Ep. 142. How to Deal With Conflict Instead of Avoiding It | with Liz Kislik

Today our expert guest is Liz Kislik, a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Entrepreneur. She consults for clients such as American Express, Orvis, the Girl Scouts, Comcast, Jansen Pharmaceuticals, and Highlights for Children. Her specialty is developing high-performing leaders and workforces. She has taught at Hofstra University and New York University. Her TED Talk, Why There’s So Much Conflict at Work and What You Can Do to Fix It has been viewed over 150 thousand times.

She got into conflict at work as a specialty accidentally. She always wanted to make things work better, and conflict is a part of life, so if you want things to work better you have to deal with it at some point.

The conflict at work hasn’t changed much over the last 10 years, except that we are now dealing with more and different channels of communication. It is harder to read tone in email, text, or on social media. You are best off avoiding conflict on social media as much as possible, despite seeing a lot of it on there.

One thing we are seeing play a role in the workplace conflict is confirmation bias or echo chambers. This means that you are surrounding yourself with like-minded people and only emphasizing what is already in your head, and strengthening your rejection of outside ideas.

Here are just a few things you can do to manage conflict in your life:

• Conflict in business is part of your job. It’s your job to figure out what happened and how to work through it. Don’t ignore it, and don’t issue threats. If an employee is not willing to work through conflict appropriately, they can do major harm to your business.
• Start in an open-minded way and find out how you got to where you are.
• Assume the person is not the problem.
• Be self-aware.
• Ask permission to bring up difficult topics.

If you visit Liz’s office, there is a free ebook on how to resolve interpersonal conflict at work.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“There is almost always something you can do. We are rarely as trapped as we feel we are, even when there are structural problems. Taking the moment to be self-aware, to self-regulate, and then to think, “What is the best thing I can do now?” There is almost always something, even if it’s deciding that you have to wait for a better opportunity. We are rarely powerless.”

—

Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more: lizkislik.com
• TEDx Talk: Why There’s So Much Conflict at Work and What You Can Do to Fix It
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lizkislik/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/LizKislik

The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media