Why PMs Must Master Conflict Resolution

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Leadership  

Among the many skills that appear on a project manager’s job description is a laundry list that includes basic elements such as:

• Keeping projects on track
• Keeping teams on schedule
• Keeping everything in budget

While this list seems to cover a lot, it doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty of what every PM learns quickly within the first week, like:

• Mediating team disputes
• Translating between groups that speak entirely different business/industry dialects
• Refereeing meetings that suspiciously resemble family dinner arguments

Essentially, if you’re a PM and you’re good at conflict resolution, you’re not just good at surviving, you’re also good at reaching goals and winning.

Conflict as a Feature, Not a Bug
There are some PMs that believe if they plan a project thoroughly enough, then the process will run smoothly. This is a very cute notion.

Reality kicks in pretty hard though, and projects often turn out to be semi-controlled moments of mayhem—by design, of course. Put together a ragtag ensemble of multiple stakeholders, limited resources, tight/impossible deadlines, and a few loose cannons who think that think the term “agile” means “to make it up as we go along,” and you’ve got the formula.

The result is conflict—lots of it. And lots of contributing voices:

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