People care about distributive justice, right? They care about their outcomes. But they also care about the process that is used to achieve those outcomes. So they care about procedural justice. Now procedural for some people has a negative connotation. It kind of smacks of bureaucracy maybe. And if you think you don't have time for procedural formalities when you do a conflict resolution, well, maybe you want to think again. Because the research shows that people often care more about procedural justice than they care about distributive justice. And what that means is that they are willing to accept relatively unfavorable outcomes as long as they consider the process to be fair, as long they are on board with the process. And vice versa, if they don't like the process, if they don't consider the process fair, even if they achieve favorable outcomes, advantageous outcomes, they might feel guilty about having achieved an unfair advantage. And they might be concerned that others regard them negatively because of that. How do you create an atmosphere where people feel like they're experiencing a fair process that ensures fair treatment? Now what constitutes fair in people's minds clearly is culturally contingent. But we can start with three simple rules of thumb. The first rule is you need a clear method. So there needs to be a transparency over what rules and standards are used for conflict resolution and a sense that those are consistently applied. And that is to ensure that you're reducing uncertainty in people's minds about what is going to happen. It doesn't mean that the process necessarily has to be formalized to a large degree. In fact, in many cultures, the actual process is very organic and flexible, but people need to know that that is what's going to happen. Okay, the second rule is, you need an opportunity to speak. So the conflict parties, the people that are involved in the conflict, they need to have a voice. They need to have some kind of representation. Now, again, between different cultures, we have a lot of variance of how much voice people have, what issues they're allowed to articulate and how they speak about them. Whether they can actually make an argument for what they want to get out of the process or whether they can defend against accusations. All the things differ but the general common theme is that people need to feel that they're engaged to a degree, right? We know that if people feel like they're part of a process they're much more willing to accept the outcome of the process in the end. They can't simply reject it by saying, I didn't have a chance to properly articulate my point of view. And the third rule of thumb is that, the people involved in the conflict resolution have to get the sense that there's a willingness to listen, right? So that people haven't made up their mind yet of how to resolve the issue, but they're willing to consider multiple options; that they are open. And that is particularly important for leaders that are involved in these, in these conflicts because they enjoy a position of formal or informal power that might allow them to rule the issue one way or the other. So followers have to have a sense that you are willing to consider as a leader multiple alternative outcomes. Now in conflicts that touch on really fundamental cultural beliefs and issues it can be difficult for a leader to credibly communicate that they're impartial. Because people suspect that you, cannot fully free yourself from a cultural bias. And in those cases it is often more helpful if you involve a third party to help resolve the issue. Okay, so three rules of thumb, a clear method, opportunity to speak and willingness to listen. So I've experienced many different conflicts myself, having worked in industry and in consulting. And I've developed a framework over the years that helps me resolve those conflicts and facilitate conflict resolution. It's a very simple framework, no rocket science here, and I call it mapping the conflict. Three simple steps to it. First step is where are we today, where do we stand? What are the issues that are in dispute, and who are the people that are involved? Step two is where do we come from, right? What are the origins, what are the root causes of the conflict? And step number three, where do we want to go, right? So what are we trying to achieve? Are we looking for the most optimal, rational decision, or are we looking to restore harmony in a group or in a relationship? Are we looking to maybe maximize learning from looking at past tensions? That's the framework. I use the metaphor of the map very deliberately, because people often get lost in conflict. They lose perspective. They don't see the forest for the trees, and my explanation for that is, if we think about it, evolutionarily, that's what you do in a conflict. As a caveman or a cavewoman in a violent conflict with a saber-toothed tiger you don't have a very wide perspective. You really narrow your perspective on that tiger trying to anticipate and counter the tiger's moves. That's what people do often in a conflict situation as well. And that's where I think the framework can help. It gives people perspective, provides a very clear roadmap of how you're treating the conflict situation, and it is participative. So people have a chance to speak and they can listen and learn from these different perspectives on the conflict situation that are being articulated. Okay, let's look at those three steps in more detail. Step one is about where are we now. What are the issues that are in dispute and who is involved in the conflict? This first part, one of the issues in dispute, it sounds trivial but it's actually not. People are often are really talking past each other as they're trying to articulate the issues. I've experienced it very often in strategy discussions that some people think strategy is five to ten years and some people think it's a one to two year thing. If you don't get clarity, if you don't get alignment on what the thing really is that you're talking about, if