Corporate Conflict

Is Corporate Conflict truly conflict?

This provocative question arises out of years of experience in being asked to conduct conflict resolution within healthcare organisations only to find out that it really means, for instance, that clinical teams won’t do what management says and vice versa. Let’s be clear, this in itself is NOT conflict and is more accurately considered an ‘engagement’ issue.

However, Trusts and managers in general (and this can occur with both clinical and non-clinical managers/ leaders) tend to simply push harder and harder, verging on coercion as they strive to get movement in other parties. To get to the root of this, we need to consider the whole topic of engagement...

Engagement

Engagement is reliant on three key baseline conditions, being:

Unless these base conditions are met, people disengage or go out of their way to avoid engaging, leading to those desiring engagement to become frustrated and more coercive. Increasingly, a 4th component is coming in to play – individual capacity. As workload increases and senior people take on ever more responsibility, they begin to become overwhelmed and perceive that engagement in something new (especially something they don’t understand) is likely to be the straw that breaks that camel’s back, leading consequently to failure in other areas. Trust’s must address this aspect if they are to want proactive, collaborative engagement from ever more pressed people.


The Coercion Trap

Coercion creates ideal conditions for direct and overt conflict, as well as leading to increased staff turnover, sickness, absence, complete disengagement, complete lack of commitment and very low morale. This directly affects performance throughout a Trust at a time when hyper-performance is the necessary standard.

Under no circumstances is coercion the preferred method of getting people to do things. Trusts engage in this approach at their short, medium and longer term peril

Communication Conflict

Much conflict arises out of the ill-timed, poorly conceived corporate communication. A blanket communication will always incite different reactions in different people, some of which will not be favourable. Poorly conceived communications cause immense problems throughout organisations including:

Many senior personnel with tremendous on-the-ground experience have never received proper influencing, communications and engagement training and yet are actively communicating on important matters to immense numbers of people. This is the equivalent of arming someone with a loaded gun without giving them instructions or training in how to use it appropriately (or even when to use it). Trusts can better understand this by conducting a communications audit to identify whether this is a specific issue within a Trust.

Simple Steps

As we rise to a more macro level of conflict, simple steps become less effective. It is difficult to apply a simple step to a whole Trust! However, Trusts should consider the following:

Resolution and Long Term Prevention


Morale Testing

With corporate activity having such a dramatic impact on morale, which in turn is such a strong indicator of performance and conflict, we strongly advocate assessing morale and examining just what is contributing to good or poor morale in different individuals, groups or departments. To facilitate this Medicology has developed a highly sensitive, immensely informative Morale Testing Instrument (Medicology MTI) to assist Trusts with this vital aspect of performance and conflict management.

For more information visit www.medicologyMTI.co.uk

The Importance of Leadership in Conflict Prevention

There is no doubt that organisations with strong, well developed leaders are much less likely to suffer conflict in any form but especially the clinical-managerial divide. The NHS has thankfully woken up to the importance of clear leadership from both the top of the organisation and at the clinical interface. However the training opportunities lag significantly behind the acceptance that development is necessary. Many clinicians placed ‘in charge of’ services or people have received no formal training in how to get the best out of people or in communicating in a way that builds commitment as opposed to compliance at a team and individual level. Medicology is the undisputed leader in leadership development, especially at the clinical level and we’d be happy to discuss this important aspect of conflict prevention with you in more detail.

More information on leadership development with Medicology: