Transforming conflict into collaboration

In response to a formal allegation or complaint, many employers feel compelled to conduct an initial fact-finding investigation or a full workplace investigation. The purpose of an investigation is typically to answer the questions: who did what and what do we have to do to them? In other words, to find someone to blame and then to impose a punishment or sanction on that individual.

Most of the time, those are unhelpful questions to ask. In ProActive’s Restorative Conference process, we instead ask:

• What has happened?
• How has it affected people?
• What can be done to fix any hurt and harm?
• What can we learn from it so we take something positive out of the conflict?

Rather than imposing a solution on the group that could exacerbate the conflict, it’s always preferable to engage in a process that allows the group of affected people to come together, clarify how the conflict evolved, build an understanding of how the conflict has affected all of them individually and as a group, and develop a plan to reconcile those differences.

ProActive Restorative Conferencing is a process for transforming conflict into cooperation within groups. In our Restorative Conference, the community of people affected by conflict come together and engage in a facilitated conversation about what has happened, and how people have been affected.

Participants benefit from the opportunity to say things to each other that they have either avoided saying or have said hurtfully rather than helpfully. The group then decides together what needs to be done to behave constructively towards to each other. As the designers and developers of this process, our facilitators then stay in weekly contact to support the implementation of the Restorative Conference Agreement and organises a whole group follow-up meeting with the Conference participants 6-8 weeks after the original Conference.

In recent years there has been a growing awareness of the need to pay attention to how we each make sense of workplace experiences to ourselves and to each other. Most workplaces have a policy that says, if another person’s behaviour feels disrespectful, you need to speak to that person yourself, in the first instance, and let them know that what they’ve said or done has upset you. Our experience strongly suggests that this is one of the most breached policies in every workplace. The reason most of us most of the time breach that policy, is that many of our workplaces are not psychologically safe environments.

A psychologically safe workplace is a workplace where everyone is encouraged and rewarded for speaking up, where you feel OK saying that you don’t understand what’s being talked about or discussed, where mistakes are used as opportunities to learn, where different points of view are available, expressed and heard, and where your leaders model this behaviour themselves. In a psychologically safe workplace, while it might feel a little uncomfortable to give a colleague some negative feedback, it’s both expected and accepted, and not only does it not threaten the system of relationships, it in fact serves to strengthen your relationships.

There is much written about building and maintaining a psychologically safe workplace and we recommend you access work done by Professor Amy Edmondson at Harvard, by McKinsey & Company plus others, and by Google in their Project Aristotle literature.

Different jurisdictions have legislation requiring organizations to minimise psycho-social hazards and ensure their employees have a psychologically safe workplace.

For example, safe work Australia defines a psychosocial hazard as “anything that could cause psychological harm (e.g. harm someone’s mental health)”. It goes on to provide examples of common psychosocial hazards at work, including:

• job demands
• low job control
• poor support
• lack of role clarity
• poor organisational change management
• inadequate reward and recognition
• poor organisational justice
• traumatic events or material
• remote or isolated work
• poor physical environment
• violence and aggression
• bullying
• harassment, including sexual and gender-based harassment, and
• conflict or poor workplace relationships and interactions