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Illustration Credit: Elie Honein
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Few of us relish conflict. It’s discomfiting and stressful. It’s also inevitable in any workplace, especially now, when social and political tensions sharply divide the world. In a recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 76% of employees said they had witnessed acts of incivility in the past month, and 13% had encountered it daily. Discord on the job costs businesses an estimated $2 billion a day in lost productivity and absenteeism. This thorny situation calls for leaders to develop a new competency: conflict intelligence, the ability to manage and resolve all types of disagreements.Conflict intelligence can provide an antidote to today’s low levels of employee engagement and its consequences. As Peter T. Coleman, the director of Columbia’s Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, explains in this issue’s cover story, leaders with high conflict intelligence not only excel at dispute resolution but also “create workplace environments where team members experience greater job satisfaction, empowerment, and well-being.” They shape organizations for the better in other ways too, fostering creative and constructive cultures where people learn to navigate uncertainty and manage their stress. In other words, conflict intelligence is a critical driver of resilience and innovation, and Coleman describes seven ways that you can improve yours.
With all the strife roiling our day-to-day lives, who doesn’t feel like shutting down emotionally? But that’s not an option. To thrive, we all have to confront conflict head-on and learn how to turn it to our organizations’ advantage.
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