Workplace Conflict

Questions of the week:  When I don't know how to resolve my workplace conflict and I don't get help from leadership. What should I do?

I write this article based on the insight of my conversation with my team in our monthly 1-on-1 call. I speak with each one of my team members. This article is to share this week's question and our working method. You can subscribe to the Building Our Team newsletter (2900+ subscribers)

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When I don't know how to resolve my workplace conflict and I don't get help from leadership. What should I do?

My answer to this during the call to the person was, "I don't know." It feels like you are stuck, and there is no way out. I am not good at managing conflict and resolving differences.

That's not how I made big money, and I am happy I found an easier way. I learned how to set boundaries, manage expectations, communicate clearly, cut people out of my life who drain my energy (Keep my distance or don't talk with them), and work closely with people who add value, energy, and ideas to my life.

We live in a world of abundance, so let's work with people who create, collaborate, and celebrate with us.   

You don't have to deal with bad clients; you can let them go, find new good clients, and be happier.

Similarly, at 73bit, I tell everyone from day one that we have a friendly culture; if you don't fit our culture, do not thrive in it, and are not happy working here, you should leave us fast because we will become friendlier next year.

Coming back to the question asked and the problem at hand. Like every big hairy problem, let's define this one and break it down before we can solve it.

Precondition: This solution is only for achievers in the company, and here are some criteria (You tick most of them)

✔ You have completed more than one year with us

✔ You know that you have made some hard money for us

✔ You have got a personal appreciation for your Work

✔ You have got a big bonus beyond your expectations (you know you will)

✔ People come to you with their problems, and you solve them

This means you know your job and are good at it. There are no questions about your skills for your role, your ability to make money for the company and your intention to help the company grow.

If I had to use industry language here,

we would call you "a good employee."

Now, Let's define the problem here in an interactive way.

You are having workplace conflict if more than 2 of the below are true.

1) Poor Interpersonal Work Relation

2) Higher Internal Miscommunication

3) Sense of false Urgency

4) Difficulty in Decision making

5) Behavioural issues from colleagues

6) You are experiencing Office Politics

7) Your family notices that you're feeling stressed.

8) Your friends know you are frustrated at Work

9) You get pushed to a borderline toxicity

10) You mostly feel suffocated while working

There are more, but I hope you get the idea.

However, we may be unable to address them all at once.

Breaking it would be intelligent and also an opportunity to learn to deal with workplace conflict (My style)

Here is my answer to the above question after thinking for a day.

Please focus on these 3 things:

- You can barely speak your mind and share your points

- You feel like you are jumping hoops and dodging bullets

- You are primarily busy doing unproductive and mundane Work

Why? Because there is an opportunity cost associated with this

✘ Low Morale

✘ No New Ideas

✘ Fear of Failures

✘ Scarcity of Initiatives

✘ Lack of Experimentation

You would ask why opportunity cost matters.

I am glad you asked.

It makes Happy Money.

Here is the formula

Happy Money == Less Efforts + Easy Delivery + Few Meetings + High Quality + More Value + Delighted Client        

You know what it also means?

Pure Profits == Satisfied Employees        

No one can argue with you once you bring Happy Money into the company. It will be the cornerstone of your decision-making.

Because

✱ It's Repeatable

✱ It's Measurable

✱ It's Predictable

✱ It's Relatable

✱ It's Scalable

Let me share a recent example to bring this home.

I will share this to the best of my ability to recall

We recently delivered 2 Scorecards for a New Client.

- It was done in 3 weeks (3 working days per week)

- Otherwise, it would have taken 5 weeks (Save 66% time)

- The client noticed that we delivered it on 16th instead of 20th

- The Client's hard deadline was met with confidence

- The quality of the deliverables was up to the mark

- Which means more profit with less time for the company

The team did good Work of collaboration and some start-of-the-art automation.

The ideas, energy, and inspiration for all this came from the team's success on Scorecard Day. The shift in mindset to think openly and attract abundance came especially from the Me Days of Scorecard Day.

The vibrant, happy, and friendly environment created for the team during Scorecard Day, which occurs two days a week, helps them with their personal development and growth.

If we had to do this the old way (Manually Setting the Scorecard with Assumptions), by putting pressure on the team, micromanaging every decision they make, tracking time for every manual effort, and forcing them to follow an unnecessary red-tap corporate process, and more.

forget it;

the project would NOT have been delivered ON TIME.        

I have been in this business for the past ten years and have seen a failed project plenty of times.

I can write this 100 times on a blackboard for those who still don't get it.

Our Business == "We are transforming knowledge into value"

We have systems and processes that make it easy for us to do our jobs, work together, and ultimately be happier. Systems work for us, not the other way around. Processes are not to massage our ego. We don't get paid to sit on meetings, send emails and solve firefighting all day.

