MOD004160TRI Managing a polarised workforce Sample
Introduction
One of the toughest challenges that organizations face is to manage the divergent perspectives which produce high tension among the employees and the leaders of the organizations on organizational political movements such as #Me too and #Black lives matter movements. Also with this productive misconception and engagement with different perspectives is very important for high-functioning organizations. So the questions are always very common: how the leaders of the organizations manage the problems that arise in the organizations and preserve the trust among the employees.
The “Harvard’s Julia A. Minson and Francesca Gino” give guidance for executives on how to address arguments productively and support employees of each and every rank in doing so, drawing upon jobs completed with academics of psychology, sociology, and leadership. Techniques include teaching people to choose their words wisely, to hedge their claims, and to emphasize points of agreement.
They also encourage individuals to develop a responsive attitude by, for example, purposefully thinking a certain way from the viewpoint of the other party. Finally, they develop a culture of acceptance through their behavior and level of formality. The reduction in irritation and negativity that results from practicing and developing these abilities is unquestionably worth it. In this report it will be discussed that the leaders are taking some important steps to fulfill the issues of encouraging spirited discussion while preserving collaboration and trust. In the next section the background of managing the foster debate and promoting trust in an organization.
Background
In this section of the report the background of managing a polarized workforce and how to foster debate and promotion of debate in an organization will be discussed. There are many things that are written which can be beneficial for the business organization and the teams that possess different views and fostering the production disagreements and creating various rival teams.
Although leaders who are involved in this kind of circumstances know that the disagreements among the teams only produce the strong opinions related to the personal identity which can be often destructive and sometimes it may also be tough to choose ( Al Shobaki et al 2018). That is more accurate today than it has ever been, as themes ranging from either the #Me-too and #Black Lives Matter campaigns to ecology and virtual organizations have increased both the necessity and the urge to avoid meaningful conversation.
According to a 2021 poll, disagreement is an unavoidable element of working life among employees at every level. 89% of the 486 U.S. participants from a variety of firms and sectors said they have experienced it to a certain extent at work. Employees cope with it for roughly 3.5 hours every week in general. Experts give suggestions on how to approach arguments more constructively and teach employees of every level to effectively communicate about difficult themes based on research performed with scholars in psychology, economics, and business leadership.
About 39% of our poll respondents said they have been taught or instructed on how to handle labor disputes. Those who received conflict resolution instruction as a component of such a leadership role as well as executive teaching had said aided them resolve disagreements quite successfully, 73% have said resulted in them feeling more secure and at ease engaging in differences of opinion, and 62% said it aided the employees turn highly dangerous dispute into successful areas.
Problem statement
In this section of the report the main problem will be discussed. In this report the main challenge is to find the problems which are related to the political movements like #me too and #black lives matter that increase the tensions between the employees and cause disagreement among the employees which damage productive efficiency in an organization and solve these problems by taking some required measured actions to increase the teamwork among employees and increase the productive assessment.
Discussion
Organizational conflict and their causes
Organizational conflict, sometimes called workplace dispute, is defined as the condition of dispute or miscommunication brought on by real or perceived differences in requirements, views, resources, and interpersonal relationships among the organization’s employees. Conflict arises sometimes when a group of individuals engage in the workplace, regardless of the job or choice they are discussing (Bowie et al. 2021).
Intergroup conflict, to put it simply, refers to the outcome of interpersonal interaction that occurs when one person of the organization realizes that their or their own goals, beliefs, or mentality are conflicting with the ones of other employees of the group. Incompatibility in viewpoints can develop inside a person, among group individuals, or between organizational groupings. According to many researchers, internal conflict in an organization happens due to various causes but the most important causes are the defensiveness and ego of the individual or the groups.
In this section of the report the causes and the solve of the problems related to the organizational conflict will be discussed properly. As it is mentioned earlier that the organizational conflict is due to the ego of the employees or it can be a more serious problem that is they are not able to accept that their advice is not helpful at all. There are three common myths which are very applicable for this report.
Myth 1: according to the researcher, whenever there is a conflict between two individuals or two teams it is possible that the one thinks he knows all the facts and the other person is unaware of it. But the reality is something different, which is that both the individuals and the group tend to believe in a single theory of the work and believe that their theory is superior to the other. It’s not because of the ego but because of the uninformed or intelligent. There is a limitation of the thinking capacity.
Over time, individual perspectives concentrate together around a collection of recognizable concepts that are shared by individuals of their networking opportunities, news sources they follow, leaders respect, and politicians that the employees support (Burlacu et al. 2020). Employees miss or ignore data that supports opposing viewpoints because it is less common and does not fit our mental image. As time passes, the perspectives of individuals from various life experiences diverge further, eventually they occupy wholly separate mental universes.
