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How effectively do you resolve conflict with others?

2 min read

Leadership

SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.

Last week, we asked: How effectively do you resolve conflict with others?

  • Very — conflicts don’t last long as I resolve them quickly: 32.83%
  • Somewhat — some conflicts are difficult to resolve: 62.92%
  • Not very — I have more conflict than I can handle: 3.04%
  • Not at all — my work life is nothing but conflict: 1.22%

Guiding versus driving conflict resolution. While none of us enjoy conflict, we have to resist the urge to resolve it.  Your job as a leader is to teach others to resolve conflict on their own.  If you’re constantly mediating disputes, you’re an enabler of bad behavior.  Everyone will keep arguing and coming to you to solve their problems.  They’ll never learn to resolve things themselves.  So the next time people come to you to resolve an issue, guide them on how to resolve it versus driving resolution yourself.

Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, author of “Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results” and “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”