Rapid pace and constant change are characteristic of the modern workplace. The changes that have the most conflict-producing potential include the following:
- Advances in technology that have created new jobs, while destroying old ones. The result is an army of workers that are unprepared and afraid of the future.
- Global competition and collaboration, which serves as a motive to cut labor costs. Typically, this striving for reduced labor costs results in lessened job security, which ultimately leads to lessened worker loyalty.
- Increased participation and presence of women and people of varied races, ethnic backgrounds, and cultures in workplaces that were previously more homogeneous or segregated. Without yesteryear's clearly defined roles and divisions of labor, our workplaces are ripe for misunderstandings and abuses of power.
- Frequent restructuring and multiple mergers that leave workers vying for positions in "step-families" where the fear of being redundant reigns and organizational charts make no sense.
- Easy and frequent access to unverified information.
- Diminished access to credit coupled with a reorganizing real-estate market.
- A farewell to the concept of an upwardly mobile society.
- Cell phones and tablets that create expectations for immediate responses.
As a result of these changes, it is likely that sometime in your career, you will encounter some version of the following:
- Competition that has gotten out of control
- Intolerance, prejudice, discrimination, or bigotry
- Perceived inequities
- Misunderstandings
- Gossip, rumors, and falsehoods
- Long-standing grudges or misplaced loyalties
- Job insecurity or a sense of having been bypassed for a promotion
- A perception of reputation and identity being at stake
- Sexual tensions or harassment
- A perceived threat to security, power, or status
- Workplace romance gone awry
- Comparisons of performance ratings or bonuses
- A pattern of blaming others for mistakes
- Alcohol- or drug-induced irrational behaviors
- Conflicts relating to employment terms or job tasks
- Office or organizational politics
- Juggling for status, influence, security, respect, and rank
- Individual agendas and conflicting responsibilities that outweigh the mandate to collaborate
- Working for long hours in close quarters, with a lack of resources
- Strong allegiances to subgroups (for example, the department, the union, a professional identity, management, and so on)
- Feeling wronged, misunderstood, or unheard
- Cyber bullying, cyber stalking, and privacy disputes
- Misunderstandings based on gender, age, race, and/or cultural differences. (In addition to the effect of gender on our communication or conversational styles, when speakers from different parts of the country or from different ethnic or class backgrounds talk to each other, it is likely that their words will not be understood exactly as they were intended.)
You may find yourself dealing with these issues directly. Alternatively, you might be in the role of supervisor, on-looking coworker, or stuck-in-the-middle mediator. In any event, your best course of action is usually to start off by defining all of the issues that are lurking under a conflict, including the individual (for example, feeling dismissed or devalued), the interpersonal (for example, a cultural difference), and the situational or environmental (for example, a recent budget cut).
Let's delve into the five overarching factors that are responsible for a lot of the heat in a conflict-charged environment: differences in communication style, management style, power, values, and vision.