Annie Binns | Life in the Fun Lane

They look harmless enough, don’t they? Those friendly folk on your project team. The ones who came to your kickoff meeting and appeared to still be conscious when you said you expected everyone to act like adults during the project. Perhaps you should have been a wee bit more specific. After all, adults do come in multiple flavors, and the flavor of the day for that project was Irritation Swirl.

I’m not talking about everyday personality conflicts. Anyone who has been in the workplace for more than six hours has probably met someone who makes their skin crawl. (Or was that just me?)  This type of conflict is something most of us have learned to deal with since the age of six when little Suzy told you she thought your socks were ugly and you secretly hoped Suzy’s head would fall off.

I’m talking about the type of conflict that arises in project teams when two or more people of equal standing have radically different ideas on how the project should proceed. This can occur on projects with excellent management and top-notch requirements just as easily as it does on projects in the real world where you work. And that’s where the conflict begins.

Roy [names changed to protect the irritating innocent] was an engineer on a development project.  Kate was a user-interface designer.  They had both been with the company for several years and had a reputation for doing good work.  Now, if you’ve ever mixed engineers and designers in the same bucket, you know what happens.  Engineers like to think they’d made pretty good designers.  And designers like to think that they’ve considered all the engineering implications of their design.  There are times when both of those statements are true.  This wasn’t one of them.  Add to this an intense personality conflict and you’ve got a project that could be stuck for weeks or more.

You see, Roy understood that the architecture of the project would be significantly simpler if a certain feature was removed from the design.  What he didn’t know was Kate had won a hard-fought battle with her boss about the importance of including this feature.  The rest of the team was scared hesitant to take sides and as the project manager, I knew they were looking to me for a solution that didn’t involve violence or taking the issue outside of the team.

I explained to the team that I knew there had been heated discussions about whether to include this feature, without any resolution.  I then asked Roy and Kate to prepare a 10-minute presentation for our Executive Sponsor explaining the benefits of the other person’s idea.  That’s right - Roy had to present Kate’s side; and Kate had to present Roy’s side.   The team looked at me as if I had grown a third eye.  Roy and Kate looked at me as if they wanted to stick pencils in all three of my eyeballs.  I gave them 24 hours to prepare.

Roy and Kate came to my office the next morning.  Smiling.  I immediately looked around to see what I could use to defend myself from attack, grabbing my Bhudda statue by his bald head while trying to appear nonchalant.  “Have a seat,” I said, hopefully.

“No, that’s okay,” said Kate.  “We just wanted to let you know we don’t need to do the presentation for Judy.”

“WTF Really?” I asked.

“Really,” said Roy.  “We figured out a way to do this that won’t be so complicated.  It’s a lot less risky but it’ll still look almost the same.”

“Yeah,” said Kate.  “When Roy explained why it was so tricky, I realized we could do it in a different way and still be okay.”

I let go of Bhudda and breathed a sigh of relief.

While I can’t guarantee this result, I have never seen this method make a situation worse.  In addition, I have never seen anyone actually give their presentation.  One way or another, the conflict is resolved before that point.  At the very least, your non-warring team members are amused.  At best, you get past one hurdle and start looking for the next one.   Here are some keys to remember if you want to try this technique:

• Disagreeing parties should be of equal stature within the team or the company.
• There should be open discussion about the issue at least twice with no resolution.
• Ask for the presentations in a public / team setting.
• Create a sense of urgency with a 24-hour deadline.
• The opposing viewpoints should be presented to a decision-maker.
• Check in with the parties twice during the 24-hour prep period.

As you might imagine, variations of this technique work well for children.  As adults, if we make a deliberate effort to consider situations from someone else’s viewpoint, it throws open doors that we didn’t even realize were closed.  I’m as hard-headed as the next person, and I rarely change my mind.  But I can, and do, see things from multiple perspectives. I encourage you to give it a try the next time you find yourself in, or observing, a disagreement.  And please, let me know how it turned out!

Tags conflict resolution empathy project management team management