May 15, 2017
Ask ACE
How do you stop workers from bickering?
By Answered By Susan Degrandpre, Collaboration Consulting
Q: My employees do good work, but they waste a lot of time bickering and complaining to me about each other. I feel like a kindergarten teacher sometimes. How can I make them stop?
ACE advises:
- Teach your employees simple negotiating skills, and perhaps add conflict resolution and teamwork training. Offer the training in the spirit of enhancing the group members' good work, not as punishment for communicating poorly.
- Facilitate the group to set norms for effective, productive interpersonal communication. Help them create norms that state specific, desired, observable behaviors, not general statements open to interpretation. “Be respectful” means many things. “Listen quietly when someone else is speaking” is clearly seen and heard.
- Set expectations for them to try working it out by following the norms before coming to you. Coach them as they prepare, if they want that, then step out of the way.
- If you must get directly involved, act as a mediator rather than the problem solver. You are the neutrally supportive presence who will help them feel safe as they learn to fully resolve their conflicts.
- Model the behavioral norms the team created when you have your own difficult conversations. In my experience, teams set very high standards when they set their own norms. Expect that they will not be easy to live up to — probably not for you, either. Reward all efforts in the right direction; bumps and short-term failures are part of learning new behaviors.
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