MEDIATION

Ben Ziegler

There are approximately 400,000 small businesses in British Columbia. Every single one of them will face conflict of one type or another.

Yes, conflict will come. If you are a small businessowner, why not build conflict-competency into your business now, in preparation for the conflicts that will definitely come your way. Small Business and Conflict

The British Columbia government defines small business as 50 employees or fewer. The Canadian federal government defines small business as 100 or fewer. As a share of total employment, BC small businesses make up 44 percent of all employment in the province.

Over the last 15 years as a workplace consultant and mediator, I’ve helped hundreds of small businesses deal with their conflict issues. As your business continues to grow, odds are you’ll find it harder and harder to have a close relationship with all your employees the way you did when your business was just you and a handful of employees.

With respect to small business and conflict, I’ve observed the following. • When you are self-employed,

“soft skills” such as effective communications and conflict management are rarely optional.

You are your business. You are the face and personality of your business, good and bad. • As your business adds employees, getting those employees on the same page to work together demands an additional set of skills oriented to communications, collaboration, and team dynamics. • As your business continues to grow, odds are you’ll find it

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harder and harder to have a close relationship with all your employees the way you did when your business was just you and a handful of employees.

To offset that relationship distance, your challenge becomes empowering your employees to make constructive choices on their own and demonstrate conflict competency from within.

A healthy workplace culture is vital. “Culture is what people do when no one is looking.” Herb Kelleher, former CEO of Southwest Airlines Three Strategies to Build and Scale Conflict Competency in Your Small Business Recognizing that your needs change as your business grows, here are three complementary steps/strategies that will help you build conflict competency and gain a strategic advantage in the process. 1. Increase Individual Self-Awareness The most cost-effective way to resolve conflict is to improve a person’s self-

awareness. When I find myself in conflict, I look in the mirror and don’t always like what I see; a bit of selfreflection usually leads me to make better choices.

Numerous self-assessment instruments will help you become more familiar with yourself. MyersBriggs Type Indicator, Thomas Kilmann Conflict Mode, DISC Profile, and Conflict Dynamics Profile are some of the best known. Understanding your own behaviours and hot buttons is essential to becoming conflict-competent.

If you want to work better with others, collaboration begins with you.

Develop Conflict-Competent Teams “A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually responsible.”

Katzenbach and Smith, in The Wisdom of Teams

Teams typically encounter both task conflict and relationship conflict. • Task conflict concerns disagreements among team players about the work they are performing. It evolves from the natural differences of ideas and opinions that occur among people. • Relationship conflict centres more on who is to blame than on how to solve a problem.

Well-managed task conflict can improve team performance. Conflict-competent teams are able to lessen the chances of task conflict morphing into relationship conflict. A focus on the task, along with a strong sense of humility, makes for an ideal team player.

Team assessments, agreements, coaching, and training can all help further team learning and development. 3. Apply a Systems Lens to Conflict As your business grows, so does its complexity . . . people, process, tools, and so on.

I adopt good concepts wherever I find them. I learned from collaborative law that it takes a system to change a system. Address complexity with complexity.

Another framework concept to which I adhere is process “guides and enablers,” a concept I learned from process engineers during my infotech consulting days. The following all further the conflict-competency cause.

Respectful workplace policies and procedures

Embedding constructive conflict into employee hiring, retention, and development

Offering a continuum of solution options, be it workplace conflictmanagement and/or collaborative problem-solving

What are you doing to get ready for conflict? s Ben Ziegler is a workplace consultant and mediator based in Victoria.

• 5 years’ related experience • Undergrad degree: 3.0 GPA • Strong entrepreneurial and people skills • Fluency in English; other languages an asset • Highest degree of honesty and integrity • Financial stability • Dedication to serving the public

For more information, please contact The Society of Notaries Public of BC 1-800-663-0343 or visit our website, www.notaries.bc.ca.