Give Peace a Chance

Face Up to Office Conflict Before It Has Time to Fester

A University of North Carolina survey that asked respondents if they ever experience backstabbing, rudeness or incivility in the workplace came to a not-very-shocking result: Of 1,601 people questioned, 89 percent said yes, they experience it.

But in the same survey, 99 percent of the people said they were never rude, or the cause of the conflict.

How many times have we complained about the gum chewer, the rude phone answerer, the cursing co-worker who sits next to us -- and then didn't think about how we ourselves might be the cause of some of the workplace conflict we experience?

Trudy L. McCrea describes herself as an expressive, outgoing, task-oriented person. She's a take-charge kind of woman, and that can be a good thing.

However, when she worked in sales for Microsoft Corp. with a partner, it was those attributes that got her into trouble with him. And they created almost daily conflicts.

"I'd say, let's get the project done for this deadline. He thought it was set in stone. But he'd have this passive-aggressive style in real negative body language, with his arms crossed and his eyes down," McCrea explained. "He would be thinking, this woman's a steamroller and I can't deal with her. And I just thought I was starting the flow. It was often innocent miscommunication."

That "miscommunication" exploded one day when he snapped at her in front of a client.

"He felt I was rushing or leading too strongly. I felt he wasn't participating enough. I was so troubled by his lack of teamwork and also thought he was angry with me. I finally called him and said . . . I think you owe me an apology."

That's when it finally came out that he had harbored negative feelings for a long time. He felt she was steamrolling projects while she thought she was just getting the project moving.

It is often the daily clashes we have with our managers or co-workers that can make it difficult to get our work done, do it well, or even drag ourselves into work in the morning. And as McCrea discovered, it often takes a real sit-down to get over the conflict and achieve work-peace. After their discussion, McCrea adjusted and her partner began to speak up when he wanted to lead a meeting. She would keep quiet, or ask him how he wanted a project to be run. "It was very hard to do," she said. But by morphing her usual practice of plowing ahead with the task herself, and showing her co-worker that he was a bit too passive, the conflicts diminished, she said.