Conflict at work: to escalate or de-escalate?

This is a guest article by one of Ben's partners, Byrne Dean, workplace behaviour and culture experts. This article is part of a series of content from Ben's partners.

Workplace conflict is increasing.

A report by the CIPD discovered that 25 per cent of UK employees, an estimated eight million people, have encountered workplace conflict in the last year. It seems inevitable, particularly in our increasingly polarised society.

It feels trite to say it, but workers in conflict are unlikely to be productive workers. Unresolved conflict is damaging to culture and productivity.  

Escalating to formal routes may make things worse

Leaders dealing with conflict are rightfully afraid of getting it wrong; with reputational, legal, financial, operational and regulatory ramifications in their minds.

This nervousness can translate to a knee jerk reaction to move straight to inflexible, formal processes to resolve conflict, like disciplinary and grievance procedures, and formal investigations.

These may seem the safer route at face value, but they can risk making bad situations much worse.  

Formal procedures rarely heal relationships. They are more likely to entrench bad feelings and lead to even greater conflict. And, counter-intuitively, an inflexible tendency to escalate to a formal route may make other employees less likely to speak up about their concerns.

Sometimes the braver, better decision is to de-escalate, swerving away from formal to informal routes. We urge leaders to pause and consider if there is a viable de-escalation route.

What does de-escalation look like?

These informal, de-escalatory routes include coaching and mentoring, training, one to one high impact conversations, and group trust rebuilding exercises.

We are particularly passionate about workplace mediations and facilitated conversations – involving a neutral third party to give employees a safe space to try to mend relationships.

Over time, conflict becomes exponentially more likely to reach the point of no return, when it can no longer be easily fixed. That point of no return may be a relationship damaged beyond repair, or an acrimonious departure from the business.

We’ve seen all these routes resolve tension before it has escalated to that point of no return, and they’re usually much less expensive than formal processes in terms of cost, management time, and productivity.

When should you de-escalate?

Click here to read the rest of the article on Byrne Dean's website.