Worse Than a Fight at the Office
Good morning, fellow leaders. Recently, I’ve been doing a little writing about conflict between workers. It’s up there on the top five things that make most managers want to stay away from the office on a long lunch. But, here are a few things that I’m beginning to see are actually worse than a workplace conflict. See if you don’t agree:1.Letting issues stay hidden and inflamed instead of dealing with them. Doing this makes conflicts bigger and badder when they finally blow.
2.Letting everyone stay ignorant of the company goals, mission, vision and commitments. Doing this makes conflicts meaningless in the long run.
3.Tolerating gossip. Of any kind. Anywhere. By anybody. Gossip is a fight that’s never fair, can never be resolved, and has ended more key employees’ time with companies than we’ll ever know.
4.Allowing employees to spy and inform on each other. We’ve all fallen prey to this one. We told ourselves we were doing it for the good of the company, to gather the information we needed to do the “right” thing. Well, doing the right thing in the wrong way is not only half right, it’s “half bright”, too.
Try confronting yourself and others over these bad behaviors, and you might see fewer fights of the classic type at work.
It could just be that simple.
As always, if you have any stories or questions to share, I’d love to hear them!
Joe Pursch
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