How does Pinnacle handle Conflicts with Civility

Conflicts exist in collaboration, and we cannot deny that these conflicts create an unhealthy environment for the team and causes exhaustion, heated arguments, stress, and displacement. We cannot afford to make this type of environment at the Pinnacle team and decided to manage how to work conflicts with civility within the team and other organizational teams.

Conflicts surface in collaborations because different parties want different things. Still, a conversation is powerful to create a bridge or a wall, and we always choose to build a bridge of ideas for development. We can not deny that some individuals quickly get frustrated and do not know how to start a civil approach to opposing suggestions.

At Pinnacle, we consider three strategies for managing conflicts, which helped us nurture our team to build trust and empower them by leaning to conflict, empathy, and stepping out humbly. 

Creating a safe environment for the team requires an individual to stretch their behavior to be more civil in approaching conflicts with other team members. Let’s walk further with our strategies! 

• Leaning to Conflict

As a team, we do not use conflicts to stop us from seeing the suggestions or ideas of both parties. Suppose we are working on a new coding system, and to get the best code, we have to go through a discussion wherein team members can review and critique the codes. Meanwhile, a new team member who isn’t used to this shared working environment might think their code is not as valuable as others as they received more comments than the others.

Our personal feelings drive us to be productive, and ignoring their feelings can lower self-esteem. We build trust and maintain a positive relationship with our team. We assure that everyone undergoes the same scrutinization to protect our team’s interests and maintain a safe environment for everyone.

• Empathy

Empathy helps in resolving conflicts. Conflicts are inevitable, but we can manage how we respond to them. Looking to the other perspective will allow the team members to picture and prepare themselves for the possible questions about how they will create a civilized conversation and how to ask an open-minded question. 

• Stepping out Humby

After the conflict, each party must step out of the conversation humbly by maintaining themselves to continue learning and avoid having a hero concept or being the victim–of the hero concept.

Instead of assuming that your perspective is right above everyone else, teams should manage to leave all assumptions and lean on the conversation to move towards a better solution. An exchange of discussion can uncover hidden possibilities and plausible explanations. 

Learning to manage the conflicts in an organization or within an agile team is essential to protect the relationship, values, and work quality performance.