How leaders can resolve conflicts between teachers
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Conflict is rife in school: between pupils, between pupils and teachers and, on more occasions than we would like to admit, between members of staff.
The last kind is often the most difficult to resolve. As Joyel Crawford, leadership development consultant at Crawford Leadership Strategies, explains: “It’s not easy to lead a team when there are conflicts that are bubbling up. This takes your focus off leading and managing the needs of the school or organisation.”
So, how can you ensure conflicts between team members don’t spiral out of control?
1. Encourage direct conversation
Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor: be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity, suggests encouraging your team to practise what she refers to as “clean escalation”.
“Instead of team members coming to you, the boss, to complain about each other, ask them to approach one another directly,” Scott says. “If you have committed to practising radical candour - caring personally while challenging directly - as a team, this will eventually come naturally.”
She explains that, as a leader, if people approach you to complain about a fellow team member, you could get dragged into a “triangle of complaining, name-calling or back-stabbing”.
If you talk to both parties separately, each side will be suspicious that you’re speaking about them behind their back - which you are - and “the two parties begin to distrust each other and a toxic relationship develops”. Scott adds: “You can avoid all of this by simply asking them to talk to each other directly.”
2. Get the HR team involved
If the radical candour approach fails and staff members encounter a problem that they can’t resolve themselves, you need advice from human resources. HR professionals will be able to offer guidance on the issue and there could potentially be legal problems associated with the conflict, so it makes sense to keep them abreast of what’s happening as early as possible, advises Crawford. The next step is to “do some detective work and find out what’s going on from each party’s perspective and try to have a mediated discussion”.
Then, invite the team members to a meeting. “Sitting the warring parties down together is ideal,” says psychologist Susan Heitler, author of Prescriptions Without Pills. “The process of healing after an upset takes both [parties] verbalising their concerns and listening to each other. It’s like a game of catch in that there needs to be both a tossing of information and catching it.”
3. Have clear ground rules
Heitler says meetings should be held in a neutral place rather than the office of one of the participants. “The starting speaker sets the tone, so it’s important that you, the mediator, take the lead,” she recommends.
One person should speak at a time and respect should be shown to all parties as you seek to understand and resolve the conflict, advises Crawford. She suggests that the best way to get conversation between the aggrieved parties started is by addressing the elephant in the room.
“Discuss at a high level that several matters have come to your attention regarding the involved parties that are getting in the way of the team’s productivity,” Crawford says. “Coaching each party to speak in ‘I’ statements and focusing on the situation and not the individual are also good ground rules. Explain that the intention of the meeting is not to place blame but to resolve the conflict as peacefully as possible, so you can get back to working together effectively.”
4. Piece together what happened
Each participant needs to explain what they said, did and felt in the problem situation, taking it in turns as they put together what Heitler describes as the “puzzle pieces” of what happened.
“The goal of this recreation of the events is for each participant to find the mi-s,” she says. “To discover what was their mistake, misunderstanding, misperception, misinformation, and so on. The conclusion, thus, is not who was right and who was wrong. The conclusion is for each participant to discover their own part in the mishap.”
5. Set a time limit
Between 30 minutes and an hour should be sufficient for the conversation, Crawford says. “You don’t want this to turn into a marathon of misery,” she explains. “Each person gets five minutes to state their case, and repeat until they feel the matter has been laid out and resolved. Interjecting by asking clarifying questions and then allowing the other party to respond in kind can help each party to feel heard and understood.”
Crawford adds that you may need to remind participants of the ground rules if their remarks start turning into personal digs.
6. Wrap up in the right way
At the end of the discussion, ask each party if they feel that the matter has been resolved satisfactorily. “Restate the resolution and action items to move forward,” Crawford says. You should also “gain commitment from both parties that they will take steps to work better together” and make sure that you document everything - “time, date, people present, body language, only objective facts, and any action items for follow-up”.
It’s also important to schedule a meeting for a few weeks’ time to make sure that the problem has been completely resolved.
“All solutions inevitably prove to be partial,” Heitler says. “Better to think of them as works in progress. So, set a time to meet again to discuss what has worked in the new system and what still needs an upgrade.”
Simon Creasey is a freelance writer
This article originally appeared in the 22 November 2019 issue under the headline “Resolving heavyweight conflict in your staffroom”
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