How to resolve conflict by focusing on success and curiosity

Today we’re getting into the details of helping other team members resolve conflicts. We’ll talk about what’s unlikely to work, what you should focus on, and key steps to deal with conflict constructively. We’ll use all this theory in two sample cases to give you practical advice.

Conflict sucks right?! But do you know what’s worse?

People bottling it up and fuming about things and not moving on. This leads to constant niggling, stresses, and issues that can pop up in very unexpected places.

In extreme cases, conflict can also make your best team members quit or disengage from their work.

Overall, when there’s negative conflict: people (including those not actively in the conflict) won’t do their best work, it will cause delays, and the game you create at the end will be worse because of it.

So what do we do?

Good on Paper, Unlikely to Work

Let’s start with things that sound good on paper, but that I think are unlikely to get results based on my experiences. It doesn’t work when:

• Someone says: “I’ll try to do better next time.”
  • I get it, we want to believe we can change. But we’re humans. Changing our behaviours is super hard and takes a lot of time. We’ll fail a lot as we go along. So expect that humans will fail.
• You focus on the differences. Whether that’s different personalities or ways of doing things.
  • This is important, but I’ve generally found this pushes people away from each other. Or at best becomes something that sounds like the equivalent of Aries don’t get along with Taurus. This is, it doesn’t give you any indication of how to get people working together.
• People try to be “friends”.
  • Not everyone has to be friends in the workplace. But they do need to know how to work together.
• You empower an individual to solve it on their own.
  • This sounds like a good thing, since you’re using the word “empower”. But the reality is that the individual is likely to feel abandoned and also: if they could have solved it on their own, then they wouldn’t be asking for help from you.
• Similarly, you tell person A that person B won’t change and therefore person A should change themselves.
  • Everyone needs to make adjustments to work together. If one person is being an issue for multiple people on a team and won’t change or come to the table: you need to figure out how to remove them from that team, if possible.
• You allow people to speak to others in ways that are suitable for their personal culture, but that do not match to the team’s work culture.
  • As a team you need to agree on what is and is not acceptable language and ways of speaking. Once you know that, it needs to be enforced. There can’t be exceptions like “the boss is allowed to yell, but juniors are not”.

So what should you focus on?

• The work itself: how each person contributes and creating a shared vision of success.
• Curiosity. Through curiosity we can understand other people’s perspectives and open ourselves to unexpected solutions.
• Considering what problem you as the mediator are actually trying to solve.
  • Why is it bad that there is conflict? Is it time consuming, disheartening for rest of team, creating a game with mismatched styles, or something else?
  • This will help you focus the scope of what needs to change and also might help you start thinking of solutions.
• Creating a series of conversations that may go on for months.
  • This won’t be a one and done meeting. You’ll need to have conversations as a group and with the individuals involved to figure out a plan and then follow up to assess the success of said plan.
• Making sure that every team member feels heard and their feelings are respected.
  • you may not have an answer or quick fix. But let each person know that you will work with them for as long as it takes and you will make it a priority.

Key Stages of Constructive Conflict

What next? I love this book called “Powerful Phrases For Dealing With Workplace Conflict: What To Say Next To Destress The Workday, Build Collaboration, And Calm Difficult Customers” by Karin Hurt & David Dye. In it they detail the Four C’s aka the key stages of constructive conflict.

• Key stages
  1. Connection — do we know each other as human beings (and know yourself)
  2. Clarity — do we have a shared understanding of success?
  3. Curiosity — are we genuinely interested in other perspectives and what’s possible?
  4. Commitment — do we have a clear agreement on what’s next?
• It also has a series of super useful go-to questions you can use that match with each phase. You should buy the book to take a look at these.
  • Note: this isn’t an ad. I just like their approach and don’t want to give away all their secrets.

Before a Group Meeting

So now we have a plan on how to talk about things, but before you bring people into a meeting:

• Talk to each person individually to make sure you fully understand their concerns and perspectives.
• Determine whether it will be safe to hold a meeting with you and the people involved
• Make sure all individuals are genuinely ready for change and discussion. There’s no point going into a conversation if it’s unlikely to improve the situation.

Case Studies

Let’s look at the two cases given to us in the initial question

Art Directors Disagree About Overall Art Style

“My company has two Art Directors, one leads environment art and the other character art, but they disagree constantly on the overall art style.”

