Disagreements over ideas can easily turn into arguments, especially in competitive work environments where everyone’s mindset is that they need to prove themselves with every opportunity. Avoiding conflict should always be the main priority during tense situations since work-related conflicts can be difficult to navigate even for the best communicators.
Where there are people, there is conflict. It’s in the nature of humankind to have different views, interests, and desires from those around us. While most of the time these differences help us grow and make our lives richer, sometimes they can create gaps and lead to conflicts. Here’s why conflict management matters.
Lack of employee motivation costs companies billions every year. Low motivation equals low productivity, poor results and low income. Studies show that 48% of employees don’t really like their jobs, while 80% feel stressed and only 30% feel engaged and inspired. At the same time, 18% of US employees completely hate their jobs.
Inappropriate behavior can happen in any company. As a boss or manager, it falls under your jurisdiction to manage such situations, and fast. When left unchecked, unsuitable actions can have serious impact on other employee’s performance as well as the office environment as a whole.
As humans, we are all unique. Not only by looks, knowledge or beliefs, but also when it comes to communication abilities and preferences. Everyone has a different approach and a unique way of expressing themselves. However, there are also shared traits that unite us, and are used to place us into different categories of communicator: extroverts and introverts, creative and analytical, morning persons or night owls, and so on.
Poor communication in the workplace has the potential to create conflict, negatively impact the morale of your team, and eventually translate in poor performance and loss of productivity. More often than not, work mistakes and failures are caused by miscommunication. Failing to communicate efficiently with your employees can have lots of negative consequences for both your company and your employees.
By this time in your personal and career development, you likely learned quite a bit. A lot of it is undoubtedly about communication techniques. Without communication, you cannot have teamwork. Or leadership. Or any sort of cooperation, to be precise.
Improving communication is at the core of organizational development. Anything you can do to improve communication will benefit your organization in all sorts of ways. Hence, it makes perfect sense to train teams into using effective communication techniques. Yet oftentimes, a few very effective ones go overlooked.