you can't nail down precisely what the issue is, you're not going to get anywhere. The other thing that you want to start encouraging people to do is to try to articulate the issue without blaming any of the people involved. So you're trying to encourage them to separate the task conflicts the disagreement about what to accomplish and how to accomplish it, from the relationship conflict which is, which is basically personal disagreements. So that it can really help with the resolution, because often the relationship conflict is laden with difficult emotions like anxiety, and anger, and distrust, and all that. And leaders often feel a little bit less comfortable dealing with those issues. If you can keep them separate, it can help. Let's keep in mind that that separation between task relation of conflict is a little bit artificial because very often one bleeds into the other. So if you criticize one of my ideas and I'm really invested in that idea, it's very hard for me not to feel personally rejected, and feel like we have a personal conflict. And I might even think that the only reason you're rejecting my idea is that you basically don't like me, so I reduce it to this relationship conflict. Let's consider an example, Let's take Manoch who is working for marketing at Tata Motors and he has a conflict with FAlony in finance. And the conflict that they have is that Manoch feels that Falony's very, very critical of, of his marketing budgets. She's always rejecting them on the grounds that the revenue projections are too risky, and the cost estimates too optimistic. And that's a clear attribution of of blame to some degree. He thinks that Felony is too critical. And, it's easy for him to do that. It's a lot easier to attribute that rejection to irrational behavior and personal animosity, than it is for Manoch to really look inside himself and re-examine some of the logic that went into those budgets in the first place. So if I were to sit down with them I would encourage them to articulate the issue in a more neutral fashion. That could be, that there is a disagreement in the organization with regards to the market opportunities, and the cost structure of Manoch's products. That's a much more neutral easier starting point for conflict resolution. So this this separation of task and relationship conflict is something that is likely going to appeal to European and North American audiences. But the discourse of, let's be rational and let's keep our emotions out of it, is less effective in East Asia. You can tackle that by flipping that around a little bit, and rather than avoiding the emotional aspect, actually playing on the effective side and saying, look, I really care about our relationship. It’s very important to me. Let's stand together and think about what we can do jointly to solve the problem. So, you foreground the relationship rather than trying to keep it out of it. That's actually a productive way to think about this. You're not blaming each other for the responsibility for the problem The “you do it”, or “you do it” but you're focusing jointly on the problem. It doesn't mean that there are no relationship issues here at all, we’re just pausing them for a moment and focusing on the on the issue. Okay, that's a more productive way to tackle that. The other part of determining where do we stand now is to get clarity on who's involved. I like to position the people that are involved on a very simple matrix by clarifying, where do they where do they stand, what kind of position do they have on on the issue? And how committed and how engaged are they with that with that positioning? Right, so what's their commitment like? And in our example here with Manoch and Falony you could say that the issue here is high risk versus low risk marketing strategy. Clearly Manoch is very much on the high risk. He wants to grow this market. He really wants to really hit those numbers. And Falony is more on the low risk. I'm drawing her a little bit bigger here, because she has a little bit more organizational power. Once you have people positioned, you get a sense of how easy it is to move them. Here it looks a little bit entrenched, because they're really far away and Manoch is really committed. But you can also then start thinking about who are other people that are involved. So one person that might be indirectly implicated in this conflict is the head of the marketing department. It could be Kala. And Kala has a lot of power as the head of the department, and she's a little more towards the middle. And she also happens to have a very, very good relationship with with Felony actually. They went to the same school. So she might be able to help resolve some of those conflict issues there. That's one way to work towards a resolution later on. This is step one, where do we stand today and what’s important for this step is to find the right context to get the information that you need about the issues and the relationships and the people that are involved here. Not to try to blame anyone and if you can do that then you are well on your way to establishing a positive relationship for conflict resolution, standing jointly to solve the problem. And having good information about what the issues are that you want to focus on, and who the important stakeholders are. And you're ready to proceed to step two. All right, step two is about getting a sense of where are we coming from. Where do the problems originate? Where does the conflict originate? This is a lot more loaded than step one because you're talking about more sensitive issues here potentially. Some leaders actually have the attitude that you shouldn't look back. You want to look forward. That leads them to be very future focused but forget about the past. Now one very simple way and superficial way of dealing with the conflict here between Manoch and Falony would be to say, hey Manoch reduce your revenue forecast by 5%, increase the cost by 5%, and Felony will basically approve the budget. Here you're not really looking back but the problem is that