The workplace grows increasingly diverse. I define diversity as anything that makes one person different from another. By this definition, some personal characteristics make identifying how we are different from those we work with easy. At the same time, there are more subtle differences. These can be overlooked or ignored. A leader who aspires to bring people together and achieve optimum levels of performance needs the skill to leverage this diversity. 

In some cases, managers either intentionally or unintentionally attempt to move people to conformity. This is essentially an attempt to make everyone the same. I understand this desire as it appears to the manager that her job will be easier if everyone acts and thinks the same way. If this is your expectation as a leader, how realistic is it? The energy expended attempting to get people to act as you want them to act and the frustration you experience when it does not happen can be better spent. 

Diversity presents the integration and differentiation challenge. Your team has to be integrated enough to work together and fit into the organization while differentiated enough to bring individual resources derived from personal uniqueness to the team. Teams that achieve this balance share three characteristics. 

• Each person understands self in order to contribute out of strengths and manage weaknesses. 

When a person contributes from self-understanding, there is less temptation to let another person define individual contribution. As people understand and lead self well each one fits into the team without losing personal high potential or hindering team productivity. Everyone complements others with confidence in what each one can and cannot contribute to the team.  The expectation is that everyone contributes out of personal strengths and weaknesses. 

• Acceptance and appreciation of self and others expressed as openness and mutual support. 

Failure to accept and appreciate self and others generates judgment, criticism, relational distance, and misunderstanding. This becomes a negative diversity experience. At best, independence limits group productivity. At worst, everyone lives in constant turbulence.  Alternatively, when everyone accepts what others bring to the group with openness and mutual support, one person’s strengths cover another’s weaknesses. This is diversity’s power. 

• Collaborative interactions evidenced in collective outcomes. 

Diversity’s power results in collective outcomes. The ability to collaborate derived from acceptance and appreciation engages every resource each person possesses. In the end, the team’s productivity improves as each person’s best synergistically produces what the individuals cannot. Personal achievement excels as well when each person contributes from her strengths. 

Some managers may believe it easier to make everyone the same. Great amounts of energy have been expended to this end. The problem with this approach: it goes against nature. Do we really believe it is easy to make someone become who he is not? It is easier to position a person to be who she is with the expectation of openness and support of others. There will be some turbulence as acceptance is sorted out, but it diminishes in time. Attempting to make people who they are not for conformity’s sake perpetuates turbulence.

Accountability, when discussed in organizations, usually focuses on employees as subordinates. Managers expect people to be accountable for the results of their work, as they should. A problem develops when people are not as productive as expected and managers cannot or do not hold people accountable. This occurs in spite of the coaching and counseling training that many organizations rely on as the way for managers to approach their responsibility. When the initial focus of accountability is on the person in the subordinate position, it is difficult for accountability to work. The initial focus of accountability should be on the leader. 

The leader should be accountable for his or her leadership before he or she expects accountability from others. The way to accountability as a leader is through credibility. People tend to embrace accountability to someone who is equally accountable to them. When you, as a leader, fulfill your role well you become someone to whom others willingly become accountable. Voluntary accountability is much more powerful than relying on authority and power. Becoming credible requires attention and intention to your leadership role. Here are three ways to build your credibility in a way that develops accountability. 

Create ownership by offering opportunity 

I find that leaders value people who take ownership in their work. Ownership increases accountability. If you, as a leader, want to increase ownership, then be accountable to provide people the opportunity to own their work. It must be work worth owning from their perspective. They have little interest in doing your work. Unless you are accountable to provide opportunity, you may find it difficult to hold them accountable as owners. 

See results by positioning people to achieve – 

The fundamental need for accountability develops when one fails to meet expected results. I have worked with managers who believe people do not want to or cannot succeed so they exert control that results in micro-management. In the end, these managers still struggle to find significant productivity. If you want people to deliver results, be accountable to position them to achieve. Most people can achieve more than they realize. An effective leader positions team members to surprise themselves, even though he or she is not surprised. He or she sees the potential in people and believes they want to succeed. 

