Creating Kinder, More Productive Workplaces: Ongoing and Everyday Conflict Engagement
Joan Sabott, Queen’s IRC Facilitator, 2019
Conflict is tough for most of us.
According to many physiologists, we tend to tap into several simple strategies when faced with conflict: fight, flight, or freeze. As a result, we likely aren’t reducing unnecessary conflicts, and effectively dealing with necessary conflicts in productive ways. So many opportunities are lost because we aren’t engaging well. Being effective at conflict, both in a proactive and reactive way, demands that we work at it as an ongoing and everyday activity. In essence, it is a lifestyle choice in how we talk, problem solve, inquire with others, and arrange our processes and teams.
There are a number of choices, activities, and strategies that can be used to enhance your organization’s ability to handle conflict in a better way. The following are just a few:
Hold People Accountable for Negative Behaviors and Celebrate Positive Behaviors
In working with organizations and leaders in many fields, I have found a few common missteps in conflict. One is the mishandling or lack of dealing with toxic people in our workplaces. They often get passes because they are good at their jobs or they are retiring soon, among various other reasons. The trouble is that they are doing grave damage to our teams and they also are setting a norm that bad behavior is allowed. Ultimately, we create workplace monsters by allowing the negative behaviors. Therefore, skills are needed to hold people responsible and foster realistic change.
4 Strategies for Collective Bargaining in Today’s Economy
Gary T. Furlong, Queen’s IRC Facilitator, 2016
We have entered a challenging and difficult time for collective bargaining for both employers and unions. Shortly following the great recession in 2008, both management and unions reached deals relatively quickly, everyone recognizing the dramatic economic issues the parties faced at the time. From 2008 well into 2012, there was little change. Employers tried to deal with the reality of the recession, and unions waited for the anticipated rebound, assuming it would resemble almost all recessions of the past – a difficult period, a holding pattern for a short time, followed by a return to growth in the economy and a resumption of “normal” bargaining. This time, however, that hasn’t happened. Certainly not in the way it has in the past.
The economy has, at best, rebounded to the level of “treading water”, and bargaining has not returned to anything resembling “normal” for the last 30 years. Organizations are looking for zero wage increases, looking to fund increases from savings within the agreement, and looking for amendments to benefits and pension plans as well. These are challenging and difficult issues, so how can negotiators achieve deals that can be ratified? How do union and management bargaining teams navigate these issues when the economy has stagnated? At times when government revenue is anemic, deficits are up, and private sector profits are much lower than normal? At times when unemployment is steady, but steady at a level that is over 3 percent higher than in the United States? At times when manufacturing jobs, long considered the backbone of a strong economy, have disappeared with few signs of rebounding?
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Conflict is tough for most of us.
We have entered a challenging and difficult time for collective bargaining for both employers and unions. Shortly following the great recession in 2008, both management and unions reached deals relatively quickly, everyone recognizing the dramatic economic issues the parties faced at the time. From 2008 well into 2012, there was little change. Employers tried to deal with the reality of the recession, and unions waited for the anticipated rebound, assuming it would resemble almost all recessions of the past – a difficult period, a holding pattern for a short time, followed by a return to growth in the economy and a resumption of “normal” bargaining. This time, however, that hasn’t happened. Certainly not in the way it has in the past. 
