One of the toughest problems managers are faced with is how to handle conflicts with problem workers. It does not matter if you run a small team within a company, a large department or even if you own the whole business. If you spend any significant amount of time in a management position it is almost inevitable that you will need to deal with a person on your team who either fails to do the work that is required or does not play nicely with others. These conflicts cannot just be ignored.
As a manager it is very important to deal with these types of conflicts appropriately. You don’t want to come down like a ton of bricks on someone every time they display the slightest imperfection. On the flip side, you cannot afford to consistently overlook a pattern of offenses that jeopardizes your team’s goals or affects other team members negatively.
The key is to accurately gauge the severity of the conflict and then to respond appropriately. Fortunately, the Bible provides some great advice for handling all sorts of interpersonal conflicts.
Let’s take an easy case first. Say you have a very talented and dependable worker who does most things right but has a weakness in one or two minor areas. Perhaps they tend to come in to work 5 or 10 minutes late some mornings or they dress in a slightly different manner than everyone else or maybe they like to listen to an IPOD while they work. For these cases I take my queue from 1 Corinthians 13 where we are instructed that Love is patient, kind and long suffering.
I might not personally like all the particular habits of all my team members but as long as they do great work and are not hurting someone else, I completely overlook all that small stuff. It is not worth damaging the moral of an otherwise great worker just to force them to conform to your own preferences.
I have found that most people are willing to cooperate if you approach them in the correct manner. Always try this gentle approach first and give it chance to work. In the next post we will look at what to do when you try to a soft approach and it does not work.
Stumble it!
