When “it” happened, nobody really knew what to do. The playbook for doing business virtually during a global pandemic hadn’t been invented yet. As I think back to those early days of May,
June, and July of 2020, it was surreal. Virtual meetings started to expand around the clock, the work accelerated as we all realized we had so much more time in a day thanks to no commutes and no travel. And the best part? People were so nice! There was an incredible sense of unity and purpose. The virus was after us all and we all came together to figure things out and keep the business world going. Some industries obviously had it a lot harder than others in terms of exposure and the closer you were to the actual supply chain of basics like food, water, and healthcare the more difficult it was. We at Advantexe had an interesting view working with clients across the global supply chain and despite the hardships, most people were still very nice.
As 2022 starts to take shape and the specter of another wave of the pandemic creeps into the subconscious, there are new realities of the new workplace settling in. Not that people aren’t as “nice” as they were during the height of the pandemic, but the stress of the new normal and the new way of business has created different tensions and different business conflicts.
In doing research about the leadership topics that are most important to the client organizations we work with, “Business Conflict was one of the ones mentioned the most. Keeping in mind that business conflicts are very different than personal conflicts, there is plenty of room for leaders and individual contributors to learn about business conflicts and the science of solving them.
What we learned is that new types of conflicts are happening in the virtual world that never happened before when most interactions were face-to-face. These virtual conflicts and messy and again, there wasn’t a playbook on how to solve them.
Before you solve a business conflict, you must first determine what type of conflict it is. As we went about the process of building a new, state-of-the-art leadership business simulation, we determined there are four different types of business conflicts:
- Business Asset Conflicts - These are disagreements between individuals, teams, or larger groups of people taking sides over business assets such as budgets, equipment, conference rooms, R&D initiatives, and other short-term and specific items. Business asset conflicts typically are internally focused; however, they can include external parties such as customers and suppliers.
- Business Goal Conflicts - These are disagreements between individuals, teams, or groups over goals such as the achievement of revenue targets vs. the achievement of market share targets. Business goal conflicts can arise around manufacturing production, new products discovered by R&D, or the timely hiring and onboarding of new employees. Business goal conflicts are typically internal but can include external parties such as customers and suppliers.
- Business Culture Conflicts - These are disagreements between individuals, teams, or groups over cultural issues such as different styles, perceptions of how to work, methods of communicating, perceptions of productivity, approaches to giving feedback, orientation around how to best execute the business strategy, functional culture, or a demographic culture. Business culture conflicts can include external parties such as customers and suppliers.
- Business Brand Conflicts - In the evolved global business environment, your brand (also known as the “brand of me”) is a critical element of long-term success. This kind of conflict is about how individuals are seen and perceived as contributors and/or leaders to the business. Business brand conflicts arise when there is dissonance between personal brands.
Solving these types of conflicts doesn’t have to be hard. There is a great approach to addressing them and we are excited to share more in our upcoming blogs and support material introducing our new simulation, “Resolving Business Conflicts.”
Stay tuned for more to come!
