In the world of project delivery, project conflict is to be expected. Whether it’s mismatched expectations between yourself and the client, a heated discussion about shipping dates with a vendor who is running late, or into-the-night conversations about the small print in a contract as you hammer out the details, conflict is part management of all kinds.
And as projects are about changing things and making new things, conflict arises time and time again as individuals adjust to new ways of working introduced by projects.
The word ‘conflict’ brings to mind an aggressive, combative situation where both sides are arguing in a negative way, but conflict can be much gentler than that: solving a disagreement about when to hold a workshop, or helping teams with different needs to agree on a single project management tool that will manage scheduling across the enterprise.
It helps to have a few tools for dealing with these kinds of regular, low-level project discussions so you can address potential project conflict head on and stop it from becoming anything more disruptive to your work.
Here are 3 tools and techniques for dealing with project conflict when you spot it.
1. Active listening
In Never Split the Difference, ex-FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss talks about the power of active listening as a way of gathering intelligence to diffuse a situation. The more you learn about what drives and inspires others on the team, the easier it will be to think creatively about how you can find ways to work together.
For example, you may pick up that someone on the team has strong family ties and is caring for elderly relatives. When you need to have conversations about working away from home on a client’s site, you can be sensitive to their needs.
Active listening can be hard when you are working with a remote team and conversations don’t include the element of small talk and office chat that you get from being physically with someone in a shared environment. However, try to make time and prompt the kinds of discussions that will allow you to uncover information without interrogating your team!
It also works really well with vendors and external clients: really listen to what you are being told and look out for clues that might tell you how you can best engage with the other person for a productive outcome.
2. Create a safe environment
Research shows that a positive work environment where conflict is expected and considered normal will lead to productive conflict – the type you really want. Productive conflict gives us better decisions, challenges to the way things work, heated but professional debates that shape solutions in new ways.
Productive conflict is how teams can uplevel and draw on the experiences of everyone to create a better outcome.
So how do you do that? A lot of it hinges on psychological safety: the idea that it’s OK to speak up and that the people around you help you feel secure in doing so. It’s more than simply feeling personally empowered; it relies on the environment feeling like a safe space in which to take risks.
One way to do that is to create team ground rules and set norms for behavior. Creating a team charter is a simple exercise that can set expectations for how the team will work together.
This goes for suppliers and sub-contractors too. Make sure they feel supported and engaged enough in the environment to be able to raise concerns when they need to. You can put communication channels in place for that and involve them in resolving issues that affect them.
3. Give people what they need to do the job
One of the biggest sources of low level conflict in project teams, in our experience, is that individuals don’t have what they need to do their best work. For example, they are asked to use advanced project management software, but they haven’t had training in Primavera P6 so they struggle daily. They feel like they have been set up for failure, and consequently that affects their attitude to work.
Another source of challenge for project leaders is not having enough people to do the work. That can create conflict between teams or individuals, as project managers have to scrabble around for resources and negotiate with team leaders. The solution here is robust work management software that enables everyone to see who is available for work. An active PMO that takes a role in capacity planning and upskilling staff for projects that are coming in the future will also help.
Robust project management software will help in so many other ways too: it avoids the conflicting expectations of what reports say, by standardizing dashboards to show a single view of the truth. It helps with transparency and ensuring everyone has access to real time information to support decision making. It works for clients and external stakeholders as well as for your internal teams.
Read 5 more tips on managing conflict at work.
None of these suggestions will help you avoid any conflict in your project teams, but you shouldn’t be aiming for that. Constructive conflict helps everyone get to a better outcome by airing concerns and difficulties in a non-confrontational or aggressive way.
Issues and challenges are to be expected. If you know your team, create a positive work culture and supply people with the tool they need to do their job effectively, you can go a long way to encouraging the kind of conflict that will ultimately end up with better project outcomes.