Applying the Four C’s:

1. Connection
   • See if each person can understand the other person’s perspective.
     • This means getting them to say things like:
       • It sounds like you’re feeling ____, is that right?
       • Tell me more.
   • Help them recognise that the conflict is happening because they are both passionate about creating a visually stunning game. If one of them didn’t care, there wouldn’t be any arguments.
2. Clarity
   1. Ask them: What would success look like? Is it:
      • a more detailed art bible that doesn’t allow for different interpretations,
      • a beautiful corner showcasing the shared vision
      • a clear set of steps that need to be followed when making art decisions. For example, feedback phases, team voting, meetings, etc.
      • a chart that specifies all art director tasks and responsibilities, and then details which of the two individuals is in charge of each task.
        • This is useful if the conflict is happening because they are both trying to do the exact same tasks and keep stepping on each other’s toes.
      • promoting one of them to lead art director for this game
      • Or is it a combination of these things?
   • Get them to reflect on how and when they are arguing. Including:
     1. What types of issues are the ones that cause the most disagreements?
     2. How is this affecting the rest of the team?
   • You can come up with plans that sound great on paper, but at some point there’ll be an exception or something unexpected will come up. So ask them:
     • When you can’t agree on a decision, how will you escalate?
3. Curiosity
   • Encourage them to be Jennuinely curious to find out what’s going on
   • If they’re starting to argue, stop them from speaking. Then
     • Check you’ve understood both of their perspectives. For each of them say: “What I’m hearing is___ What have I missed? What would you add?”
       • This will help deescalate and get back on track with the conversation.
     • And if that doesn’t work, take a timeout and schedule the next meeting.
   • Ask each of them what they want you to do to help. And step back when it looks like they’ll be able to continuing solving on their own without you.
4. Commitment
   • If no plan of action has been created at the end of a meeting, schedule a follow up conversation in 1 week to discuss next steps.
   • If you have created a plan of action, assign steps to owners. Then schedule a conversation to check in on how the plan is going and what needs to change or be improved.

Engineering Director Doesn’t Listen to Artists About Tools

And here is our second example:

“My engineering director is also very stubborn and doesn’t want to take feedback from the art directors that certain tools are too difficult to use by the artists, especially VFX.”

Applying the Four C’s:

1. Connection
   • Start by talking just with the eng director so that they recognise that the artists are not just venting and making it up.
     • Find out why the eng director isn’t listening to the artists. Is there history that is causing biases and assumptions to take over.
     • Be Jennuinely curious and don’t go in accusing the eng director of being a bad person. Accusation wouldn’t go down well and will just cause them to get defensive and you won’t find out anything.
     • Work with the eng director until they are willing to Jennuinely listen to the artists.
   • Next: Get the eng director to watch the artists using the tools on a screensharing meeting. That way the eng director will be able to directly see what’s going on and that will hopefully open their eyes to why they should listen to the artists.
2. Clarity
   • Now get everyone on a call (or perhaps just a representative for the artists) and ask: What does success look like? Is success:
     • less time to create art assets and/or VFX;
     • more features in the tools;
     • less features;
     • improved UI/UX;
     • better training for the artists;
     • something else.
   • This will help the eng director focus on a plan of action to address what’s going on.
3. Curiosity
   • Encourage the eng director to ask questions with Jennuine curiosity. For example:
     1. Why do you do things that way?
     2. Have you tried doing this thing instead?
     3. What’s one thing that would help save you time?
   • Make sure the eng director watches their tone, since all of those questions can come across badly if the tone is off.
4. Commitment
   • Once the eng director has recognised the issues, give them time to come up with a plan of action.
   • Schedule a follow up call where the eng director details their plan and confirms ordering priorities with the artists.

Some Final Thoughts

• A lot of this discussion was about you helping others on your team work through the conflict. But when you’re in the conflict yourself, you can also apply the four C’s of Connection, Clarity, Curiosity, and Commitment.
• Conflict is not always bad. If there is no conflict, it might mean that your team has disengaged with the game and development. Conflict can help the team innovate and more. But when it starts destroying morale and causing team members to be incapable of working together, it can have disastrous effects.
• Encourage your team to be open about small issues, so you can deal with them when they’re still small.
• Ask everyone to be Jennuinely curious about other people’s issues and perspectives, and be willing to work towards a better way of dealing with disagreements.
• Keep focused on what success looks like and make sure there’s a shared vision of success.
• And finally… don’t forget to follow up! Most issues will take plenty of iteration to find the best solution.

 

Remember: This is general advice and it might not be right for you and your team, even if you’re the one who wrote in the question! For me to help better, it needs to be a dialog between me, and you, and your entire team. You can hire me to consult for you —> jennsand.com .

If you have a question for me, just fill in my form over here: jennsand.com/askjenn/