They are increasingly convinced that their positions are founded on unassailable facts, sound reasoning, and self-evident facts, while also having difficulty understanding what exactly supports the opposing side’s convictions. It’s almost like those who have parents will never understand those who don’t have their parents. Union employees believe that executives should be aware of their challenges and dedication.
Employees of color are frustrated when firms make little effort to promote equality and inclusion. Also as result, disagreements that may generate fresh ideas and production sometimes result in disagreements because individuals ascribe the dispute to another side’s refusal to recognize seemingly clear truths.
Myth 2: the second myth of organizational conflict is described in this section. In this myth it is described that the researcher and he colleague Charlie derision described the emotions related to the employee that have a disagreement with another employee tends to talk with specific patterns such as greater level of anger, irritation and even sometimes they feel disgust to talk with them.
That respective employee sees them as their rival and feels insecure about their position in the company which results in him being threatened and anxious. Researchers stated that the employee who is anxious, thinks accepting their fault will damage the ego and if the opponent of the employee rejects their thinking it will be threatening their viewpoint in front of the world (Chow et al. 2021).
Researcher and her colleague also stated that after doing such things, individuals sometimes feel that they are superior to other employees and try to avoid hard work by ignoring each other from the perspective of work. In a study it is mentioned that nearly three-quarters of those employees expect that by picking a controversial debate they will win and they will ignore the hard work which is impossible mathematically.
Myth 3: in the third myth it will be described that the disagreement is bad for the organizational conflict. Most employees see confrontation negatively and will go to considerable efforts to prevent it. Imagine a 2021 study wherein 656 workers were questioned about the significance of dispute in their working life. Almost 60% said workplace conflicts were very, remarkably, or deeply unpleasant. And over a third chose not to use them, and far more over 40% stated that they were harmful to their work relationships and efficiency.
However, considerable research indicates that, when handled properly, disagreement produces better results than avoiding. It may stimulate new ideas, imagination, and development, allowing firms to obtain a competitive advantage (Clardy, A., 2021). The essential term is “when handled correctly,” which necessitates understanding of the tactics researchers will examine later in addition to the commitment to regularly employ them. In the report researchers expect conflict to end in tragedy because we presume the opposing party will not engage with either an inquisitive attitude.
We frequently depend on preconceptions when assessing others who hold different viewpoints, telling themselves they believe their opinions are exaggerated representations of just what they truly are. This is referred to as spurious polarization by psychologists. According to a recent study conducted by Much in Common, a nonprofit devoted to building communities against social divide, less over 20% of Democratic employees agreed that many policemen are nasty people, while Republicans believed that far more about half would accept (Das, S et al. 2020).
False polarization leads people to believe that addressing a sensitive issue with someone who holds a different viewpoint will be extremely unpleasant and mainly futile. This assumption frequently causes individuals to dread or avoid such interactions.
Due to these three myths, organizational leaders are focusing on skirting the disagreement or searching for compromise to make these organizational conflicts disappear. However, if differences on critical subjects are not resolved properly, issues develop, communication skills are hampered, and vital viewpoints are silenced. Leaders must enable individuals to deal successfully with competing viewpoints in order to foster meaningful collaboration.
Researchers offer four types of strategies and different practical steps to deal with organizational conflicts and polarized workforce. All the steps are described properly in the below section.
Reduce the concern of clashing with people
The researchers mentioned in their journals and study that whenever it is questioned to the employees about their reason for the disagreement among employees or the teams, they simply replied about clashes in personality, intense dispute and various fierce exchanging of words that hamper the working relationship between them. It is simply because the different points of view and ideas of different employees are hard to accept for each other and they drive to have conflict between them.
Since most employees find it hard to deal with opposing viewpoints disagreeable, employees tend to avoid the situation and attempt to forget about it as soon as humanly possible. Many of the employees closely examine tough talks in order to develop better disagreement methods in the future. Understanding about conflict, on the other hand, might help employees welcome and handle this in future conversations. Below are a few suggestions for fostering such understanding.
To realize that the disagreement among them is not going to feel as bad as they think.
When Donald trump elected the president of United States in January 20, 2017, researcher Julia and her fellow researchers have performed a study among the participants on who voted for the rival candidate Hillary Clinton and how their reaction on the presidential election are. It was noted that the participants in this study have extreme anger, sadness and a disgusting attitude towards the election.
