At the risk of coming across like The Cranky Middle-Manager, I have a couple of grievances to air on how people interact with each other in the workplace. It seems that people claiming that they work in a “toxic environment” is all the rage as of late. In a minimum of cases, this may be truth, but in far more circumstances, it seems as though anytime someone doesn’t smile at you at the water cooler, you’re entitled to claim a horrible work situation.
The truth is that anytime you are in a workplace of more than one person, there are going to be disagreements and compromises. And contrary to much of the hype you read in the popular media, sometimes work will be a drag. To quote Jed’s dad, “If it was supposed to be fun, they wouldn’t call it work.”
I believe the root cause of this problem, is most people’s incompetence in dealing with conflict. Many people believe that conflict is bad, when in fact it is neither good nor bad, but merely exists. People’s response to conflict can make the situation bad.
Some people respond to conflict by becoming aggressive and overbearing. Others choose to avoid conflict like it was a toilet seat at the bus station. Both responses are destructive and will not improve or resolve whatever situation has caused the conflict to emerge.
Interestingly, in my experience I see the most common response to conflict to be one of either avoiding or yielding. Both are poor responses to conflict in almost all cases. If you are inclined to respond to conflict in this way, it is time to grow a pair and act like an adult. Issues need to be confronted and dealt with.
It doesn’t mean you are always going to get your way, but at the very least you will have some confidence that you have attempted to constructively resolve workplace conflict, rather than letting it get pushed underground to fester.