Conflict Is Inevitable. Deal with It

Few of us relish conflict. It’s discomfiting and stressful. It’s also inevitable in any workplace, especially now, when social and political tensions sharply divide the world. In a recent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 76% of employees said they had witnessed acts of incivility in the past month, and 13% had encountered it daily. Discord on the job costs businesses an estimated $2 billion a day in lost productivity and absenteeism. This thorny situation calls for leaders to develop a new competency: conflict intelligence, the ability to manage and resolve all types of disagreements.