But in the report, Julia and her fellow researchers have stated that the negative reaction was not even close to the negative side which they had anticipated. After some time. Participants expected this psychological version of an endodontic treatment, but instead got their retainers fastened but not horrible (Kecić, A., 2019). People may learn to face conflict voluntarily and eventually reap the perks of interacting with different standpoints by realizing that conflicts are probably to be a little less distressing than we expect. Leaders who recognize this may teach their workers on how to have constructive dialogues with others who hold opposite viewpoints.
Compare the approach of Braver Angels, a neutral group researchers investigated that provides training and mediated discussions to draw conservatives and liberals with each other in polite conversation. In entire workshops, an identical number of people from the Republicans and Democrats participate in a variety of organized exercises in which they are urged to communicate their emotions.
Mostly in Stereo activity, red and blue individuals gather in different bedrooms with facilitators to brainstorm harmful perceptions about the opposing side. They pick five and talk about whether or not they are genuine. After that, the groups reunite to discuss their insights. They are instructed to listen without interjecting or challenging people from the opposing political organization (Lauande Rodrigues, P. and De Minicis, M., 2022).
The high feelings of irritation and wrath that frequently follow unsuccessful attempts at influence are avoided since the debate concentrates on knowledge instead of persuading. Participants discover that conversing with people on the opposite side does not need to be really negative and that they frequently have reasonable grounds for their ideas.
Pursuing people to be free and broad minded
It is way better when people are broad and free minded rather than having a narrow and collapsing mind. Having a broad mind, taking and receiving each individual’s idea is welcomed to get a bigger approach. Leaders who are free minded, they carefully pay attention to the ideas of others, and critically evaluate the ideas. They also have a diversified knowledge by evaluating them on a fair basis. Free minded people could handle both liberal and conventional people freely.
Considering information of others’ perspectives
The basic evaluation strategy in “social psychology” has portrayed that describing people to be far more effective in measuring other’s views. It is often thought that this process of being free-minded is being nurtured, it is much fruitful to address them to weigh the reasons attentively which keep a hold of the approaches. Through the same way, the instrumental role is to be willing to consider and accept new suggestions on the basis of other approaches, this is necessary to give up the most advantageous way of eliminating others with various places and standards as describing the average and unintelligent efforts oozing out (Lyda-McDonald et al 2021).
The studying, training and improvement director gave an approach about the contradictory issues of training design. , according to his statement it has been described that a certain number of people has been asked to presume so they could train and fathom why an employee observes things through a different way. In the course they have been told to go through the conversation without having any particular context and leadership and in the latter part they have been told to aim on what they would train and get knowledge from other employees. It is just a normal inward view and approach.
Somehow it has altered the view on how to cope up with others and balance on any workforce and in any business. By conducting this evaluation this has been perceived that the worker felt much more efficient by examining the assumptions, instead of balancing with others when he got a disagreement.
Picking words carefully to the other employees
It is normal to desire to cut oneself off during a fight, but doing so simply makes it more unlikely that the issue will be resolved. Allow the parties to the disagreement some time to calm down. Manage the argument by speaking in a collected, amiable tone. Isolate each other’s people from the issue and speak in an objective manner. To prevent the other person from feeling assaulted, it is preferable to communicate in “I” terminology rather than “you” terminology. For instance, it will be more beneficial to state “I feel exploited in my job” rather than “it doesn’t appreciate the work.”
By using the pronoun “you” will simply make the other person defensive, which is not good for resolving disputes. Don’t undervalue the influence of voice and body posture in adding to carefully selecting ones words. Conflict frequently escalates because of how something is stated rather than what is actually being said (Martinez-Bravo, M. and Sanz, C., 2021). When an employee conveys his eagerness to settle the dispute and reach a mutually beneficial agreement, the other employee needs to keep his body language open.
These could encourage others involved in the disagreement to act calmly and openly since people prefer to imitate everyone around them. Research of Julia and her fellow researcher’s shows that the employees can signal to their other employees a willingness to listen to their words which will improve their respect for each other and reduce the possibility of organizational conflict. There are some specific ways through which an employee can foster receptive speech that will increase the teamwork between them and decrease their dispute with each other. All the four receptive speech are:
- To coach the employees of the organizations to speak in a specific manner.
- By Shield the assertions.
- By supporting each other.
- By supporting their ideas.
- Reframe the ideas of your own and others in a positive term.
Researchers saw no justification for each issue. Respondents in one of the research which juila and her fellow researchers read a dispute between a company president and a local council member about measures designed to curb the proliferation of Covid-19. Researchers staged the dialogue to ensure that the company owner made false and unethical claims that endangered public health. Its script was written in two versions.
