The following is a summary of Episode 46 of my podcast, The Engineering Career Coach (TECC) Podcast. I will summarize the main points in this post; however, you can also listen to the show through the website or by subscribing on iTunes. I offer a career-changing tip at the end of each podcast session.
Dr. Zach Schaefer (Dr. Z), the Founder and President of Spark The Discussion (sparkthediscussion.com), is a university professor, author, researcher, and consultant. In addition to starting his own consulting business, he is also an Assistant Professor of Applied Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He is also the author of the book, “American Creativity: The Mind At Work.”
Schaefer explains on the show that many successful people know how to disagree without coming off as disagreeable. They see conflict as a way to be productive.
Schaefer gives the following five steps on how you can manage and overcome conflict in your engineering career:
- Know your heritage and know yourself. Understand your triggers and what makes you feel awkward or uncomfortable. Also learn about the person you are having a conflict with.
- Shift from blaming to contributing. Think about how you might be causing or contributing to the conflict. Turn your potential conflict into a dialogue.
- Know your audience. Consider factors like identity, status, reputation, and hierarchy. Think about how you are communicating with the person based on his/her organizational hierarchy and based on your position in your own organizational hierarchy. Get clear on where the conflict is stemming from by truly understanding the relationship between you and the individual you are in conflict with.
- Understand what your conversational goal is. Step back and think about what your goal is for this conversation or situation and what you can do to realize it.
- Identify your preferred method of dealing with conflict. There are 5 methods for dealing with conflict:
- Compromise
- Competition
- Collaboration
- Avoidance
- Accommodation
Can you share how you have used these or similar strategies in dealing with conflict at work?
Anthony Fasano, PE, author of Engineer Your Own Success, found success as an engineer at a very early age and now writes and podcasts to help other engineers do the same. Visit Anthony’s website at EngineeringCareerCoach.com to access all of the free engineering career resources he has created to help engineers succeed.