- What was the conflict?
- What role did you play?
- Who were the other participants in the negotiation?
- What was the result?
Can you see any room for improvement to how the conflict was handled.
There
have been a few occasions where I have experienced a role conflict in my place
of business. The one that comes to mind happened with a co worker at a position
I held in an organization I was at for a quite some time. The conflict occurred
one day when I was called into a meeting with the director of my department and
the manager of another. During this meeting, I was informed of a new policy
that was set into place by another department that affected my team directly
with the way we processed some of our information. I was informed of the
information directly from both the manager and director and was told to pass
the information along to my team members. Once the policy and its procedures
were explained to me and I had an understanding of what was going on and what
we had to do, I walked over to my department and informed my teammate of the
changes that were taking place.
While
the teammate, at first listened to what I had to say, when I was done
explaining everything, he nonchalantly said “ok whatever works.” It seemed as
though he didn’t care about the information I was providing to him, so I asked
if he understood everything and was comfortable with the new process. He then
stated to me, “I’ll just wait for John to come and tell me what the actual
process is and take it from there.” I was immediately taken aback as to the
condescending attitude he seemed to have toward my knowledge about the new
policy and the faith he had in me training him on the new way of doing things.
In the past he had treated me this way before, but not to such an extent.
I
re informed my teammate that I had just come out of the meeting with the
director and manager, was informed of the new policy and procedures and was
told to pass the information along to him and my other teammate. For some reason
he didn’t seem to buy what I was telling him and answered in a sarcastic tone
“I’ll just wait for John to get back so I can ask him directly and see what he
says.” I have to admit; at this point I was livid. In order to refrain myself
from being disrespectful back, I said “Ok, no problem.” When my director came
back to his office, he asked my teammate, if he had heard the news on the new
policy and if I had informed him of the new information. My teammate then said “She
touched upon it but, if possible would you explain it a little more in depth
for me please?” I immediately felt the steam rise from the head as my director
started re explaining the process almost exactly the way I had already
explained it to my co worker.
As
my director finished explaining the new policy and procedures, my co worker
seemed to have some difficulty in understanding why the procedure was being
changed and why we “just couldn’t continue doing it the way we had before”. He
also clearly did not understand the new process and how to go about the new
procedure. As my director didn’t perform the “day to day” work of the
department, and I was the veteran counselor on the team, I was instructed to
show my teammate how to go about the new process. As I tried to explain the
process to my teammate he seemed to gain the same condescending manner with me
that he clearly did not have with my director.
To make a long story short, this
went on for some time and my co worker continued to challenge me on the topic
at hand and clearly did not respect me as a teammate. Toward the end of the
conversation which continued past 5:00 on this particular day because he just
did not seem to want to give in, my co worker stated to me “It just doesn’t
make sense why we even have to do this and why you have to be the one to tell me.” Now I had, had enough. I
respected my co worker and had enough patience up until this point. But it was
clear I had reached my breaking point. The minute he said this I started to
collect my belongings so I could go home. As I gathered my things I said to him
just as rudely as he had spoken to me. “If that’s how you feel, then do
whatever it is that you want. At this point I could care less.” I then walked
out of the office and drove home both ticked off at the way I was treated yet
happy that I had stood up for myself.
Once
I got home and the anger started to slowly dissipate, I realized that my
actions were probably not the best that I should have taken in this particular
situation, however I couldn’t help but feel at the same time, that it was
absolutely necessary to react in a manner that informed my teammate that it was
not okay to treat me the way he had and it would not be tolerated on my behalf.
The end result wasn’t a good one as my teammate and I pretty much stood away
from each other as much as we possibly could after that. It was clear we didn’t
want anything to do with one another for quite some time. All in all, it truly
had a great effect on our professional relationship and the way we interacted on
a daily basis.
There
is one main area of improvement I would have liked to see handled differently.
The next morning, I had walked into my director’s office and apologized for the
way that I had reacted as I knew it was out of character for me. My director
asked me to express my frustrations and discuss what I felt went wrong the
prior afternoon. During our discussion, my director expressed that he had seen
the dynamic that was going on between myself and my co worker and noticed the
way that my teammate was speaking to me. Interestingly enough he stated that I
handled myself quite well for someone in that particular situation and that if
I felt the need to defend myself that I should, and to not let anyone degrade
me in such a manner. I was confused by this as I didn’t realize that he had
even noticed the way I was being spoken to.
After our meeting ended, I was
happy on how well my director perceived my actions, but then became angry as to
why nothing was said to my teammate, if it was clear on the way I was being treated.
I never said anything about this, as I truly wanted the whole scenario to just
go away, however I truly think it would have been nice to have had my director handle
the situation in a manner where my team member and I could have come to a
better resolution considering everything happened in front of my supervisor. I
believe if our actions would have been addressed, instead of overlooked, the team
dynamic could have possibly had a better end result than having just completely
dissipated the way it did.
