Negotiating using mediation process reduces conflict between employees and management.
Conflict arises when two or
more parties can’t agree on something.
It’s interesting to note that conflict doesn’t have to just be between
employees that can’t get along. It could be managers having conflict, or
employees and managers having conflict.
Managing conflict is never easy.
One way that conflicts can be resolved is through mediation.
Mediation is non-coercive, neutral facilitated
negotiation. In mediation employees have an opportunity to speak directly with
each other in an informal, productive atmosphere to develop a mutually satisfying
resolution. Unfortunately, nobody wakes up in the morning being a great
negotiator. This is a skill that takes
patience and practice. In a lecture on
Negotiation by Margaret Neale, when preparing to go into any type of negotiation, but especially for mediation to resolve a conflict, here are four things to remember to be effective:
- Assess the situation (do benefits outweigh the costs?)
- Prepare (understand my interests as well as the interest of my counterpart)
- Ask (engage with my counterpart)
- Package (negotiate things together rather than issue by issue)
Margaret Neale says we are
to ask ourselves why we are negotiating.
We must be able to negotiate in the workplace in order to manage
conflict. Nobody wants to work in a hostile
work environment. Research in conflict
management systems has revealed five major characteristics, one of which is that
resolution should be welcomed or at least tolerated early on in conflict
through direct negotiation (Lipsky 2010).
The early stages of negotiation play a critical role in determining how
conflict will unfold and the nature of the outcome of said conflict. (Volkema,
2010).
This recommendation is important because conflict arises on every level and
it’s important to be aware of how to get what you want. Any relationship
that you are currently in has had some type of conflict, because conflict is
just part of life. William Ury’s talk on “The Walk from No to Yes”
discusses how conflict is managed in one particular South African village he
visited. The men in the village traveled with poison arrows that they
used for hunting and these arrows were absolutely fatal. He says
that when conflict arose, someone would hide the arrows, and then they would
all sit in a circle and talk it out until a resolution occurred. I like
to think of the poison arrows symbolically. Since we don’t currently have
poison arrows in most workplaces, we can think of them as poison words.
It’s so important not to say things out of anger. “When angry, you will make the best speech
you will ever regret” (Ury, 2010). In one particular case study
between an employee and her manager, the employee approached her personnel
department to talk about her complaints and difficulties with her line manager,
John. Nichola was going to put in a complaint through the
company's harassment policy but after mediation, things were resolved.
The potential weakness in negotiating everything is that not every company has the time or resources to be able to negotiate or even practice these negotiation skills. As we learned, some parties, especially women will find it hard to negotiate. In Linda Babcock’s “Women Don’t Ask”, she talks about how men are taught to pursue their needs whereas women are more concerned about the needs of others. Could it be possible that when conflict arises in the workplace, most women just suck it up and bear it because they are too timid to ask for what they want? Another factor to consider is the anxiety level of a negotiator. There are three studies shown in which anxiety is shown to be associated with negotiations and harmful to performance. Negotiators who experience high levels of anxiety make steeper concessions and exit bargaining situations earlier (Wood, 2010). This shows that negotiation as well as conflict resolution skills have to be practiced so that individuals don’t get so nervous when a difficult situation arises, in order to eliminate some conflict in the workplace, strong negotiation skills must be practiced.
References:
The potential weakness in negotiating everything is that not every company has the time or resources to be able to negotiate or even practice these negotiation skills. As we learned, some parties, especially women will find it hard to negotiate. In Linda Babcock’s “Women Don’t Ask”, she talks about how men are taught to pursue their needs whereas women are more concerned about the needs of others. Could it be possible that when conflict arises in the workplace, most women just suck it up and bear it because they are too timid to ask for what they want? Another factor to consider is the anxiety level of a negotiator. There are three studies shown in which anxiety is shown to be associated with negotiations and harmful to performance. Negotiators who experience high levels of anxiety make steeper concessions and exit bargaining situations earlier (Wood, 2010). This shows that negotiation as well as conflict resolution skills have to be practiced so that individuals don’t get so nervous when a difficult situation arises, in order to eliminate some conflict in the workplace, strong negotiation skills must be practiced.
References:
David B. Lipsky and Ariel C. Avgar. October
2010. The Conflict Over Conflict
Management. Dispute Resolution Journal Date: May 1, 2010. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.chatham.edu:3827/eds/detail?sid=ec876832-ed70-4daa-8336-472ce005e720%40sessionmgr111&vid=1&hid=110&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=bsh&AN=55149628
Wood, Alison and Schweitzer, Maurice. May 2010.
Can Nervous Nelly Negotiate? How
Anxiety Causes Negotiators to Exit Early and Make Steep Concessions.
William Ury: The Walk From
"No" to "Yes." October 2010 [Ted Talk, ted id = 1017] https://www.ted.com/talks/william_ury
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