What is the number one mistake leaders make when dealing with conflict?
Emailing!
Email is for facts, period. It is not for arguments, debates or other such shenanigans. In my experience, email only escalates conflict and leaves you with more of a mess than you started with.
I don’t do many direct mediations any more, but most of the ones I have conducted lately have involved email. One example: a woman accused her boss of harassment. It wasn’t harassment, but she didn’t know what else to call his behavior. His office was right next door to hers but he never talked to her. He gave her all her assignments on email; he even did her performance review over email! (He was in IT. Hmmm…)
Another example involved a group of software developers who were so immersed in conflict that they couldn’t get the product out the door. They brought me in to work with the team. I went to their staff meeting and noticed they all brought in their laptops. Fair enough… they might be accessing the meeting’s agenda or want to take notes electronically, I figured. But instead, they spent the session emailing each other comments such as: “Dog breath; that was the stupidest comment that I’ve ever heard.”
September 24, 2018
