How to master conflict at work

Hello and welcome to Working It.

Many thanks to Emma Jacobs, who wrote this newsletter at short notice last week when I unexpectedly had to take time off. It was a reminder of the fact that brilliant colleagues will support us when we are overwhelmed and have to step away from work 🙏.

By coincidence (although I sometimes doubt there is any such thing) I’m reviewing a fascinating book, How We Break, by Vincent Deary. It’s about what happens — and how to cope — when we are pushed to our limits: emotional, mental and physical. “We are a record of our prolonged encounter with the world,” is just one of the lyrical sentences that has stuck with me.

Read on to find out how to encourage good conflict at work, and in Office Therapy we advise someone with a confusing workplace dress code.

Understanding and managing conflict at work 🧯

Everyone reading this newsletter has probably heard about “psychological safety” at work. To recap, that useful but often misused term describes a healthy workplace culture in which team members feel able to speak up — and speak out — about uncomfortable things. And to disagree.

To take a step back, there can be no psychological safety — let alone any sort of change or improvement in our workplaces — without understanding the role that conflict plays at work. And then we have to learn how to manage it effectively.

I hadn’t thought about conflict as the “bedrock” of good workplace management until I spoke to John Curran. John is an organisational consultant and honorary professor of practice in the UCL anthropology department. He brings anthropological insights to workplaces — one of which is that conflict is central to how we operate as human beings in group settings.

As John told me: “Conflict is ever-present and is part of the infrastructure of any organisation’s culture. There is no culture if there is no conflict. It is part of every group’s dynamics and often works to define who we think we are — and who we are not.”

Conflict, in other words, is telling us something important. “It needs to be embraced, rather than swept under the carpet,” John told me. How can we do that? Many of us are wholly conflict-avoidant and have been ignoring tensions for years 🙋‍♀️.

First, he says, make sure you are not confusing healthy workplace conflict (disagreement over a new process or initiative, for example) with the professional tensions and resentments that we may secretly, or openly, harbour. So-called “professional tensions” are often deemed rational and normal at work. They aren’t.

Here’s John: “Conflict can be dressed up as professional tension when in fact it is political and aims to derail or sabotage progress, collaboration and innovation for many different reasons.”

Healthy conflict, on the other hand, requires good leadership. And that requires managers to stand back and not take sides or be influenced by those involved in the disagreement. “Talking to the key individuals involved in the conflict can spark the process of trying to address the issues at hand. An evidence-based conversation usually begins with ‘I have observed a few times that . . . what are your thoughts on this?’ This addresses the elephant in the room.”

Even with a “stand back” approach, leaders still need training on how to spot conflict and manage it well. Sometimes it’s what’s not being said — think about those awkward silences on Zoom 🤐.

And how does good conflict management work in practical settings where staff may have profound disagreements? I asked Nina Goswami, head of UK inclusion for Clifford Chance, the law firm. Her tip is for moderators or managers to start any potentially difficult meeting with a clear statement: “Setting out the purpose of the discussion from the outset will help, along with an acknowledgement that there may be differing opinions and people may feel they need to have a break to ‘take a moment’.

“The ultimate aim is to leave that meeting where people have had their voice [heard], realising they may not agree, but that they will leave with common actions to take away, allowing them to continue as a collaborative team.”

We are keen to hear about your experiences with conflict management at work. What are the best tips — and pitfalls? Email me: [email protected].

This week on the Working It podcast

It’s peak hiring season, and for many employers that means automatically looking to external candidates to fill roles. We are hard-wired to be attracted to shiny new people — with all the potential they bring. But in a global talent shortage, it makes sense for hiring managers to look to existing staff to step up, retrain or move to new departments.

In this week’s episode, we talk about the pros and cons of internal vs external hiring, with HR experts Josh Bersin, who heads an eponymous research and advisory company, and the FT’s deputy work and careers editor, Bethan Staton. It’s a rich discussion with lots of tips for managers — and for staff looking to gain more skills in search of promotion.

