Paul PelletierProject management key note speaker, author, corporate lawyer, and executive| Paul Pelletier Consulting Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
How can Ethics help you to solve a conflict in your team?
Here are some ideas:
You can use the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct as a Guide:
- Respect:
Show respect to both sides of the conflict, listen to them and provide feedback to ensure you understand all perspectives.
- Responsibility:
Take responsibility for the conflict, tell the team you will take action to resolve it (and take action).
- Honesty:
Be honest with both sides, a conflict involves emotions, misunderstandings and facts. Try to bring everyone to begin to appreciate their differing viewpoints. If you think someone is being unreasonable or has misinterpreted the situation, then say so. Remember that there are often multiple solution options - compromises that provide wins for everyone are often the most successful solutions.
- Fairness:
Even if there seems to be one side or person who has acted inappropriately or whose understanding of the problem is wrong, all parties will likely be emotional. So be fair by acknowledging their feelings. Most often both sides did something wrong or have contributed to the problem (or there would be no conflict). Be fair to hold each party accountable for their contribution. Try to find a solution that is fair for everyone.
As project managers, we have a helpful Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to help us manage challenging problems. We also have the Ethical Decision-Making Framework - a very useful tool to use when confronted with conflicts that might involved ethical dilemmas.
I agree that ethical frameworks help you steer through conflicts. To answer your question about other tools to resolves conflicts here are the ones from my toolbox:
- Focus on finding the root cause of the conflict. Quite often conflicts are the result of miscommunication, competing requirements, wrong assumptions, conflict of interests, hidden agendas, etc.
- Use decision making and problem solving techniques to resolve conflicts. i.e. approach the conflict as a problem to be solved
- Do assumption analysis, bring the facts up to the surface
- Focus on the problem on the hand, not the people
- And finally learn from it and move on. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
The way to resolve a conflict does not depends on ethics. It depends on the organizational culture and you own method if you are in charge of resolving the conflict. Your own method most of the times will be aligned to organizational culture because if not then it has no sence that you are working inside the organization. So, what code of ethics list is a set of common topics that can help but organizational culture is the key Saving Changes...
Peter PfeifferPM Specialist| MPP - Management de Projetos e ProcessosRio De Janeiro, Rj, Brazil
I think that ethical tools and conflict resolution tools are different one from another.
When there are conflicts, it is likely to have occurred ethical or legal breaches. If there were predominantly legal issues, the conflict should be solved in the legal domain, which is somewhat more objective than the ethical.
If the conflict was caused predominantly by ethical issues, perhaps professional mediation can find a way out. An external mediation is useful, because the involvement of team members in the conflict resolution bears the risk to create even more tension, whereas an external mediator can stay neutral.
On the other hand, ethical tools help to prevent conflicts in the first place. They have an awareness-raising and educative purpose. Ethical Self-assessments, team assessments, team charter, serious games and other tools can be applied to make team member talk about ethics before it is too late.
Once a conflict has been resolved, these tools can, of course, also be very helpful to re-build the team and prevent future conflicts. Saving Changes...
In addition to PMI's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, PMI has also produced an Ethical Decision Making Framework (EDMF). That framework includes a five step process for addressing ethical dilemmas and can be used to address conflicts within a team, as well as other kinds of conflicts. The EDMF is available in eleven languages. Here is a link to this free resource: http://www.pmi.org/About-Us/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics.aspx Saving Changes...
Alankar KarpeProject and program management, Speaker and mentor | WiproBangalore, India
In an ideal world where all the people are ethical, conflicts can be resolved easily. But in real world, we have the organization code which served as a light house and tell us what's accepted and what's not. How conflict is resolved also depends on how leaders behaves. Saving Changes...
Almost always, I start with Root Cause Analysis (similar to what Ayat also mentioned), and then go with any number of techniques based on the situation. I agree that the Code of Ethics needs to be used as a guideline here, just as much as it is to be used in any behavioral situation Saving Changes...
Lily MurariuResearch Council Officer Program Advisor| National Research Council CanadaCantley, Quebec, Canada
Project Managers are faced with increased responsibilities and accountability of their actions and decisions. A strong personal value system, along with a good understanding of the Code of Ethics as project managers needs to be also combined with the Code of Ethics of the organization and sometimes to add the Code of Ethics of the professional association that may also belong to (i.e. engineers, architects). These multiple layers create complexities that call for thorough knowledge of areas of convergence among these ethics pieces. Saving Changes...
Tony ApplebyDirector, Strategy and Solutions| Delegata CorporationAlameda, Ca, United States
Frequently our ethics as professionals has a basis in shared, core values. When those values emphasize ethical approaches to our responsibilities, it helps provide a potential mutual foundation for managing conflict. In PMI's Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility, the four "pillars" that Paul references in his initial post (those of Fairness, respect, Responsibility, and Honesty) are exceptional reference points for us to leverage when trying to sort through conflicts as they arise. Saving Changes...
M. Sahir A. Shatiry, PMI-RMP, PMPSenior Hook-up and Commissioning Engineer| Petronas Carigali Sdn BhdIpoh, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Malaysia
Conflict may come from various reason i.e. personal things, technical matter and etc. Yes the ethics shall take in place in resolving this kind of problem apart of other aspect. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
I tend to agree with Sergio. I don't believe ethics are necessary to resolve conflicts. While it behooves us to apply ethical means to resolving conflicts, it is not a given they are necessary. Saving Changes...
"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed - but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
