This episode builds on one of our guest’s “micro-practices”. Pilar talks to workplace culture facilitator Lech Guzowski about understanding and navigating conflict in remote and hybrid work environments. They explore conflict's essential role in collaboration, delve into various conflict response models, and discuss how to intentionally create space for healthy disagreements within teams.

Lech Guzowski is a workplace culture facilitator, which means he works on everything and anything related to workplace culture. Pilar has got to meet Lech through his culture micro practices. These are sent out every other week, to give people time to think through them and introduce them - like all change processes, this needs time.

Pilar is signed up to the micro practices and the one she picked to talk about on the episode is one about understanding conflict responses. Before we start resolving conflict, it’s important to understand why it’s going on. We all have a need, emotional, psychological and biological. If we perceive someone blocking that need, it causes us anxiety and frustration. Conflict comes from the actions we carry out due to that perception and from people having different needs to be met at the same time.

At work, our need is to get the work done as best as possible, but we have a different opinion about how it should be done. There are different ways of dealing with conflict, and Lech refers to the Thomas Kilmann conflict model. They have plotted our ways of responding to conflict depending on how assertive and co-operative we are.

You can check out the model over at https://www.human.pm/conflict.

The best thing is to work towards a collaborative approach, and in order to do this we need to understand both our needs and the other person’s, otherwise it’s difficult to reach a good resolution. If we always compromise, nobody’s needs ever get met.

Of course conflict is not as straight forward as models can make it out to be, but people most likely fall into one or two of the responses by default. And they are context-dependent , eg you might be accommodating at home, and be different at work.

Lech Guzowski

15.45mins

What happens when we focus on people’s conflict responses when working apart from each other? Working remotely can provide us with the opportunity to step away from the situation and take the time to react, whereas when we are co-located we might react faster, without shaping our response.

It pays off to build into the ways we work how we deal with conflict, so that conflict is not just brushed under the carpet. For example, checking in as a leader with individuals that people are not keeping things they need to tackle to themselves, or to create the space in meetings for things to be brought out into the open - especially in a remote setup, where things can easily go unnoticed.

Conflict and disagreement are bound to happen when we care about our work, and if we’re working away from our colleagues, we might be influenced by different contexts. And, when we don’t have much time with our colleagues, we might be afraid of being the one that “destroys the atmosphere” and there could be a danger of artificial harmony.

When thinking about the remote space, Lech reminds us that authenticity is even more important, as well as creating the space for team members to express disagreement with each other throughout the working week. Reminding ourselves that we are disagreeing because we want to meet our goals can help the discussion.

Pilar refers to the book Radical Candor (more about the book here) and previous guest Rachel Happe’s article on navigating conflict in remote teams. where she reminds us we need to be more deliberate about addressing conflict, especially if we are used to use spontaneity to navigate through those moments.

Lech sees value in deliberately creating these spaces, but making them feel natural.

“When you are collocated, you can usually sense if there is tension between your team members but if you’re remote, your peripheral vision has to be wider and you have to have more intention behind it so that you know what’s going on, without micromanaging and interfering.”

We can intentionally create processes and ways of working to address emerging conflict, so that they become second nature to how we work. It’s often hard to talk about conflict, but it’s an essential part of collaboration and it helps if we accept this.

Understanding conflict through the lens of when it needs to happen, for example, as a new team goes through Tuckman’s storming stage can also help. Team members are trying to figure out how to work together.

“Conflict is an accumulation of energy. If you handle it poorly, sweeping it under the carpet, it will blow up in your face. But if you harness that energy, of people who are meaning well, if you resolve that and use it as fuel, it will take your team to new heights.”

32.30mins

Pilar considers three scenarios that are more likely in a remote team than a colocated one:

There is the danger of team members becoming conflict-avoidant and the work suffers, or there could be lots of conflict emerging but we don’t have the breathing space to work through it or, as team leader, we become so disconnected we don’t know conflict is taking place.

Lech reminds us that, although we need different tactics for the remote space, the fundamentals are the same as they’ve always been. It’s important for leaders to turn to the team to work on managing conflict, for example by using the micro practice (synchronously or asynchronously) that brought Lech and Pilar together for this episode. Pretty much like when team members take personality tests, the micro practice can be used as a conversation starter, in the team, or as a personal coaching tool.

Ironically, Pilar reflects, remote work doesn’t dehumanise us - because to do it well, you have to know yourself well and work on human relationships as much as possible.

And, Lech adds, let’s remember that other people can’t read our mind… and that’s why he sees the values in the “user-manual of me”, outlining communication preferences and other personal preferences in how we work and how we react.

Of course, the hybrid space has brought up another kind of conflict around “where can we work from”? Between people with differences preferences, working in different spaces day to day, or between decision-makers and employees who have different ideas of where to best work.

So, what does Lech think of the hybrid set up, instead of mixing both in office and remote, should we be running “parallel tracks”? Well, as long as the job is done well, does it matter when and where from people work?

Office-based and remote work run differently, mainly with different tools, but merging them into hybrid is very difficult, so why not make the rules for each set-up (remote/in-office) separate?

And we’re all in favour here of banning the word “hybrid”! It means little now…

Lech sees the benefits of running workshops in person, and much prefers them to online. And though he sees office-work as essential, it needs to look different to how it used to look before.

Lech is the host of the We Got This podcast, which focuses on culture. He talks to Heads of People and CEOs to find out how they carry out people initiatives in their organisation, with the aim of inspiring listeners.

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WLP331 Navigating Conflict to Strengthen Collaboration in Remote Teams

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