Personality conflicts hurt businesses by contributing to a decline in trust, communication, collaboration, teamwork and morale. In turn, efficiency, productivity, culture, team-member satisfaction, retention, business growth and bottom-line profits are all negatively impacted.
The degree to which team members do not communicate effectively and collaborate is one of the greatest obstacles to business success.
The efficient, effective and smooth flow of information is critical when working to consistently meet and even exceed the wants and needs of customers, foreseeing challenges, engaging opportunities and overcoming obstacles.
It is also essential to the production and delivery of high-quality goods and services in a timely manner. When communication is limited or even impossible, due to personality conflicts, the business weakens from within, and the effects are far-reaching.
It is vitally important for business owners and managers to be aware of negative behaviors that are a result of personality conflicts and to address them early and effectively in order to keep communication, collaboration, teamwork and morale at consistently high levels.
Do you recognize any or all of these sabotaging behaviors in your business?
#1: Avoidance
Some people choose avoidance to cope with a personality conflict. While this may be a quieter and more discreet way of dealing with the situation, it is not effective in fostering the high levels of communication, collaboration and trust necessary in highly functional teams.
#2: Resistance
When in resistance mode, individuals will openly or overtly resist the suggestions, desires, directions and demands of the person they are in conflict with. They may even demonstrate intentional spiteful actions that are intended to get back at or push the other person’s buttons. This type of behavior is not part of a successful team.
#3: Verbal Sabotage
Gossip and snide or edgy comments are common when there is a personality conflict between team members. This type of negativity doesn’t lead to positive outcomes and can significantly damage the work environment. It has no place in a powerful business model.
#4: Arguing
This behavior is the antithesis of effective communication, collaboration and teamwork and does not contribute to positive environments where team members can perform at peak levels. Arguments and aggressive disagreements are disruptive to operations, send negativity rippling throughout the business, and they damage morale and company culture.
If you recognize some or all of these behaviors in yourself or your team members, it’s important to realize the tremendous drag they are having on the team, resources, operations and profitability of your company. When top talent and customers are lost as a result of these conflicts, it’s already gone too far. Given the overwhelming downside personality conflicts bring to a business, it is imperative that you discover, address and overcome them as quickly as possible.
Many personality conflicts arise out of unconscious habits and tendencies that exist within each team member. Sometimes, these habits can easily be corrected by simply drawing attention to the damaging negative behaviors in which team members are engaging and making it clear they are not acceptable in the workplace.
Team trainings built upon highly accurate assessment results and designed to help people understand themselves and others, their similarities and differences, and which also teach participants how to effectively communicate with various behavioral types are invaluable to business success. With greater understanding and acceptance of each other and enhanced communication skills, personality conflicts are significantly reduced.
Effective coaching is very successful in helping people become fully aware of the situation at hand and their role in it. By working with a qualified professional, team members learn to take personal responsibility for their attitudes and corresponding behaviors and can then correct them to create a more positive and collaborative work environment.
Another option for lowering the occurrence of personality conflicts is to proactively hire for both attitude, skills and emotional intelligence. Through the use of highly accurate assessments that measure these attributes of the team member you bring into your business, personality conflicts can be diminished from the outset.
Sometimes, team members will insist on keeping conflict alive and will refuse to put down their differences. In these instances, the wisest choice is to let them go. Anytime you reduce negativity and tension in the workplace, you improve the satisfaction level of the team and, in turn, improve customer service and profitability.
A well-designed team, working together in a culture free of personality conflicts, can deliver the best possible experience to customers.
We all are unique and different, and we won’t always agree. However, when strategic investments are made in helping team members understand themselves and each other better, acceptance of differences becomes easier, and effective communication and teamwork become the norm.
