Melvin Amador

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How Come Your Conflict Resolution Training Keeps Failing: A Hard Assessment

 

Your Dispute Management Fantasy That's Ruining Your Workplace: The Reason "Collaborative" Approaches Usually Cause Additional Problems Than They Resolve

 

 

Let me going to attack one of the most sacred cows in current mediation training: the belief that every business conflict can and should be settled through "win-win" solutions.

 

 

Such approach seems enlightened and humane, but following nearly two decades of consulting in dispute management, I can tell you it's frequently total rubbish that creates more complications than it fixes.

 

 

Let me explain the basic problem with the "win-win" mindset: it presupposes that each conflicts involve relationship issues or competing needs that can be somehow harmonized if parties just talk enough.

 

 

In the real world, many organizational disagreements involve genuine, fundamental differences in goals, valid rivalry for scarce resources, or cases where one party really needs to prevail and another party needs to lose.

 

 

We consulted with a large creative firm where the design department and the account management department were in ongoing tension about project approach.

 

 

Design teams wanted to produce cutting-edge, award-winning creative content that would establish their professional standing. Client services people needed campaigns that would satisfy conservative customers and maintain established client partnerships.

 

 

Each teams had completely valid objectives. Both positions were essential for the company's success.

 

 

Management consulted a series of organizational development specialists who spent weeks conducting "cooperative dialogue" meetings.

 

 

Those workshops generated complex "compromise" strategies that seemed sophisticated on conceptually but were completely unrealistic in practice.

 

 

As an illustration, they designed processes where all client work would somehow integrate "innovative excellence" with "account satisfaction." The consultants established elaborate review processes and decision-making processes intended to guarantee that everyone's concerns were included.

 

 

This result: decision-making timelines that took much more time than before, artistic campaigns that was compromised to the point of being ineffective, and customers who were confused by contradictory direction about project strategy.

 

 

Both teams were even more unhappy than originally because neither side was achieving what they genuinely needed to do their jobs successfully.

 

 

After half a year of this dysfunction, the team helped leadership to abandon the "mutual benefit" strategy and establish what I call "Clear Priority Setting."

 

 

Instead of trying to assume that each campaign could at the same time fulfill conflicting objectives, they created clear guidelines for deciding when innovative quality would get precedence and when account retention would be the primary concern.

 

 

With prestigious customers where the company needed to maintain long-term partnerships, client preferences would receive precedence.

 

 

For experimental clients or charity work, artistic staff would have increased freedom to develop cutting-edge approaches.

 

 

Regarding potential award entries, artistic quality would be the top focus.

 

 

Each groups were clear about precisely what the goals were for every client work, what standards would determine decisions, and what trade-offs were being chosen.

 

 

Tension between the groups virtually ended. Both teams could focus on excelling at what they did professionally rather than endlessly debating about priorities.

 

 

Account retention improved because account management teams managed to honestly communicate campaign approach and expectations. Design excellence increased on designated campaigns because artistic people were given definite authority to pursue innovative concepts.

 

 

This lesson: working to develop "collaborative" approaches for essentially opposing priorities frequently results in "everybody loses" outcomes where neither party gets what they really want.

 

 

Better to be clear about choices and make deliberate, thoughtful decisions about when various objectives will get precedence.

 

 

This is a different situation of how the "collaborative" mindset causes complications. The team consulted with a IT engineering company where senior developers and entry-level employees were in ongoing conflict about work distribution.

 

 

Lead developers wanted focusing on advanced, important projects that would develop their professional growth and increase their market standing.

 

 

Junior employees wanted opportunities to complex work to build their experience and grow their professional development.

 

 

Finite quantities of challenging opportunities meant that allocating more access to entry-level employees inevitably meant less access for established team members.

 

 

Supervision brought in organizational development experts who dedicated months trying to create "collaborative" arrangements that would magically satisfy everyone's professional goals.

 

 

These experts created elaborate approaches for "shared work responsibility," "coaching partnerships," and "skills sharing initiatives."

 

 

Zero of these approaches fixed the core problem: there were plainly not adequate challenging opportunities for each person to get what they needed.

 

 

This result: even more confusion in project distribution, slower project planning, and persistent conflict from all sides.

 

 

We helped them create a straightforward, merit-based process for assignment allocation:

 

 

Lead positions on challenging tasks would be given based on proven performance and track record

 

 

Junior employees would get specific development assignments created to develop their skills methodically

 

 

Specific requirements and pathways were created for promotion from beginning to lead roles

 

 

Every employees were clear about exactly what they had to accomplish to earn higher-level levels of assignment opportunities

 

 

Disagreement among various categories nearly stopped. New team members were able to focus on reaching specific skill milestones rather than arguing for insufficient assignments. Lead staff could work on complex projects without continuously defending their right to these projects.

 

 

Efficiency and quality increased dramatically across each skill categories.

 

 

The reality: honest, fair allocation often produces more effective results than elaborate "collaborative" arrangements that work to avoid inevitable choices.

 

 

Now let's examine probably the biggest harmful element of the "collaborative" obsession: how it protects inadequate employees and sabotages organizational standards.

 

 

I worked with a government agency where certain team was regularly not achieving performance standards, producing inadequate work, and generating complications for different units that relied on their work.

 

 

After affected departments complained about these quality problems, leadership consistently responded by arranging "cooperative problem-solving" meetings to find "win-win" approaches.

 

 

These sessions would consistently conclude in complex "workflow improvements" that essentially expected high-performing teams to work around the poor output of the problematic unit.

 

 

For instance, in place of demanding the underperforming unit to meet normal schedules, the "win-win" solution would be to lengthen all project schedules to accommodate their poor performance.

 

 

Instead of requiring them to fix their standards standards, other teams would be asked to provide extra review, help, and fixes to account for their substandard output.

 

 

That arrangement was incredibly inequitable to effective departments and systematically encouraged substandard results.

 

 

More problematically, it caused resentment and dissatisfaction among effective employees who sensed that their extra contributions was being taken for granted while poor employees were being accommodated from accountability.

 

 

We persuaded administration to eliminate the "collaborative" approach and establish straightforward performance systems.

 

 

They established clear performance requirements for every departments, with specific disciplinary actions for ongoing inability to achieve these requirements.

 

 

Their underperforming team was offered concrete training and a fair deadline to fix their performance. After they refused to reach the necessary expectations, necessary staffing actions were made.

 

 

This change was dramatic. Total efficiency improved substantially, team conflicts decreased, and employee satisfaction with effective employees improved substantially.

 

 

This reality: genuine "mutual benefit" outcomes result from maintaining consistent standards for all parties, not from lowering standards to enable substandard behavior.

 

 

Here's what I've learned after extensive experience of observing organizations struggle with counterproductive "mutual benefit" approaches:

 

 

Good conflict handling demands executives who are willing to make tough decisions, maintain consistent expectations, and acknowledge that not everyone can get everything they prefer.

 

 

Often the most effective solution is for someone to get what they need and others to compromise significantly. Often the best solution is to get rid of people who are unwilling to work professionally within organizational parameters.

 

 

Furthermore often the best outcome is to accept that some disagreements represent basic differences in approaches that cannot be compromised through conversation.

 

 

End working to create "win-win" arrangements where they shouldn't exist. Start establishing organizations with fair processes, consistent implementation, and the leadership to make difficult choices when collaborative solutions aren't appropriate.

 

 

The organization - and your most valuable staff - deserve nothing less.

 

 

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