In today’s business environment, tensions within leadership teams can arise from various sources—differing opinions, clashing personalities, conflicting priorities, etc. Managing these tensions is crucial for an organization’s overall success. The role of the General Manager in this tensional environment is pivotal to ensure balance and effectiveness, leading to current and future success. This article briefly describes the main reasons for tension and some advice on mitigating it. Its recommendations are for general managers, but they can be helpful for everyone dealing with stress in their workplace.
The START:
Understand the Sources of Tension
The ground of every team is that they consist of people with different backgrounds, perspectives, life philosophies, and perspectives for life and work. While this has its positive side, it is also a prerequisite for creating conflicts. Some of the well-known reasons for tension and arising conflicts in the teams and leadership teams as a private case can be found below:
Personality Clashes – Personal attributes and individual understandings play a significant role in how people interact. The stronger the person’s personality is, the higher the tension they create and the possibility for conflict within the team.
Differing Goals and Priorities – Each leadership team member may have different goals based on their respective departments or areas of responsibility. Aligning these goals with the overarching organizational objectives can be challenging and sometimes make people struggle. Each department has specific goals, but when leaders take responsibility mainly for the operative and particular goals of the department and don’t work with others around them to harmonize these goals with the broader organizational goals, often a clash of objectives and priorities happens.
Communication Breakdowns—While effective communication is a milestone every leader should master, this element often suffers and weakens the team as a whole. Breakdowns in this area include poor communication channels, differing understandings or misunderstandings, lack of transparency, etc. They all work to create higher levels of tension in the team and across different layers of the company.
Competition for resources – Resources are limited everywhere around us. All people in the organization are “fighting” to get them and use them to deliver their goals and objectives. Such limited resources can be a lack of team skills, a training budget, insufficient people-power to deal with challenges effectively and raise obstacles, etc. They often create conflicts within the leadership team because they cause one department to be prioritized above another one. And that usually leads to resentment and even discord.
Decision-Making Processes – Now, be honest, decision-making styles differ. The more significant the difference in the styles of those participating in the decision-making process is, the higher the level of disagreement and opposition is. For example, a leader may prefer a data-driven approach when making decisions. Still, in the same group of leaders, you may also have a person who prefers a more intuitive, experienced, or emotionally attached way of making decisions. This apparent clash of styles may lead to tension and move the process from effective decision-making to stressful decision-defending. And that creates an unhealthy environment for the leaders involved and their teams.
In light of the decision-making process, tension seems like a prominent driver. At the same time, when there are differences in style, attitude, approach, level of capability, etc., leaders are determined to suffer in the decision-making and decision-execution processes. As the saying goes, “The coin has two sides.” Tension, conflicting interests, and approaches may exist, but for every situation, there is a productive and effective and unproductive and ineffective way to solve it. Often, these ways are known as strategies. Here are some:
SOME STRATEGIES FOR BALANCING TENSION
The company’s General Manager has a unique advantage in fighting against and minimizing tension. The role focuses on observing and addressing tension to help positive results come over adverse developments by building an environment of collaboration and support.
And the opening point here is…
Fostering open communication
This one is easy…, right? Or at least it looks easy. This step is one of the hardest because the General Manager, or everyone else responsible for it, should be able to balance the situation by creating a safer environment where everyone feels valued for sharing their opinion and even concerns about everything. Open communication is developed through various instruments, such as regular team meetings focusing on clearing and problem-solving. These one-to-ones create plans for personal development and establish internal awareness, building and providing platforms where everyone finds and implements balanced and unbiased solutions together.
Now let us move to…
Aligning goals and objectives
Conflicting goals and KPIs are not ready today. The more an organization grows, the wider the impact of contradictory goals becomes. It is hard but necessary for every leader to ensure that overall organizational goals and objectives are transferred through the structure and specifics of each department and individual. The better the goals and objectives are aligned, the reduced the risk of conflicts and discrepancies becomes. One minor but essential element often forgotten by leaders and plays a negative role in the relationships and interactions below – regular revisit of the goals and objectives. So many leaders fail to revisit an objective once it is set until the deadline for evaluating the results comes. And it can’t be more wrong as an approach. In a fast-moving and tension-based environment, where everything has its level of urgency, the regular review of goals and objectives helps them stay relevant. It lowers the tension inside the leadership team and the structures below each leader.
