When people from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds work in a closed environment, conflicts are bound to happen. The success of an organization depends on how easily it addresses these conflicts, engages with all the stakeholders and resolves them.
The CPP Global Human Capital Report, 2022 found that 85 percent of workers face conflict at work. In total, researchers found the average employee spends 2.1 hours each week handling conflict resolution in the workplace. This totaled out to every worker spending around one full day per month embroiled in workplace problems with co-workers and leaders.
In this exclusively authored article for All Things Talent, Tina Vinod, Founder and CEO of Diversity Simplified and Dwight Cook, Founder of Leading with Pride, write about how conflict can be resolved in constructive ways.
Often it is easy to default to compliance-focused behaviors that create short-term changes only. We hope these examples will inspire new approaches that are long term engagement-focused and result in sustained, systematic changes.
Team members feel that introducing a trans woman to the team will be disruptive because they will likely not behave in alignment with the expected gender-based norms. Terms like hyper-femininity, attention seeking, and “excessive flirting” are brought up.
A skillful DEI practitioner reinforces the shared commitment to team performance and discusses how assumed gender-based behavior norms can inhibit other team members.Studies have shown that teams that embrace gender-neutral norms perform better. Regardless of how any new or existing team member behaves, a cis woman could have masculine traits or a cis-man could have feminine characteristics as defined by traditional social constructs. Often, we interpret behaviors as “attention-seeking” only because they are outside our expected norms.
Accepting and embracing every individual for who they are will help the team be more creative and productive and design products and services that meetthe needs of a diverse customer base. Empathetically accepting and looking beyond behaviors that don’tfall into gender norms can help all individuals and teams focus on shared goals. The highest-performing inclusive organizations create environments where traditional gender-based behavior norms are unimportant, and each individual’s unique perspective is used in decision-making and work contribution.
Sometimes there are perceived conflicts between DEI and business goals. During economic downturns and fluctuating market conditions, DEI may be deprioritized. This often leads to conflict, as employees see a pullback on DEI programs.
Effective DEI advocates focus on an inclusive culture's long and short-term business impacts. In downtimes, DEI can be critical in boosting productivity and morale, retaining crucial talent, and driving significant creative change, innovation, and profitability. How a company responds in downtimes can build loyalty and engagement. Downtimes are when creativity and engagement are needed most.
Business results directly connect to a consistent, unwavering commitment to DEI. A ‘yo-yo approach’ to DEI will harm organizational culture and business success, especially with younger workforces. Research shows that Gen Z values diversity and inclusion and seeks a sense of purpose in the workplace.
A manager learns that there is growing resentment in their team towards the company’s new affirmative action policy for accelerating women's journey into leadership roles.
Many within their team interpret that this is unfair to cis-men who feel that leadership development programs should be granted based on merit alone. Preferences to women are unjust to those cis-men who are more experienced.
An inclusive manager can articulate to the team how the affirmative action policy is a strategic choice that will help increase company performance significantly. Choices around leadership development opportunities are about workforce engagement, innovation, productivity and building a gender diverse leadership team.
McKinsey's "Diversity Matters" reportfound that companies with greater gender-diverse leadership are 21% more likely to outperform their peers regarding profitability.
The visibility of women in leadership creates role modeling and inspires more women and other minorities to engage and contribute within their teams. Equity-based cultures create more diversity in teams and leadership, resulting in higher long-term performance and more opportunities for everyone.
Six people were hired as part of an organization's diverse talent acquisition program. All hires have been doing well except for one who has absenteeism, performance issues, and a lack of discipline in attending calls and responding to emails. This has been a pattern in spite of constant mentoring and guidance. This led to the team manager requesting that they be put on a performance improvement plan (PIP). The individual feels they are being singled out because of their minority status.
During performance improvement situations, it’s best to engage with empathy and understand the root cause of the challenges. Both the manager and the individual need support. It’s important to understand if there is any bias or discrimination that the person on the team is experiencing and help resolve this issue first. Unresolved performance issues can erode support for DEI programs and undermine efforts to hire and support other diverse talent. Performance issues must be addressed for the sake of the individual, the team, and the DEI program.
In many cases, expert guidance and support can be offered by trusted ERG members and external NGOs working in this community space.
There are situations in the course of an organization's DEI journey where conflicts will arise. Conflict is often helpful as it creates visibility to underlying issues that, if left unresolved, can impact DEI effectiveness.
Differences cannot always be resolved quickly, they require time, patience, continued dialogue, and investment to develop allyship. Understanding the systemic bias faced by the under-represented and marginalized as well as the value they can bring to the workplace, is a continuous journey.
Resolving conflict is less about “changing people” as much as it is about creating alignment by finding shared commitment. Collective ownership, with a culture of trust and respect, forms the foundation for a purpose-driven approach to DEI. We need to navigate conflicts with resilience, openness, and a genuine commitment to creating an inclusive environment while achieving and exceeding business goals.
This article is co-authored by Tina Vinod and Dwight Cook. Tina is the founder and CEO of Diversity Simplified. Dwight Cook isthe founder of Leading with Pride, www.leadingwithpride.com.
This article was also published in allthingstalent.org on May 14, 2024 - https://allthingstalent.org/navigating-workplace-conflict-some-real-world-stories/2024/05/14/