We get paid a premium to fix big problems.

Let's find a solution for your workplace conflict since you must resolve it yourself.

You need to lean toward the overall objective of making happy money and putting all the solutions to achieve it.

I got 3 solutions for you.

A) Setting Clear Boundaries

It's about knowing your roles and getting better clarity on your responsibility. This means you are not your Work; you and your Work are separate. Your purpose to go above and beyond will be only if you think it is important for your personal growth and an investment in your future self.

If you think some boundaries are hard to maintain or manage. Get some consense from your peers. Ask Chat GPT for some expert advice (prompt: Act as Adam Grant OR Simon Sinek and answer me) Get it approved by the leadership team at 73bit.

You may only get approval for some. But you can apply the 80/20 principle, based on which ones you get approvals, and settle with the rest.

If you are sophisticated about it, You will have a personal menu card in the form of an excel sharable link when the boundaries and time it takes can be maintained. If you are intelligent, each task will have a productive vs unproductive item (Things you are not skilled to do and out of your scope). The Overall % of UN productive OR NON Profitable allocation will be highlighted in BIG BOLD RED FONT.

You don't need to adjust. The next solution will come to the rescue.

B) Managing Expectations

Just because you have to do something doesn't mean you have to agree with the standard of expectations here. Everyone in the team has different experiences; some have 2 years (junior), and some have 20.

Wouldn't it be foolish of me to expect the code quality of a junior developer to match my coding standard? It would be an insult to me if I start comparing my work with theirs or god for bid if I turn insane to tell them that I can improve the quality of the code 10X.

Of course, it would be better. In fact, I should be so better and technically sound that I should open the code and read it in 15 minutes, suggest a solution that the junior can implement in half a day, and the problem should be fixed forever. (If you can't do that, STOP judging other people's work.)

I have done 6 years of formal education with a degree of Masters in Information Technology. I have passed it with distinction. I have 10 years of working in corporate experience and have travelled to 3 international countries for work-related reasons. I have worked on projects with over 10 million dollars in budgets for big banks and life science companies. I have worked with developers who have worked for big tech companies. Read more than 250 tech books after college. Listen to more than 1000 podcast episodes. (Sorry for the humble brag, but I had to rant out the illogical point here for baseless comparison)

So, You know what you are good at and how long it will take you to do specific tasks. Including the unproductive red tape processes that are slowing you down. If you are smart, then you may also add intellegent point like context switching, and the chances of landing would be lower, but you can give it a shot.

You can do the same for the quality, details, and other delivery factors.

Take advantage of emails for this so that in case it needs to be escalated, you can cc it to leadership and have a one-on-one with leadership for things you are not capable of doing or that are out of scope.

C) Assertive Communication

Assertive communication is a way of communicating that's respectful, direct, and clear, while still standing up for your own needs and beliefs.

You can look up a couple of YouTube videos on it. But I will give you a few practical applications of it. There will be some conversations you will find are not profitable, aka don't make use of happy money. Have standard answers to them.

I will give you 1 better: Using a keyboard shortcut program like aText, which has short commands like "ciw" = "Can it wait till tomorrow since I am in the middle of something that is currently in my mental model and would cost the company 2 hours for context switching?" These would be for requests that are random and outside of meetings and daily Scrum. After a while, people will stop bugging you if they see if it can wait.

For any ticket update for existing red tape process for daily update.

"dtu1" = "I've been working through several tasks today, making sure the code is running smoothly and fixing any issues that arise. The overall structure of the project is improving, and I’m getting closer to finalizing a few key areas. Some challenges came up, but I managed to address them efficiently.  Today's Progress 1) 2) 3)"

I got this from ChatGPT and It gave me 10 more messages. 30 should be enough for the whole month and dtu2, dtu3, dtu4,.... can be created.

If you have to repeat something repeatedly to explain it to someone. Ask if you can create an video, 3 question (Answer should be in 300 words or more, like pop quiz in school) assignment in a word document that is already answered in a video and prepare and written answer document that will have links to other videos and help document. It can be followed by the call in a coaching style, you ask questions and they reply. Any off track conversation.

Ask yourself this money question: "How will this question help you make more happy money for the company?"

Take this oppurtunity to build a bite size training program. Recently someone asked for a call and I shared the cheating article as a response. I am still to hear back if the call is needed. I don't think I will get into the call.  

So you will have the tools you need by the end of it. It won't be created in a day

1) Boundaries Menu Card

2) Expecation Management Emails

3) Automated keyboard message shortcuts

4) Short videos or references to existing videos

5) Pre-requisite Probench understanding assessments

6) Pop Quiz video explanation followed by Q&A

Are there other ways to solve this?

Absolutely, yes!!!

Mine would be simple to understand and easy to execute, entirely in your control, and focused on the company's objective rather than the individual's ego.

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