Workplace conflicts

Conflicts are never pleasant and almost everybody will say that they don’t want to be involved in one. However, conflicts appear quite often at the workplace due to the fact that this is a place where people with different education, professional and cultural background are put together to work and therefore to interact both at professional and personal level.

Interpersonal conflicts are caused generally by office politics, gossip, rumours as well as by language and personality styles clashes. Another source of workplace conflict can be different the various ideas about personal success. The strong drive for work related achievement in some employees can clash with co-workers who do not emphasize work-related success in their lives.

Organizational conflicts are frequently related to the hierarchy and to the inability to resolve conflicting interests. Resource allocation, the distribution of duties, workload and benefits, different levels of tolerance for risk taking and different views on accountability are just some of the sources of organizational conflicts.

For both interpersonal and organizational conflicts one of the things that generates or amplifies them is assuming. “Never assume, always double check” is one of the most valuable lessons I have learned until now in the different work environments I have been.

So many times we make mistakes just because we assume things. Why do we tend to make assumptions instead of verifying things? Here are some of the most frequent situations:

We consider that the other person thinks like us.  In our head what we think is so logical that we automatically believe that this is what is logical for everybody. This is most of the times wrong. We have different understanding of things and facts, different background, different opinions, we are so different one from another that the chances for two people to think exactly the same about a situation are extremely low.

We misinterpret the messages from others. Not everyone is paying very much attention to the way they say things verbally or in written and sometimes messages that have no harmful meaning are interpreted as aggressive or offensive. Assuming that the person who sends us the message has something against us, without clarifying the situation can only generate conflicts.

We think we know so well a certain issue and we don’t need any further information. Therefore, we tend to assume the things that we are actually not sure about. 

We think someone will do something because we are convinced that is their responsibility. This happens quite often in teams working for a project where the responsibilities are not clear. Everybody assumes that someone else will do a certain thing and in the end nobody does it.

Staying away from conflicts at work it doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone and everything. What we can do instead is to acknowledge the situations that might generate a conflict and react in a professional and constructive way. Not making assumptions and not taking things personal are from my point of view, some of the golden rules when it comes to workplace relations.