Do you Create Unintentional Conflicts?

Jaya, a senior leader at a well-known global finance company, has become so frustrated with her life that it seems like every day of work is a never-ending journey, full of stress and crises. What makes matters worse, work problems have prevented her from enjoying the moments she spends with her family. She couldn't improve the situation despite all the many attempts; however, hard she worked, her career seemed to be over. These challenging circumstances forced her to think differently, and she ended up discovering a great opportunity to grow and succeed.

Jaya’s status represents the current reality of most people in leadership positions in the world. It provides a good example of the types of obstacles that are difficult to overcome, as described by most leaders. In most cases, chronic tension and sadness initially alert one to a problem, along with the willingness to do something to improve the situation. Sometimes, it requires trial and error, but eventually, there is positive corrective action.

Blaming yourself is not the answer:

As is usually the case, Jaya’s current reality was the result of excessive commitment. She did not control herself, her thoughts, and feelings. It may be natural to blame herself, but it will not improve the situation. She could get promotions, rewards, and decorations related to good performance for a while, and felt satisfied for a short time.

However, those awards motivated her to pursue new goals nonstop to enjoy what she had already achieved. Still, the worse, she felt that everything that happened to her was the cause of most of the conflicts in her life, whether with people, projects, or responding to emails. The struggle was a daily reality for her.

Jaya was able to change her life in a more positive direction when she began to address conflicts and feelings of frustration with the coach's help. She realized that her crisis could be an opportunity to reduce the negative impact of conflict on her life.

Luckily, Jaya soon discovered that to improve her life, she needed to notice what she needed to focus on and increase her focus to include awareness of her emotional state. Through this practice, Jaya discovered that conflict and stress in her life were linked to her thoughts and reactions she had the power to influence directly.

Managing conflicts effectively can become an opportunity to demonstrate potential critical problems, strengthen relationships, and engage.

Controlling what can be controlled:

Self-monitoring is often associated with knowing how your beliefs and reactions affect your behavior with mindfulness meditation practices. However, self-monitoring is an essential component of an empirically-supported cognitive behavioral therapy method and a key component of working with emotional intelligence. This easy strategy consists of honestly observing how circumstances affect your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Through this process, Jaya discovered that her behaviors were often the cause of the tension that led to the conflict. For example, she tried to make her opinions and ideas heard and felt that she had failed because of disagreement with her.

No wonder people were feeling negative while she was in attendance. She unwittingly became the person everyone expected to argue with. Perception had a great impact on her career, and she again invested with Coach's help in understanding how and why she gained these behaviors to replace them with something better.

You may not have decided to be a difficult person to deal with:

Jaya’s story closely matches what most leaders say about developing unintentional bad personal behavior. This attitude can arise naturally from mimicking bosses or even parents, especially without the benefit of effective leadership training. To change these patterns, it's essential to create an environment where others want to help you succeed in the long run, rather than agreeing with one of your ideas or acting easily as if they agree with your views.

Our  natural tendency to adapt to organizational culture is another mistake. Most leaders have learned to accept conflict, like stress, as a natural part of their workplace. Struggling leaders tend to believe they are doing a good job of exceeding expectations as they interpret organizational norms.

However, it is common for a leader to be unclear about the appropriate strategies to use in specific situations. Many leaders continue to use the behaviors of the command-and-control era that are now known to be ineffective. These differences are critical because the realization that most leaders were failing because of their good-intentioned ignorance -rather than incompetence - helps them commit to change.

Change doesn't have to be difficult:

Skepticism about beliefs and experiences that contribute to ineffective leadership has confirmed that it is a good investment of time for leaders. For example, Jaya’s focus on this point demonstrated her need for a sense of control over meetings, including creating and facilitating agendas and the communication process, and need to monitor potential threats for its sense of control and prepare to confront them.

When Jaya was able to self-regulate the behaviors associated with this need, she was amazed but delighted.

Jaya began to feel amazed when she noticed the ability and willingness of her colleagues to take responsibility. By consciously giving way to more participation, she found that others had better plans and solutions to problems than she did, and she discovered that much of the work she counted as stressful was a good learning opportunity for others.

Giving co-workers a chance to help with their workload had a direct and positive impact on their stress levels, as well as improving their family life. Ultimately, her stress levels decreased, and her production quality improved, which helped her advance at work.

How to Manage Conflict Effectively:

Awareness helps to identify the possible causes of your reactions to the expected conflict, which then enables you to determine your role in creating unnecessary conflict, and can apply what you have learned about yourself during this process directly to understand the beliefs or needs that may force others to respond to you negatively. This method will contribute to success in reducing and managing conflicts by helping you to:

1. Learn how to spot the early signs of conflict you're having.
2. Develop your ability to organize reactions that contribute to conflict.
3. Identify the triggers and causal beliefs behind these reactions.
4. Invite others to express opinions that do not agree with your own.
5. Provide opportunities for others to make decisions and gain recognition.

In conclusion:

Leaders have come to see the conflict being managed effectively as an opportunity to demonstrate potential critical problems, strengthen relationships, and engage, and have become able to recognize this value once they have focused on letting go of any need to feel important or in control; this change in views has allowed them to have a positive relationship with conflict, and interact with others more effectively.