In the proposed scenario, it is required to resolve the conflict between two managers, Pat and Robert, after the reduction of the third. Two people under my official position at CapraTec had irreconcilable differences about where the motivational team should go due to the increased workload due to the dismissal of a third member of the team. Robert, a more stubborn and conservative employee who has long held a position in the company, demands complicity in resolving the conflict without changing his fixed point of view. Pat, a younger employee, is also not at his best, expressing hostility and a real lack of communication skills. Moreover, the dialogue with Pat led to the manager threatening to quit and return to his previous job. It is required to select, plan, and effectively apply a motivational strategy to resolve the conflict and move the work of the team off the ground. To begin with, it is proposed to consider and compare the effectiveness of possible options for resolving the conflict: abdication, mediation, delegation, compromise, and collaboration.
Abdication in management is traditionally considered a failure in the performance of one’s duties. In this case, this is the most likely but unacceptable option, since it is unacceptable to let the existing conflict take its course. In a situation where both managers are dissatisfied with the current result, relinquishing responsibility will mean maintaining and escalating the split within the company.
Mediation in this case will mean the involvement of a third party with a sober and independent, distant perspective on the current situation. Mediation is indicative of openness within the company and readiness to resolve conflicts through discussion (Miller & Katz, 2018). It should be noted that this proposal has already been put forward in the process of preliminary individual discussion. It was dismissed by the more conservative Robert, who believes that this action requires my skills as an influential person in the company. Probably, the involvement of an independent expert could give greater objectivity in assessing the situation and resolving the conflict.
Delegation of authority, that is, transferring them to subordinate workers, could increase their sense of self-importance, motivation, and diligence. The problem with delegation, however, is that in the current situation, it is impossible to give full control over the company to either Robert or Pat. Due to the contradictions in the concepts and also given the poorly developed diplomatic skills of both managers, this decision will only harm the company. That is due to a mismatch of motivations, interests, and even ideologies in the generational conflict (Lyons, 2019). And it is collaboration, as the last option for the development of events in this conflict, that both managers especially lack. It is likely that collaboration, such as interacting with other employees of the company, conducting polls, or voting, could help them form a more democratic opinion about the situation.
I am informing you as a personnel manager about the details of the current situation. As follows from the attempted communication with each of the managers individually, their desire for collaboration is close to zero even after the offer of negotiation. The current situation is unacceptable and requires patience and communication skills shown by the head of both employees. None of the employees can be lost to the company as a result of the conflict because they are of great value to the company. Robert is needed by CapraTec as a manager with extensive experience in the company, whose developed skills and competencies are combined with the memory of the company’s tradition of work. Pat, on the other hand, has an original vision and can offer really valuable strategies for the future development of the company.
In this regard, the neglect of control over the situation is unacceptable. Direct contact between managers should also not be allowed at the moment, until their positions become more tolerant of each other’s visions, since it seems that a personal and even generational conflict has arisen between managers. The problem of generational conflict in the workplace is quite common and expresses a lack of understanding and even neglect of the opinion of a representative of the older or younger generation. Each of the managers believes that he has the moral right to disregard someone else’s point of view, which is expressed in the complete failure of constructive dialogue and is capable of causing serious harm to the company. It is necessary to focus the parties to the conflict on the fact that their inability to cooperate hinders the development of the company, regardless of which of them is right.
The stages of solving the problem will be to listen to the positions of both managers and, through negotiations, mediation, and even direct complicity, resolve the conflict of interests and tasks. Mediation between two employees seems to be a fairly effective method of establishing a dialogue between them, and I express my readiness to undertake to mediate in their negotiations. The opportunity to be a diplomatic person who can gently convey the positions of each of the managers is quite valuable. The points of view of both Pat and Robert are important to us, so mediation seems to be a temporary solution to the problem. In the longer term, the opinion of other employees should be attracted using a conference or survey. As a result, it would be possible to obtain a general statistically organized idea of the expected future movement of the company and offer it to managers. Probably, if managers are ready to act in the interests of the company, such a survey could help them consolidate by finding certain common ground.
The undoubted advantage of this strategy is the ability to allow managers to speak out without directly conflicting with each other. Mediation through a third party can smooth out misunderstandings and hostility toward each others. This can provide an opportunity to find common strategies and allow management to continue to work for the benefit of the company. The second stage, collaboration, includes other members of the company. The emphasis on the fact that the opinion of each employee is important and should be considered should hint to Pat and Robert that they need to overcome differences for their work to be realized and have a positive result. Thus, Pat could feel like a full-fledged member of the team at his new workplace and he would no longer have the desire to leave the company that arose in a fit of frustration. Robert, in turn, would feel like a necessary and valuable member of the company, whose opinion is relevant as well as that of any other employee of the company. I hope that the strategy proposed by me will be positively assessed by you and that I will be able to start the first stage of its implementation shortly.
References
Lyons, S. T., Schweitzer, L., Urick, M. J., & Kuron, L. (2019). A dynamic social-ecological model of generational identity in the workplace. Journal of Intergenerational Relationships, 17(1), 1-24. Web.
Miller, F. A., & Katz, J. H. (2018). Safe enough to soar: Accelerating trust, inclusion, & collaboration in the workplace. Berrett-Koehler.