Gestión De Conflictos

Why have respected CEOs like Jack Welch, Bill Gates, and Andy Grove made constructive conflict
management a strategic priority in their organizations? The reason is that conflict has key effects on
productivity, decision making, and retention.
With respect to productivity, consider the amount of time spent on conflict. Several years ago,
Warren Schmidt and I conducted a survey on conflictmanagement for the American Management
Association. Managers reported spending 18% to 26% of their time dealing with conflicts, depending
on their organizational level. That is a huge investment of time—the equivalent of many millions
of dollars of payroll in moderate-sized to large organizations. Any significant improvement in the efficiency
of conflict management—by surfacing conflicts quicklyand directly and settling them cleanly—
will produce productivity gains that far outweigh the cost of most conflict management programs.
But conflict management is about more than just saving time. Most organizational conflicts
involve disagreements over task-related matters, with people bringing diverse perspectives, information,
and expertise to bear on an issue. Too often, some key input issuppressed or ignored, or
the conflict leads to deadlock and inaction. When conflicts are handled constructively, in contrast,
these diverse inputs are likely to be considered on their merits and incorporated into better, more
innovative decisions. Also, decision makers are likely to get accurate feedback on the results of
decisions—in time to take corrective action. These decision-makingbenefits can be important for
any organization on important, nonroutine issues. They are especially vital for organizations that
aspire to be learning organizations or to compete on the basis of rapid adaptation and innovation.
In such cases, it may take only one good decision on an important issue to justify the cost of a conflict
management program.
Finally, consider the effects of conflict onretention and turnover. Poorly managed task-related
conflicts can easily become personal—generating resentment, antagonism, and hostility. These
“emotional” conflicts interfere with work relationships, create stress, polarize teams, and are a
major factor in absenteeism and voluntary turnover. Occasionally, they lead to grievances and legal
actions. When conflicts are managed constructively,on the other hand, people are likely to feel that
they are listened to and treated fairly, which reduces personalization of conflict, absenteeism, turnover,
and formal complaints. Here again, the financial savings from reduced turnover and absenteeism
alone—not to mention the benefits of stable working relationships, organizational loyalty,
and the retained knowledge of experienced workers andmanagers—may justify the cost of a conflict
management program.
How, then, can an organization realize the benefits of effective conflict management? This
paper explores five key elements of a strategy for making conflict management a core competency
in an organization: developing conflict literacy, measuring conflict styles, building conflict management
skills, involving top management, andusing conflict-focused team building and interventions.
Making Conflict Management a
Strategic Advantage
W H I T E PA P E R / PA G E 1
Kenneth W. Thomas, Ph.D.
DEVELOPING CONFLICT LITERACY
To manage conflict effectively, an organization needs to develop a common language that helps people
think effectively and communicate clearly about conflict and its management. The foundation of
thislanguage is a useful definition of conflict and a set of alternative ways of dealing with it.
Defining Conflict
People often think of conflict as fighting. It’s important to realize that fighting is only one way of
dealing with conflict. A more useful definition of conflict is the condition in which people’s concerns
appear to be incompatible. A concern is anything people care about. In an...