Experience progress by developing healthy relationships – 

Many times, work groups cannot progress because people do not work well together. Even maintaining the status quo presents a challenge in these cases. Managers get frustrated from endless turbulence. If you want people to progress in the ability to work together, you as a leader must be accountable to develop healthy relationships within the team. If you do not fulfill your accountability to guide people on your team out of relational turbulence, you should not expect them to progress in their ability to work together. 

There are many ways a leader can be accountable to followers at both the team and organizational level. If you want to increase accountability from those in your organization or on you team, first make sure you are credible as a leader. You will find the willingness of people to be accountable to you increases with your credibility.

Do you think of aggression and hostility when you hear the word conflict? If so, you define conflict like many of those I have taught conflict resolution. In reality, much of the conflict I have observed is passive. It is underground and as such, ignored. When we ignore conflict because it has not reached the level of hostility and aggression, we sacrifice our team’s ability to move beyond the inevitable turbulence it creates. 

Passive, unresolved conflict can be observed in team member interactions. Avoidance seen in failures to communicate or support another team member can be indicative of passive conflict. Third party communication where individuals talk to others about differences they can only settle with each other perpetuates team turbulence. A manager who listens to individuals’ complaints about one another, but does not engage them in addressing the problems perpetuates conflict. Collectively conflict is ignored while individually everyone knows there is “an elephant in the room.” 

Underlying conflict’s negative effects include decreased productivity and a negative work environment. The failure to communicate and support other team members creates reworks, frustration, unnecessary work-arounds, missed deadlines, and management fatigue. I am not aware of any organization tracking this metric, but it is not difficult to conclude that it costs productivity.

Beyond lost productivity, a turbulent environment stresses most people. The negative workplace can cause people to dread coming to work, making the job a duty to be survived. The experience of unacknowledged tension and protecting oneself from negative encounters robs potential commitment and enjoyment of work from even the most resilient people. In this context, employees do not engage they survive. If they have options, most eventually look for a different position. 

The manager or leader has the responsibility to address passive, underlying conflict. It induces  equal, and at times larger, problems than open conflict. It is also easier to ignore. Raising and addressing the underlying conflict without experiencing the aggression and hostility that we pay any price to avoid challenges leaders and managers. 

Addressing conflict with confidence requires an effective conflict resolution process. An effective conflict resolution process has three qualities. 

Problem Solving – If you and those you work with are unable to resolve differences because you fear blaming or being blamed you may push conflict underground. If you are a “blamer” as a manager then you may be forcing conflict underground. If you will become a “problem solver” instead, you move the focus from the person to the problem. 

Reconciling Relationships – For people to work together and achieve individual and collective high productivity, they have to develop healthy relationships. They may not be best friends, but they will treat each other with respect, openness, and support. When conflict is resolved well that is the outcome. Your process should yield that result.

 Understand, Engage, and Embrace Diversity – The goal of conflict resolution is not to make everyone the same, or even get them to agree all the time. It is to position people to accept one another without the perception of threat. A good process becomes the foundation for people to relate to one another in a way that the power of differences becomes fertile ground to grow individually and as a team. 

Confidence in conflict resolution grows when you have a process that is based in these three qualities. Over time, you will begin to see conflict as an opportunity instead of a problem.

Your favorite part of team leadership is resolving conflict, right? While I have worked with many managers and leaders who enjoy their role, I have not talked with very many who enjoy dealing with conflict. I have yet to find one who has never experienced conflict in his or her work group. Disagreement, misunderstanding, blaming, and competition are a few of the reasons we, as leaders, deal with conflict between people. 

A conflict occurs when one perceives that a person or group will take action that threatens needs, interests, values, or well-being. Conflict is experienced when one reacts to the perception of threat, whether the perception is real or not. 

What is your preferred approach to settling conflicts? You may avoid conflict. That is, you don’t do conflict. Perhaps you are the person that always loses. You may state your case, but in the end, you never prevail. Alternatively, you may do whatever it takes to win every conflict you decide to engage. There are those who take the middle ground of compromise and work with everyone to find a solution. In this scenario, you win some and lose some in a process of giving and taking. 