you're not really getting to the root of the problem. You don't have the chance to really clear up any misconceptions or misunderstandings between the two, and you don't give them a chance to improve their relationship or get a better understanding where they're coming from. I would encourage that digging. You want to get to the root to really tackle the problem. A better way to actually help the two of them get to the root is to encourage them to talk about where they're coming from. To articulate their theories of where the problem originates, to speak openly about their attributions and their perceptions. It could be, “Manoch, why are you optimistic about the market projections?” and, “Felony, why are you more pessimistic about it?” That can be a starting point for both of them to better understand where they're coming from. They're not projecting their fears of each other onto each other, but they get a clear understanding of what are the underlying motivations. Why do they behave the way they do? They might have a chance to identify shared values, and to share the understanding that they might have as a starting point for conflict resolution in the future. A much better starting point right there, a better understanding of the conflict, really. I don't want to belittle how difficult it can be to make people feel comfortable about disclosing and openly talking about their perceptions of the conflict and their attributions of where the conflict is coming from. Clearly, in different cultural contexts, you have to be very careful of who is articulating that first how do you respond to these different perceptions, so on and so forth. But what you want to achieve at this stage is to get from the positions that people have and that they articulate initially I want this, and I want this other thing to the underlying interest and the underlying values that the people bring into the conflict. This really requires all your communication skills, because sometimes people feel uncomfortable really talking about what they really want. Sometimes they can't really articulate it. You really want to help them and facilitate their path towards that. That is really the material that helps you in the next step to actually resolve the conflict. Steps three is about articulating the way forward. Where do we want to to go? Here you use everything that you've learned from the previous two steps about you know what are the issues, who are the people involved, what are the root causes, for a task or relationship conflict. You can leverage all of that. There are different approaches that are possible here. Maybe you want to tackle the issues first because you feel that, there is a lot of clarity on that. Maybe you want to tackle the relationship issues first because people's views of the task conflict are so clouded because of that emotionality that you don't get anywhere before tackling that. Whatever approach you take, the journey is very similar. You want to focus on shared interest, shared values, commonality, amongst the conflicting parties. You want to look for compatibilities in their views, trade-offs that you can make to keep both parties, making progress towards resolution. You want to slowly de-escalate the tension. If the discussion gets heated and emotional, acknowledge that particular people care about the discussion. But you want to build down kind that tension essentially, and get commitments along the way that people feel that they're making progress. Now throughout this process you also want to seize the opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the conflicted parties. So Manoch and Falony could give each other some love and appreciate each other for what they're contributing towards the conflict resolution. Falony could appreciate Manoch's pursuit of market opportunities and express that she sees the necessity for doing that. But Manoch, vice versa, could, thank Falony for actually pressure testing the budgets. And that he recognizes that needs to be done. If you if you work towards that kind of interpersonal congruence, that you recognize what you're contributing to the conflict resolution process, that really can strengthen the relationship and reduce the misperceptions and the tensions that people have. It also helps, clearly, to craft a resolution. As you're crafting a resolution you want to check in with people of whether they perceive it as fair, whether there's anything that is still misaligned with their underlying interest. and take, step by step, basically, to secure their commitment to the solution, ultimately. All right, so let's sum up. Procedural justice is important and helpful. It makes people feel safer to open up, to speak their mind, to share their perception and interpretation of the conflict that can lead to better understanding of root causes. It can also foster good habits of speaking your mind and listening to other other views. To really, enhance your understanding of where conflicts are coming from. Clearly we understand that people have different different ways of articulating their views and working through conflict across different cultures. Whether it’s task conflict or relationship conflict, or a conflation of the two. But, what you want to work with with your followers is to build habits that transcend the nested cultural habits of dealing through conflict. Being open towards different ways of talking about conflict that builds true intercultural conflict competence, if you want. Io my experience, mapping the conflict framework, helps with that. It's very participative throughout the three stages. Where are we today, where are we coming from, where are we going? People can have their input. It's very flexible and adaptive to different communication styles and it's simple. You don't want a super complicated 53 step protocol that only you understand and use. You want to feel you want to make people feel confident and competent to deal with the problems themselves, so that they can make their own contribution towards a healthy conflict culture.
