Opposition

Creative workplaces experience conflicts: various definitions of success, opposing views on tactics, different management styles, overlapping ambitions, and many more. Healthy workplaces manage conflicts to keep them in the domain of vigorous exchange rather than letting them deteriorate into an atmosphere of emotional turmoil.

Handling persistent conflict with a peer manager can be painful, particularly because staff will be watching regardless of how much privacy you strive to achieve. Often the stress of the situation will cause managers to voice their concerns and frustrations to subordinates, peers and others. While every effort should always be made to resolve conflict early, personalities and organizational inequities make some problems apparently intractible.

Good managers continue to take steps to address conflicts to minimize disfunction in the workplace.

• Arrange specific meetings to discuss the disagreements. Try to reduce the conflict by finding points of common ground.
• Identify important benefits and work jointly towards achieving them. If cooperation is not forthcoming, take steps independently to achieving the benefits, periodically offering a way in for those not participating.
• In an objective, organizationally-focussed manner, discuss obstructions with your boss. Depersonalize opposition by analyizing the organizational issues, but do not fail to communicate that conflict is harming progress on goals.
• Do nothing, if there are no organizational implications to the opposition. Wishing you could work more smoothly to achieve objectives is not a serious problem that should take priority over actually accomplishing those objectives.