Level 1 - EMPLOYER: Basic Techniques for Handling Existing Conflict

Before you are able to properly implement a culture of zen in your workplace, you may be faced with current and ongoing conflicts.  One of the most basic techniques you can ask your employees (especially your managers and supervisors) to utilize is 'Active Listening'.


 Active Listening

This approach helps employees show more understanding and empathy toward each other. This enhanced communication will also serve to dampen any escalation of conflict. As a bonus, learning active listening is not particularly difficult.  Employees just need to start paying attention to the feelings of their colleagues. 

As such, when listening to their co-worker discuss their views on a particular conflict, employees should try to pinpoint what exactly is it that is driving their colleague's feelings of dissatisfaction.  Once that occurs, the employee should then attempt to restate the issues and feelings their co-worker was trying to convey.  It is important to use non-confrontational words when doing this.  Finally, the employee should check in with the co-worker to see if they have correctly gleaned his/her viewpoint.  This active listening will then be reciprocated to the employee by the co-worker.


Whether there is eventual agreement, engaging in active listening allows employees to show each other that they at least made the attempt to understand their colleagues' perspectives. That, in and of itself, is a good thing.

Conflict De-escalation

Next employers have to learn to get their employees in the habit of bringing level 1 issues out in the open before they are allowed to escalate. This will allow managers and supervisors, who are facing a task conflict, to quickly pinpoint the issue(s) that are the source of the workplace unrest. The the next step, of course, is to get the parties together at the table to help them  brainstorm possible solutions that will work for them both. 

The common view in the business world is that personal clashes in the workplace are “unwinnable.” This is because there is “no substantive, identifiable, or meaningful issue to be resolved.” The only solutions offered in these situations are to either (i) for employees to “put aside their personal conflict for the good of the team” or (i)“ to transfer one or both employee(s), or even separate them from the company.” This line reasoning explains why 85% of all terminations are due to this type of dispute.

The entire Zen Workplaces site, however, is dedicated to showing you that personal clashes are indeed winnable. Along with enhancing your managers' basic conflict resolution skill-set, simply point your employees to some of the techniques on this blog that give them step by step instruction on how to react appropriately in the face of conflict. 

The goal here is to get your employees in the habit of diffusing conflict as before it takes root. As they say, “an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure”.

~Here is to Zen in the Workplace!