. But it doesn't have to be this way just because there's divisive conflict within a team. It’s actually a great opportunity to create bonds and deepen understanding.
How do we start using conflict in a way that creates a depth of understanding and strengthens bonds? As a business consultant who works with teams to develop collaborative and productive team cultures, I want to share with you a format you can use with your team to develop a deeper understanding and create bonds with your team members during conflict.
In this video we're going to be going over a very practical, effective method called Nonviolent Communication. I'm going to break down the four simple steps that I and many others have used to help team members understand one another and move forward.
Transcription
Leaders who are looking to resolve conflict within their teams. Having a team free of conflict. When there's that animosity those frustrations that are going within a team. It's so easy for people to stop working with one another or try a little bit less to work with one another.
It can cause people to feel frustrated, annoyed, scared, uncertain, and then they start working more in silos and your productivity drops. But it doesn't have to be this way just because there's conflict within a team doesn't mean it has to be so destructive.
And so how do we start using conflict in a way that creates a depth of understanding and actually strengthens bonds more than tears them apart. My name is Michael Vargas. I'm a business consultant who works with teams to develop collaborative and productive team cultures, and I want to share with you these ways that you can use conflict to develop a deeper understanding and create bonds within your team members.
And we're going to be using what's called. Nonviolent communication. It's a very popular methodology. And so I'm going to break it down for the four simple steps and they're not necessarily always in this order but things that to be aware of so that when you have team members that are really going at each other you can use this format to help them understand one another and move forward.
So the first part here is about observation. It's so easy for team members to be like John was acting like a jerk John is acting stupid and so on and so on. So we want to help our team members first try to discuss what it is that they actually observed without the judgment. John did not respond to me when I spoke to him. John did not look at me or speak to me during the meeting.
Those are things that are actually observable. And that's where we want to start off with first is what is it that we're actually talking about and removing judgment. When we have judgment the walls go up and it's much harder to have a conversation. The next part is feelings. Yes feelings. Why are we bringing feelings into the workplace? Well, because people are in conflict when they're in conflict. There are emotions that are going up. So being able to at least speak to that will help people feel heard will help people feel considered. So taking the time to understand.
How is it that people are feeling? Are they feeling sad are they feeling scared are they feeling frustrated? Are they feeling uncertain are they feeling unsafe? You want to help them understand? What is it that they're feeling so that we can help them move past that feeling. Those feelings are what hold people to the conflict. The next part, which is a question that rarely gets talked about is needs. What is it that this person actually needs what is it that they need in this moment.
I've asked so many people that question and they don't even know. So we get to work with our team members to help them understand. Okay. I'm actually needing security. I'm actually needing to be understood. So getting a sense of what these people need so that we can give them what they need so that their feelings can be managed. And then this is how we move forward with it by them making a request.
A very specific behavior. Don't just say I want you to listen more. It's kind of hard to quantify listening, but you can say when I say something I would like for you to at least summarize what I said, so I know you understand and then these people who are in conflict have a dialogue about this specific request. Just because someone made it doesn't mean that they're going to actually do it. It means this is the starting point of the conversation.
And so when teams are in conflict we can work to understand what request would work for both parties. So this is a very simple format that you can use with your team when they're in this divisive conflict and it allows for a deepening of understanding of themselves. And what's going on.
A deepening understanding of each other and then also as a leader for you to see how this happens and how this works with them. So you now know how you can continually help resolve conflict and then continually show that to your team. I hope this was helpful for you. Thank you so much for checking us out. Now. If you'd like to learn more about team culture, you can visit us at lead by impact.com. Thank you so much.