5 Tips on How to Prevent and Solve Arguments at Work
With the rising numbers of COVID-19 infected people. Likewise, the number of people working from home is going up as well. As a result, this change of workplace might have sparked a few fights within your company. It might have been caused by common mistakes that happen in the office. For example, someone has a bad mood, different work styles create frustration for one or both parties, or lack of communication. But working offline brings other mistakes along with it. People have to change and adapt quickly. Well, some people do not like change and some people are not so quick in adapting. In this article we are going to introduce you to an amazing strategy on how to handle quarrels between your colleges or stuff, it even works at home when fighting with your wife.
As you have previously read, changes in circumstances bring confusion. This might happen in a couple of ways.
- Firstly, people might be confused on who is doing what
- Secondly, people might be confused around task prioritisation
Here are a few tips to prevent confusion
- Assign tasks in project-management or scheduling tools like monday.com or Planday.
These tools help your staff to know where exactly they should focus on, and at what time. Here they can create small goals for the day to complete. - Have regular meetings where you decide on one major goal for the month and assign specific tasks for specific people in order to get to the major goal.
Secondly, after this you can organise smaller meetings on the start of each day to see how everyone is contributing to this goal. This makes your people more motivated to contribute to the main goals. - Have regular short one-on-one meetings to ask how they are doing.
It is important to care about the mental wellbeing of your colleagues and stuff as it affects their performance in work. - Choose one main communication channel.
Email, Facebook, Slack or some other app? Make sure everyone uses and prioritises the same so messages do not get lost along the way. - Expect and encourage questions.
Above all, no question is a dumb question!
And if any problem or quarrel arises?
Focus on the problem, not on the people
When a conflict arises, it is important to keep calm and not to take sides. Try to think about the problem and what would be the best solution for both sides to solve it. Listen well and do not focus so much on fighting and attacking the other person. Instead identify and solve the problem.
Example of identification of the problem:
A: You never deliver anything on time!
B: I never have time to finish anything because I get new tasks all the time, it is your fault!
In short, maybe it would help if both subjects would decide on a project/task deadline before actually starting with it.
And there you go, these are the 5 tips on how to prevent work quarrels along with an opinion on how to solve them. Brought to you by Barma. Want to get more tips on the correct communication techniques? Look at our course about conflict management from Jon Valdemar here.
Henrieta Kozova
04-02-2021
