Back to work after the longer
than usual holiday break and guess what? We have some conflict. This is a common uplift in the business world
based on people perception and change.
Taking that most amazing and free leadership skill second perceptual
position (being and looking through the eyes of another person), we find that
we have worked hard, become part of a magnificent high performance team, have
great ideas for developing the business and on Thursday repaired to home for an
extended and well deserved break (this section does not apply to those of you
with young children). During this
sojourn our minds have integrated with relaxation, indulgence and social media
and so has everyone else’s; ultimately Thursday’s team integration becomes
Tuesday’s rebellion.
The leadership key is to
assimilate all of it. Conflict is vital: the fact that it exists is recognition
of free speech and/or ideas, as long as it is resolved effectively it will lead
to personal and professional growth, working group to high performance.
So capture the ideas that come
from relaxation or indulgence, but what of social media influence?
I am not always sure if I
enjoy the benefits of the immortal iconic front-runner in the social
information technology genre, but I do know that Facebook is somehow
influential. The billion or so
(apparently) human users have organically amalgamated into what I can only
describe (to myself) as a plethora of daftness.
Unlike its more mature and responsible Uncle ‘LinkedIn’, snappy go
getter cousin ‘Instagram’, global career sister ‘Twitter’ or genial originators
Grandma and Granddad ‘Friends Reunited’, Facebook seems to be the child sitting
in the family car screaming ‘I’m bored’, ‘are we there yet’, ‘I want an ice
cream’, “LOL OMG” whilst uncle L calmly reassures them and big sis T exclaims
‘I told you we should have taken the train’, ‘Shut up, I’ve got more friends
than you’ being the stark FB retort.
This latter brag is true by a
country mile and therefore Facebook becomes a kind of road crash TV; not
actually watching road crashes, but viewing pictures of dogs balancing cats on
their heads, strangely shaped vegetables pitched against an Australian sunset, CGI
video clips of goldfish devouring leopards and isolated empty bottles of gin
nestled comfortably in fine sand on a beach in Anguilla. It is also important
to ‘post’ life changing, globally poignant annotations poetic beyond all
measure; ‘Today I’ve eaten the last of my Christmas peaches’, ‘I’m Corsica,
which Mediterranean island are you?’ I’ve reached level 97 in Candy Crush Saga’. So this is what is happening in the planet
and we could believe it if it were not for the sake and saviour of reality; I
can listen to Capital Radio or BBC 5 live, Conservatives or UKIP, Laurel or
Hardy, Putin or Obama (not sure why I linked those), but in the end its choice
and the choice of business. As Buddha
once famously quoted ‘Never believe anything you hear unless it relates
directly to you, not even if I said it’
So do we acquiesce or do we
resist? Captain Picard was once told by
some bloke from Sweden that resistance is futile and we know what happened
there! There is no conflict on a Borg
ship but plenty in Star Fleet; I know where I’d rather work.
According to psychologists Art Bell and Brett Hart,
there are eight common causes of conflict in the workplace. Bell and Hart identified these common causes
in separate articles on workplace conflict in 2000 and 2002. The eight causes are:
1.
Conflicting resources
2.
Conflicting styles
3.
Conflicting perceptions
4.
Conflicting goals
5.
Conflicting pressures
6.
Conflicting roles
7.
Different personal
values
8.
Unpredictable policies
