Source: Image of Blurred Biker, Public Domain, http://mrg.bz/mzISOM; Image of Snail,Public Domain, http://mrg.bz/6fZyAB
Hi, I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together. Today, we're going to talk about how we can resolve conflicts in fast-paced work environments.
So in some work environments, the work pace is very fast. And the people and the organization has a vested interest in working at that speed. So when we're talking about work pace, it's the timing and the schedule in which work is supposed to be done.
And all of us have that speed interest that are working together in an organization so we can keep up with the pace of our work and the workflow. And so what does that really mean for conflict resolution processes?
Well, some may view the processes to be very slow and snail-like, as in this picture. And it can take a lot for people that are really trying to get their work done and go with the flow of the work pace to take time out to go through a conflict resolution process.
And so as a conflict intervener going into this type of fast-paced work environment, we have to find a way to adapt to that environment. And so people will be invested in wanting to solve their conflict and to buy into this process.
And so how are we going to do this? Well, we're going to conduct multiple mini-sessions. So what I mean by that is we're going to break down the conflict resolution process into a number of different sessions. And these mini-sessions, the time will be determined by the parties involved in the conflict and their organization and how much time they can invest per session. Maybe that's a couple of days a week, maybe one day week, whatever that is.
So we're going to break it down. Rather than having a larger session, we're going to have a couple individual smaller sessions. And in those sessions, we're going to break up the conflict resolution process. Since we have little bits of time, we can only cover so much. So we need to break up the conflict resolution process.
And since we're breaking up the process, we have to come up with some way on how the parties are going to act towards each other in between the process. Since we can't cover everything, we can't necessarily resolve all of the conflict in these mini-sessions. So we're going to have the parties write up some MOUs, or Memorandum of Understanding.
So an MOU is basically a temporary agreement between the parties and how they're going to interact with each other at work while they're going through this process still. So these are interim terms in which the parties agree to abide by until this process can be completed.
I just want to show you briefly on how you may creatively break up the conflict resolution process into our little mini-sessions.
So maybe in session 1 we're going to cover our ground rules and go over how we're going to communicate and act in this process and give a process overview, and then maybe have some uninterrupted time for each party to share why they've come to this process and give us a snapshot of the conflict. And after that's done, we can talk a little bit about the MOUs and what we're going to do in between.
And then in session 2, we can have an exchange of information, some clarifying questions.
Session 3, identify interests, and so on and so forth, until we get through all of the stages of the process.
There is another way in which organizations and workplaces can have a buy-in to a conflict resolution process. So although they may feel that it's too slow or they don't have time to do it, they will consider it, especially if the conflict has escalated to the point that is so bad it's interrupting the work pace, interrupting the employees, causing some chaos.
And so at that point, they really may feel it's worth the time to invest and participate in a conflict resolution process, whether it has to be at that quick pace still, maybe they will decide that it's so bad we need to slow things down a bit and really take the time to go through a conflict resolution process.
So now that we've gone over conflict resolution and its relationship to work pace and speed interest, let's look at our key points. So in a working environment, a fast-pace working environment, it's important for the organization to keep up their work pace and have an investment and interest in going at a speed where they can maintain all of the workflow. And we need to find a way in which we can create buy-in for a conflict resolution process, because it can appear to be a really slow pace. And that really doesn't fit in with this fast-pace work environment.
And we can create this buy-in by adapting our conflict resolution processes. And we do that by breaking it up and conducting several little mini sessions with the parties. And we break up the process to fit in with these sessions. So we can hopefully reach an agreement in the end and fit in with the time and the demands of our work.
And in between, we will create some MOUs. And those are Memorandums of Understanding where we agreed to act and interact with each other in certain ways until we can come up with the final agreement.
Well, that's all I have for you today. Please feel free to pause and look a little closer at your key terms here.
Thank you so much for taking the time out to view this tutorial. I really hope that you've gained something. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.