As a manager of a team, you can often feel like a parent. Have you ever caught yourself talking to your employees the way you talk to your children? We've all been there. When conflict arises, though, you don't want to put on your Mom or Dad hat - you have to wear your Manager hat and help your team to help themselves.
Leaders take on a parenting role when they let their team members come to them with every little problem. If your employees know they can knock on the door and say, "Hey, boss, what should I do about XYZ," get an answer and then get right back to work, they will stop thinking for themselves. If this sounds like your team, you'll find yourself getting sucked into every single employee conflict that arises from who forgot to make the coffee in the morning to who made a critical mistake on the quarterly sales figures.
If you want your team to start working things out for themselves, you've got to cut that parental cord. First, admit that you've been taking an over-active role, and then make every effort to get your team to seek solutions on their own.
The first step in encouraging your people to work things out for themselves is to recognize the true value of your time. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey points out that managers often spend too much time dealing with problems that might be urgent, but are not necessarily important. Do you know the difference? According to Covey, an urgent need requires immediate attention, but a need is only as important as its impact on achieving company goals.
An employee who steals other people's parking spaces might be creating an urgent problem, in that people are wasting hours a week complaining about their parking issue. But parking spaces don't stop them from delivering products and services on time, so it's really not important.For issues that aren't important, you simply don't need to be involved, and you certainly don't want your team taking those problems to senior management if you simply cut them off. Instead, you want to begin to gently guide your employees towards reaching their own resolutions for issues that are urgent, but not important enough to eat up your time.
You can also point them in the direction of the tools they need to handle their issues on their own. You might direct them to the portion of the employee handbook or company wiki that speaks to their problem, or you might help them work out one or two possible solutions and then weigh the best option.
The key is to step back and let the employee find his or her way toward a solution. You can guide them there, but don't offer up the solution on a silver platter. Once they are used to dealing with small issues on their own, they will feel empowered to manage larger issues and conflicts on their own, as well.
You can't avoid every instance of employee conflict that comes up. You will have to get involved from time to time. When a conflict escalates to the point that it's difficult for others to work, deadlines are being missed, or company goals are not being met, it's time for you to step up and step in.
Other signs a conflict requires your intervention:
It's easy to fall into the trap of solving every little issue that comes across your desk. Many managers feel it's easier just to give the answers and move on. But when it comes to employee conflict resolution, no manager has the time to deal with every issue, disagreement, or petty argument that pops up in a day. Start taking steps to empower your team to discover answers on their own.