Other participants studied a copy that included the city councilman counterargument. Another viewed a copy where the city councilman utilized the same counterpoints but added a few phrases showing receptivity and a wish to interact. Participants were equally inclined to support the responsive councilman or perhaps the non-receptive one. In these other words, openness did not validate harmful ideas. People judged the responsive city councilman was a stronger, more capable leader.
Encourage a socio-culture aspect to give a purpose on patience and leniency
Employees come from a variety of backgrounds, religions, and cultures in the typical workplace. To coincide and work really collectively, we should figure out how to be open minded toward one another.
As a result, employees must learn to accept the many differences they encounter in their workplace interactions. International Day of Tolerance is now celebrated annually by UNESCO to raise public awareness of the dangers of intolerance and to emphasize the significance of workplace tolerance (Mendy, J., 2020). Even differences in appearance, education, marital status, age, tribe, and other factors may cause them difficulties at work. Respect, trust, and creativity are all bolstered by tolerance.
The fact that employees from various cultures and backgrounds have no bearing on anything, and everyone should be permitted. Hatred of political or religious groups among workers should not be tolerated in the workplace. Beliefs should not be shared with anyone else. In the workplace, morally or ethically questionable behavior should not be tolerated.
For instance, just because a member of a tribe smokes before lunch does not mean that such behavior is acceptable in the workplace. It’s important for employees who come from families or homes where it’s perfectly acceptable to drink alcohol at any time of day to know that the workplace is not a home. Instead, it’s a business setting where people from different backgrounds, cultures, and religions work.
It is the organization’s leader’s duty to educate your staff about the significance of cultivating a climate of tolerance. Make it a stride further by featuring the various ways organization collaborators do things that may be not quite the same as researchers. Employees can learn more about other people’s personalities by taking psychometric tests.
Recommendation
Nurturing and engaging activities to provide endurance
Constructing through the path to nurture and get individuals in business to apply “more-receptive” language. Directors could make higher steps which will lead and address to the culture of their business which would give much endurance and less tending to cause hostility.
Leveraging women: the topic which has been created that would give a perspective that women are actually sympathetic to lead any conversation which is coming from another aspects and ideas, without having any special guidance or learning women move normally to a conversation and lead it through their ways, from the approach two things could occur, a. When having any problematic issue, it would be better to engage a woman to cope up and deal with it, and another one is, engaging training and skill to other men, which will lead to a prospect for betterment in the business.
Applying the “listening triangle” method: people often in business don’t listen to other’s ideas who could give better aspects on any given particular subject, listening habits give an address to a leading goal in any business. It could take on a void situation, where a firm nothing would gain (Tsvetkov et al. 2019).
So listening carefully to others ideas, methods would give a way to resolution. Boasting around and feeling superior to others in every aspect is completely a negative spot, implanting an idea of listening activities where a person would give attention to others words, in case he could repeat it again, by continuing this process, one could lead positively in listening goals, giving attention to others, asking review and feedback from others to a particular subject would develop the listening process, implanting and implying this method a firm could deploy several trainings for its employees. There are existing companies which would give the training of these ideas like- Pixar, Webcast to improve the skill.
Conclusion
In this subject, the foremost introduction has evaluated the core areas of the subject regarding polarized workforce, following this, the conflictive areas have been given based on some events, where the event has been described how and when it occurs.
In the myth1, it has been seen, that in an circumstance, where two groups are available, between them one group making strategies, taking decision of core aspects, marking the strategies as a superior and effective one, but on the opposite hand, there is another group which is existing, the other group need to pay attention to their ideas also, effective or not, the other group’s ideas also need to bring out in front of the leader, but neither they got any attention, nor any reviews on their ideas.
According to myth 2, if there are any experienced employees existing in the company, their ideas don’t always match, and by this disappointment, conflict arises, moreover their ego comes between their work which is enough to destroy the atmosphere and working factor and also it is destructive to the firm. It’s absolute that the idea of any one individual would be selected, but on the other hand, it is completely unexpected if there any kind of disappointment, ego, and conflict arises, so in this case firm need to pay special heed to them.
In myth 3, it has been seen that on the basis of report of 2021, 60% of the workforce alleged that the have been through a conflictive areas, and it has damaged their efficiency and working ability, and 40% of the workforce stated that they have been through the traumatized situation and marked by improper activity in any workforce.
In these earlier said aspects, the conflictive areas pointed out that contradiction, disappointment, not getting attention to work and ideas and ignoring them make a firm to be at a disadvantageous position. To wipe out these barriers and obstacles some recommendations and ideas have been given like leveraging women, applying the method of “listening triangle strategy” which would give better prospects to clean the polarized situation in any agile workforce.
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