Although there is no one solution for all conflict, there are people who peddle such promises, and it is wise to walk away from them. But you can apply some principles to resolve conflict within your organization.

The Right Focus

It may sound odd, but you can't focus on the conflict. A clash is just a symptom. You can't directly address the conflict, and you don't want to. That was just the sign something was wrong. It is the actual problem your team faces that causes the conflict, and it is that problem you work to eliminate. Concentrate on what you are trying to achieve and how to get there.

Identify the Challenge

Keeping the right focus gives you the next step: recognize the problem. That might sound trivial, but it isn't. People constantly tilt at windmills, thinking that they are solving what bothers them when they're actually chasing phantoms. Misidentifying problems is much easier than you might think. Usually, mistakes are made because people are trying a solution that is suited for a completely different problem than the one that lies before them.

If you've picked the wrong challenge, you run the risk of wasting your time. Worse, there is a good chance that you can make a situation worse than it already is. Say you are faced with two people who aren't working together well. They may misunderstand each other, using similar terms in very different ways. If you think the problem is that they don't talk enough, you'll only increase the frustration by putting them together even more. Instead, you should be helping them understand where their communication is going wrong, or find someone who knows what each is saying and is able to translate.

What to Do?

When you see conflict and the underlying problem, many issues may come into play. But it can be refreshing to remember that you will only do one of three things:

• You can abandon the team's goal, which may be sensible if that goal turns out to be poorly formed and capable of actually setting things back.

• You can overcome the barrier and continue progress toward achieving your goal.

• You can create a combination of your current approach to your goal (thesis) and the barricade (antithesis) to reach a new and more effective path to the goal (synthesis).

Your only imperative is to solve the problem and keep moving toward your goals. Use whatever approach lets you do this while maintaining your team principles and those of you and your team members. At times, one of these tactics will work, and in other conditions you might need another.

Resolving Principle

One of the basic concepts in this chapter is the thesis-antithesis-synthesis cycles. All three of the major categories above use a form of synthesis. That makes resolving conflict an art more than a science.

The art comes in working with unpredictable conditions, goals, and people. The science is in the theory itself. Although the exact form of synthesis is not something you'll know in advance, you will need a resolving principle. You need the resolution of the conflict to move in a specific direction. You find which of the three general techniques gets you closest to your goal while not disrupting other goals of your team or organization. If more than one technique will do the job, then use the one that is easiest and least expensive in resources to implement.

Encouraging Others

Even if you could single-handedly resolve all conflicts for your team, what good would it do? Your team wouldn't know. In most cases, team members are the only ones able to see the conflicts and take appropriate action. If the conflicts are personal and you want a lasting solution, the involved members will have to take part.

As much as possible, using coaching and mentoring, you must help your team manage the conflict it sees. An implication is that a leader can never know about all conflict from direct perception. Many times the other members of the team will be the ones who see evidence — another reason why communication, particularly active listening, is so important.