Take 30 seconds and look at news media. Yes, we realize that you just wasted 30 seconds, but you needed to be again exposed to the conflict in our world today. Conflict exists on many fronts: global, political, within the teams, and at home. The conflict that makes the news tends to be negative or destructive conflict. Not all conflict is destructive. There is the idiom of the Phoenix rising from the ashes.
For those unfamiliar with this idiom, the bird loses its life in flames but rises from the ashes to be transformed into something greater. Turning challenge into opportunity may be a better way to look at it in terms of business success.
Life is full of various conflicts. Some are small and, in many cases, should never have risen to the level of even being called a conflict – i.e., your child indicating they dislike vegetables to the larger scale issue of a client/customer being completely dissatisfied by a resulting transaction or experience between them and your company – i.e., promises not kept. How conflict is navigated in both cases determines whether it becomes a Phoenix or remains ashes.
The challenge for business leaders is that we know and take time to educate and train our team on our products and services. Still, very little attention is given to developing the skills to defuse a conflict situation constructively. We can lie to ourselves that such things don’t happen that often, but when they do and are handled poorly, your organization likely loses a current and future revenue relationship. So, all that investment to attract clients and customers just got tossed out the door. It is better to keep a profitable customer than to attract a new one.
All that said, we don’t want to imply that the customer is always right. Constructive conflict resolution is not a bail-out to save the customer relationship. It is an artful navigation to listen, hear, and constructively address the concerns to a neutral or even better experience for the customer. The burning of the bird does not mean the loss of a future customer.
To have great customer, employee, marketspace, and overall personal positive experiences, the art and science of constructive conflict de-escalation is a critical skill for everyone in the workplace. The efforts put in before they are needed will be returned in numerous ways. Happy customers, happy employees, and higher retention rates for both employees and customers, which in return grows your business profitably.
Interested in improving your team’s skills to de-escalate potential conflicts for a constructive outcome? Call JKL Associates at MI (313) 527-7945 or FL (407) 984-7246.
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QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS – EMAIL US AT PARTNERS@JKLASSOCIATES.COM OR CALL OUR OFFICES – MI AT (313) 527-7945 FL AT (407) 984-7246
Celebrating 30 years of Delivering on “Promises”