While each of these approaches has their place depending on the circumstance, in terms of building a team, collaboration is the most beneficial. Collaboration focuses everyone on what is creating the conflict and how to fix the problem. It is better than compromise because there is a commitment to the best solution and not the one everyone can live with. 

It is impossible to build a team with shared responsibility, ownership, and accountability without working through conflict. People have to work through differences to come together. It is the leader’s responsibility to make sure this is done well. 

There are three reasons you should value conflict: 

1. Conflict is Normal – It is normal to disagree, misunderstand another person, compete for your idea, believe your experience is the best, avoid blame, and the list goes on. Is it unrealistic to think that people can attempt to work together in a productive manner and not bump into one another’s differences? A leader does himself a favor when he accepts the reality that conflict is normal and teaches his team the same truth.
2. Conflict is Healthy – When conflict is resolved in a healthy productive process, it is healthy for both individuals and the group. Working collaboratively to agree on the best outcome in a conflict requires people to communicate well, be open, seek to understand, and desire to be understood. This training and experience connects people into a strong team.
3. Conflict brings New Opportunities – Collaboration results in outcomes that can only be discovered when people interact. Ideas reveal themselves as the process of working through conflict to a solution elevates them to consciousness. Collective creativity and innovation reside in these interactive moments. As the team matures in its ability to disagree without experiencing threat, they have moved beyond the turbulence conflict creates.  

When a leader learns an effective process for resolving conflict, he or she is equipped to benefit from the conflict that occurs in a team. This transforms what most managers dread into a powerful leadership tool.

Managers face growing challenges in the new workplace. Many seek out knowledge and skills that position them to lead effectively by participating in professional development opportunities. Unfortunately, many of the practices they learn do not solve the problems when they return to their team, but in some instances seem to perpetuate them. With growing frustration, the manager and employees attempt the same solutions repeatedly and the problems do not subside. That was Cathleen’s experience as she led her call center team.

 Cathleen sought training because of conflict and productivity challenges in her team. Team members were not mutually supportive and struggled to work together. Beyond the negative work environment, individual and team goals were suffering. This in spite of the fact that she had taken several management courses that taught skills which were not working in practice. Cathleen said, “During previous management courses I learned to resolve issues and conflicts as they came. In many situations, this meant to fix the upcoming issues on my own. Team members were not held accountable for their actions.”

 When Cathleen met with the J. Clint Anderson Company, she indicated she had tried everything she learned to address the situation, and nothing was working.

 J. Clint Anderson, Ph.D. provided coaching based on the Trimergent Leadership® System Leading Teams process, including training in conflict resolution. Her team members also participated in our Being a Team Player course. This approach to team leadership and teamwork does not rely on the 100-year-old practices of scientific management, and is not a revision of its principles base on updated language. The Trimergent Leadership® System has been developed from the ground up over the last decade. It is based on the latest research and understanding of organizations. As a result, it transforms the way people work together.

 The coaching included a method of providing feedback that ensures accountability for both a team member’s impact on others and goal achievement. Team members began to take ownership of the solutions that ultimately made a difference in the team. Cathleen was also coached through an evaluation of the goal setting process and made significant changes to her approach. The new approach to setting goals resulted in team member participation that also created ownership.

Cathleen shared, “With the new approach Team members have the opportunity to set their own personal monthly goal. This works perfectly for all members participating in the goal setting. In the past, I gave all Team members their goal during a one on one session. With this new approach, Team members are individually responsible for the overall Team goal. This can be seen as a great success for the entire Call Center”

 Cathleen’s new skills and practices, combined with team members’ understanding how to be a team player, made a real difference by the time the coaching process ended. In her last meeting with the coach, Cathleen indicated the entire work environment had improved and the team met its shared goal.  Beyond that Cathleen stated, “In February 2012 the Team has met their highest collections goal since the existence of the Call center.” After two years, the skills and practices Cathleen established continue to support a positive team environment and high productivity.