Developing skills for Conflict Resolution
Conflicts are not easy to handle, especially for people who are not experienced in this process or do not have the right skills and tools to do it. While conflicts and tension depend on the maturity level of the people involved, the intensity of the action agenda, and the environment and support it creates for or against the tension, developing the right skills may be crucial in dealing with that tension. This may mean training the leadership team in skills like negotiation, active listening, and empathy to help the leaders successfully navigate the disagreements that arise. Learning those skills and training to “predict” conflicts and tension can also be supported by skills for mediating tension and conflict situations.
Establishing Clear Roles
Defining the role is crucial for dealing with tension. As team leaders and managers, you play a significant role in this process. You may have heard a thousand times that “This is not my job” phrase. It often comes from the understanding that situations threaten people’s well-being and balance. However, it is also a product of chaos in the framework of roles and responsibilities. The more precise a role and its set of duties are defined, the less the tension around it is and the more productive the person is in that role. When every team member understands their specific duties and responsibilities and how they contribute to the organization’s success, collaboration elevates and becomes smoother and more positive, dragging positive results toward it.
Promoting Diversity and Inclusion
It’s a simple truth- supporting diverse opinions and views leads to a more balanced and open discussion. Yet, according to HR.com’s research by UKG, only twenty-nine percent of leaders fully embrace change and diversity in their leadership teams. The study also reveals that a significant thirty-four percent of leaders are hesitant to promote diverse opinions, preferring to stick to what is familiar, even if it’s not universally accepted. This is where the tension arises. It’s clear that leadership teams must embrace diversity in opinions and points of view to enhance decision-making and introduce innovative solutions. When all voices in the room are heard, it’s a win-win situation. The more people feel valued in sharing information, points of view, and positions, the smoother the relationship grows in the leadership teams and structures below them. Embracing diversity in leadership not only enhances decision-making but also inspires and enlightens all involved.
Facilitating Team-Building Activities
Now, it looks obvious and logical, but many leaders still mistake the need for strengthening the team as a team with emotional disbalance. Often, this ends in neglecting the process of building a better team or rebuilding a successfully existing one. The need for team-building activities is recognizable from all the tense activities happening. The team-building may look like a short and formal workshop, providing opportunities for different team members to bond together, informal gatherings on various occasions, sessions to openly discuss and understand strengths and development areas of multiple team members, and graph a plan on how to change them for sound, etc.
Leading by Example
General Managers are the model for those below them. The more time they invest in building an exemplary model for leading, the better the final results from their efforts look. The famous phrase “lead by example” is a mantra that the general manager should live with, spread, and demonstrate as actions and behavior. Setting the standard of expectations for behavior, approach to work and people, attitudes, and values is an essential part of building exclusive, dedicated to the organization’s mission, vision, and values, and committed to winning together as a team. This may mean building and demonstrating empathy, showing respect to others, no matter the role and grade in the organization, and demonstrating willingness to collaborate for success. All these are happening and seen to build loyal followers and positive contributors to organizational success.
IN CONCLUSION:
Tension is often seen as a negative outcome that leads to conflicts and challenges. Looking at it as a transformational element can further strengthen relationships and rebuild teams. After all, challenges make people stronger. In leadership teams, tension creates discrepancies, builds alliances, and elevates people and teams. For a General Manager, understanding the tension and all the sources fueling it is crucial in their mission to develop and sustain a balanced and harmonious team. Fostering open communication, aligning goals and objectives, promoting inclusivity, and choosing suitable team-building activities are crucial to creating opportunities for growth and success by elevating teams around.
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