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United States employees spend around 2.1 hours each week involved in conflicts in the workplace. This comes out to about $359 billion spent on workplace conflict instead of on positive productivity. Managers typically spend 25% to 40% of their time trying to resolve workplace disputes and conflict. That can amount to as much as two days out of every week.

The most common problems in the workplace are with leadership; between departments; and with differences in work style, ideas and personality. That could be because 60 percent of employees have never received any sort of workplace mediation training.

So, what can be done about it?

Employers can hire the type of leaders that already fit into their work culture or provide more leadership training. Enforcing current policies or booking mandatory training sessions are just a few of the ways to go about this. Employers can clarify employees’ roles and responsibilities. They can set out clear policies and guidelines in a handbook. They can train employees in workplace diversity. They may even need to replace some employees.

Another approach to solving workplace conflict could be through Enneagram training. Inviting employees to participate in this training could be the key to fostering mutual understanding and creating a better workplace environment. Not only does it teach them about themselves, it teaches them how to better interact with others. Let’s take a deeper look at this training.

Enneagram training focuses on the Enneagram, which is a system of nine distinct personality types. It offers a method of management that is focused on self-awareness. For that reason, it is a key tool in your workplace mediation arsenal. Each personality type has a distinct pattern of thinking, feeling and acting. These patterns arise from personal motivations or worldviews. Considering that personality clashes account for 49% of workplace disputes, this methodology has its merits.

In the Enneagram, there are three centers of intelligence and perception, which include the head, heart, and body. Each of the nine personalities falls into one of these centers. Enneagram training can help you and your employees find balance and mutual understanding across these defined personality types.

The three personalities that are considered body-based types are called the protector, the mediator, and the perfectionist. These people focus on power, control, and doing the right thing. They are often considered to be very instinctual.

The three personalities that are considered heart or feeling-based are called the giver, the performer, and the romantic. These people care deeply for others and focus on success and living up to expectations. They are thought to be very emotional.

Finally, the three personalities that are head or thinking-based are called the observer, the loyal skeptic, and the epicure. These people focus on rational actions, creating certainty, and finding several different options. They are believed to be very intellectual.

People have a natural inclination to connect with each other. However, when the connection or responsiveness is interrupted, conflicts arise. Each individual has their own world view, which can often create a barrier to stepping outside of their own box and empathizing with others. That barrier often creates fractures in interpersonal interactions. Understanding and utilizing the Enneagram can help repair those fractures and build personal bridges.

The purpose of Enneagram training is to help you become more self-aware and understand what motivates you and others to act the way you do. By doing this in a group, you can learn to have more compassion for those who have different personality types than you. This can help everyone better handle conflict.

While Enneagram training may not be for everyone, one study concluded that 95% of employees claimed that some type of mediation training helped them resolve workplace conflict in a positive and mutually beneficial way.

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Choosing to Be Relational empowers lawyers to move beyond the adversarial ethos. Even when you are not mediating or otherwise engaged in alternative dispute resolution, choosing to Be Relational on a daily basis in client counseling, negotiation and interaction gives lawyers a framework to be effective in more expansive ways; to be more human in decent ways, to advocate in ways that are good for themselves, their clients and the other side. Relational practices not only improve the quality of interactions (especially difficult ones), but they create well-being.

This month, September 2018, kicks off the ABA’s first annual Relational Practices Task Force Virtual Summit. The first Virtual Summit for the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution. You can access the 21 recorded sessions exploring and sharing what it means to practice relationally with specific how to’s for what relational practices look like and sound like as well as deeper look at a relational mindset in both dispute resolution and litigation and transactional legal practice. Whether a mediator, arbitrator, litigator or contract negotiator, the big picture is becoming more aware of the choice to be relational in a highly transactional world or not. You will be riveted by the collection of scholarship and thought, over 7 hours of content, broken up in bite size segments of 6 minutes to 45 minutes.

We welcome you to the relational practices movement! Together we will look at the unintended consequences of the adversarial ethic, take a stand for a more relational way of being, and support each other and the shift in practice- in thought, word and action.

Republished with permission from the American Bar Association “Just Resolutions.” Author: Louise Phipps Senft, I Can Relate! Blog

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