Conflict in the Workplace

WHAT?

My example of this is the job I have held for almost 3 years now at a playhouse called the Swift Creek Mill Theatre. I work in the office and my basic job is handling reservations and making sure everything is up to par and correct on show nights—a big responsibility and often a basis for conflict. One particular time, I had worked a shift where I set up for the show that was to occur the following night—meaning I started making sure the reservations were in order and that everything was correct. I had not finished, which was fine because the reservationist the night of the show had the responsibility of updating everything and making the “finishing touches” to the show. Well, I got called the day of the show by a manager who told me that the tickets were all out of order and everything was messed up—she thought it was my fault. I explained to her that it was not my fault because I had not handled the tickets whatsoever up to that point and somebody else in the shift after me would have been responsible for that. Regardless, I came in early and fixed the show to resolve the whole issue. But the real issue lies in the teamwork aspect and how this all could have been resolved from the beginning or at least handled differently…

SO WHAT?

Working in an organization like this should be a team effort, but it is usually not treated as such. Everybody usually takes responsibility for their own job and there is not a lot of communication unless something goes wrong. In this case, the issue was between the leader (my manager) and the followers (my fellow employees and I). My manager, in this case, approached the situation with a very aggressive leadership style. As discussed in Levi, “The underlying emotions of the aggressive style are anger, insecurity, and lack of trust.” This exert describes the leader in my example very well. Trust was probably the biggest issue, and my manager was not trying to solve the situation with a clear head. She was getting nervous and lashing out and no clear solution was given except to point fingers and make me go in and directly fix it. In this case, since the conflict occurred so late, there was not much time to discuss it; however, when it was finished, there was no evaluation done of the solution, a problem-solving step as discussed in Levi. I believe it is because of this problem-solving aspect that conflicts like this seem to be recurring in my workplace.

NOW WHAT?

There is a lot that could have been done differently with this situation and that can be improved upon in the future. First of all, I think my manager could have handled this situation and those in the future with a more assertive approach. I feel like there would be a higher level of trust in that sense and a clearer understanding of where everyone is coming from so it isn’t always pointing fingers. To elaborate on that point, and as demonstrated in Levi, developing trust “provides a foundation for resolving conflicts.” I think that is one of the biggest elements that we are missing. Finally, there is the creativity aspect. In our office, we have always had a set way of doing things and that almost never changes. Well, I think it becomes evident when conflicts like this emerge that there is a lot of improvement that can be done. As the workers that handle all of these responsibilities every day, I know that we all have our own ideas to bring to the table that can improve things. We never have group meetings or anything of the sort so our ideas cannot be heard. I feel like that has the potential to greatly improve things in the future and create a more efficient environment with less conflict.