Office Therapy

The problem: My workplace clarified its post-pandemic office dress code. It’s “smart” on Monday to Thursday, and “smart casual” on Fridays. Can you guide me on what this means exactly? I am a man in the financial services sector.

Isabel’s advice: I called in an expert for this: Carola Long, the FT’s deputy fashion editor. Here’s an edited version of her reply — sign up to the Fashion Matters newsletter to get her full recommendations, including best brands and styles 👔. (Anyone else with a workwear dilemma, do email her: [email protected]. She’ll sort you out.)

“Dress codes can be hard to interpret as people put their own spin on them, and workwear has become far more casual in the last four years. First, email the HR department at your workplace for advice, as everywhere has its own sartorial culture.

For “smart”, wear a dark blue or navy suit with a white shirt but no tie. If you arrive at work and feel the blazer is too much, then you can take it off. Wear with black Derby or Oxford shoes.

As for “smart casual” — the most overanalysed but least understood dress code — try dark khaki chinos or slim-fit gabardine trousers with a button-down shirt and a gilet. A wool polo shirt is another option. Shoe-wise, chukka boots are preferable to smart trainers.

Perhaps this advice errs on the formal side, but just because you can dress down, it doesn’t mean you should!”

Got a question, problem or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our readers? Send it to me: [email protected] or via a voice note. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleagues or underlings will never know.

Five top stories from the world of work

1. The UK has an accountability problem: just look at the Post Office: Camilla Cavendish’s insightful look at the UK institutional failures that go beyond the Post Office scandal: a lack of accountability infects far too many of our public bodies. (Some interesting discussion about this article on LinkedIn, too)

2. The ‘smile files’ cheering up gloomy workers: Keeping track of praise and upbeat comments about you, or your team, on a Slack channel or document is a popular way to boost morale and feel better about work — Emma Jacobs explores this growing trend.

3. The scramble to find CFOs as departures hit record high: It’s a candidate’s market in CFO recruitment. Brooke Masters talks to headhunters and experts to find out why finance executives are the hottest commodity in corporate life.

4. Competent jerks have a shelf life in the office: Or, why jerks don’t usually get to the top. Anjli Raval looks at the research and talks to experts — it’s a reassuring read. (Also check out the reader comments online — a wide range of views on display 👀.)

5. The young people sifting through the internet’s worst horrors: A compelling FT magazine investigation by David Pilling, talking to young content moderators working from Nairobi on low wages — and sacked by their employers when they formed a union.

One more thing . . . 

I very much enjoyed Bruce Daisley’s LinkedIn post sharing an absolute corker of a PR gaffe from the chief executive of WebMD in the US. It’s a video telling staff that they have to get back to the office. Come for the heavy-handed messaging, stay for the cringe musical number 😳.

This version of the video has been withdrawn and updated by WebMD since the (ahem) backlash, but the original is well worth the watch🍿.

A word from the Working It community

In last week’s newsletter, Emma Jacobs wrote about the importance of rituals in our working lives. Thank you to everyone who responded with their thoughts. Here’s a Working It reader who asked to remain anonymous:

“I expect the reading I do on my commute, which I do as a ritual both to and from the office, to take me out of my element, in part as a transition between home and work/work and home. After reading ‘Your Brain on Art’ last year, I decided that my commute-time reading needed to put me in touch with what I consider to be transcendence in the form of literature, poetry, poetic criticism, and sometimes biography (of a person I admire or whose qualities I can aspire to), i.e. I aim for what can move me, take my thinking out of a rut, refresh me, inspire me, etc.”

I hadn’t come across Your Brain on Art 🖼️ before but the book’s publishers claim that “just one art experience per month can extend your life by ten years.” That’s extraordinary 😮.

Megan Pantelides, executive director at Board Intelligence, brings a fascinating perspective:

“The challenge for managers is to make work rituals feel important so they become as powerful as social rituals. In my view, this is about making them interesting — somewhere we chew over our biggest issues, and everyone’s brains are whirring. If in that meeting, or writing that report, you come away having solved a problem, felt heard, got the resources you need, or started thinking differently about something — then you’ve got some value back. You approach the next one completely differently.”

And finally . . . 

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