The Familiar Psychology of Workplace Conflict

Over the years,  I have come to appreciate and understand that I have benefited throughout my career from the training and knowledge I gained while in graduate school - when I was on track to become a psychologist. While I never managed to complete my Ph.D. (I am classified as "ABD" in academic jargon), the years I spent learning from wise professors, experienced clinicians and my peers in the program have provided me with skills that I use every day in navigating the turbulent waters of the workplace.

As always, my perspective focuses on people. In this case, people as they interact in the workplace. I have been thinking recently about the false frameworks we (western-capitalist society in general) place around the workplace. We tend to believe that somehow a place of work is inherently more fair and rules-bound than the spaces and relationships in the other parts of our lives; that people are on their best behavior during their time "in the office", and that they adhere to norms that should prevent conflict and messiness. A place of work is thus seen as a sort of homogenized and purified space where the foibles of human irrationality and emotionality are kept outside, allowing us to drive the engine of commerce!

Yeah, right.

What we learn from even a cursory study of psychology would go something like this: Put more than one person in a shared space for any significant period of time, and eventually they will disagree about something. It's inevitable. Then let's add duration to the mix - force those people to spend a lot of time with each other, and maybe we'll sprinkle in some ambition, some ambiguous situations, a bit of personal history, a large helping of interpersonal politics, and implicit bias and power dynamics ... I think you see where I'm going with this. From a psychologist's perspective, a place of work is essentially guaranteed to be a hot bed of conflict and strife. It's just obvious. Denying it thus seems a bit silly. Ask anyone who's ever held a job: True or False - Conflict can happen at work. Do any of us really think that there is a single person who would answer "false"?

So, then, why do conflicts in the workplace seem so often to catch us off-guard and unprepared?

Here is an illustrative passage from one of my favorite authors, Alain De Botton, writing in his book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work:

" ... workplace dynamics are no less complicated or unexpectedly intense than family relations, with the added difficulty that whereas families are at least well-recognised and sanctioned loci for hysteria reminiscent of scenes from Medea, office life typically proceeds behind a mask of shallow cheerfulness, leaving workers grievously unprepared to handle the fury and sadness continually aroused by their colleagues". p. 246







That's a rather dense paragraph, and yet it reads also almost like poetry, at least to an almost-psychologist like me.

If we unpack this a bit: Workplace dynamics are complicated and intense, and so are family dynamics - but because we EXPECT the latter (or at least most people will admit that conflict within families is rather inevitable) we are in some ways better prepared to handle it.

I would like to point out that I am focusing on so-called run-of-the-mill family stuff, and NOT on truly toxic, violent or abusive families. In other words, I am focusing on high-functioning families, and I believe that the author is doing so as well. To dive into the depths of deeply disturbed families and individuals is beyond the scope of this blog post, and an area for which I lack sufficient knowledge to be able to contribute meaningfully.

By the way, just because we might expect conflicts within families, we are still not protected from the emotions, the hurt, the seething resentments, the accusations. But somehow because it's expected within families, there is a different mindset around it than there is in the workplace.

De Botton is illuminating the facade of "shallow cheerfulness" that we allow to be painted onto our work environments. Somehow, we all suffer this kind of mass blindness, because - despite countless experiences to the contrary - we stumble into the office every day somehow continuing to believe that conflicts just shouldn't happen at work. Is that reasonable?

I want to focus on shallow cheerfulness just a bit more. It resonates with me that De Botton would modify with the word "shallow". Not only does it imply that the veneer is thin, but also that the underlying nature of the environment is likely to be quite the opposite of "cheery". And yet we gird ourselves daily, paint the smile on our faces, and continue to pretend. To a psychologist, this is kind of formula for craziness. In my view, a central core of psychological health is the capacity to be honest: to see things for what they are, to see yourself in an unbiased light, and to share a rational perception of self and experience with others. In the simplest example, this allows us to connect with each other in a shared reality - like "how about this weather?" responded to with "sure is hot!" The world tips on its side when the same comment is met with "bananas cannot make a salad" or just about any other strange or disconnected response. Resolved: the shallow cheerfulness of the workplace contributes to personal stress.

Now let's hone in on the phrase "grievously unprepared". Not being prepared isn't a perilous thing all of the time. For example, walking into your own surprise party is fairly unlikely to smash your psychological well-being. But I think we are looking at something deeper in this case, where unprepared is a state but within a mindset that is opposite. That is, most of us operate under the illusion that we are perfectly prepared to deal with the workplace, for the reasons I've referenced above. But expecting illusions to carry the day is another recipe for craziness. We are inevitably disappointed when what we are prepared for simply does not happen, thus that feeling of being taken off-guard by that snarky comment from your co-worker, or that sudden reprimand from a manager you didn't even know was angry. To work toward psychological health, we all need to disentangle our wishful thinking from practical reality.

The hard truth is that your colleagues will annoy you sometimes, and please you at other times. They'll hurt your feelings and ignore your needs - sometimes on purpose, other times with no clue. They will act selfishly, and they will blame you when you were not even involved. This list could go on and on, of course.

So what to do?

I will not pretend to have all of the answers to this dilemma. I've got a few suggestions, take them or leave them as you see fit. Add your own in the comments, or please point me to great resources. At any rate, here are a few things I've tried that seemed to work to some degree:

1. Prepare; that is, arrive at work each day knowing that real people with real imperfections and misconceptions will now be mixed together in an artificial environment for several hours - again - and that some strange things are to be expected. Simply having a mindset that recognizes this actually calms me and prevents me from being surprised when things get messy.
2. Name it. Workplace conflict. It exists. When you observe it, classify it. Wow, Jane really lit into John for that low-importance error he made, they must be some workplace conflict going on there!
3. Practice emotional intelligence, process your feelings before acting on them. One easy rule of thumb is that every time you begin to feel furious do all you can to remain curious. Next time you really want to say "Oh, yeah, well scr*w you!" to a colleague, try instead "Hmm. Tell me more about that" then listen carefully and see what happens.
4. We all make a common error of personalizing our experience. We tend to believe that others' actions in our presence are pre-meditated and specifically designed to elicit our response. This error of self-importance and self-absorption is almost comical when you step back and observe it - we all seem to believe that we are each the lead actor in our own movies called "life", and that everyone else is just supporting cast. Then we freak out when they don't follow the script! We need to let go of that mindset, and really ask ourselves if that is possible: does every person in our presence carefully consider their actions taking into account our likely response before they act? Sorry, man, not true, and probably only very rarely actually happens at all.
5. Choose your workplace carefully and intentionally. If you work in an environment that is truly toxic, you need to find a way out. If you work in a place that is not great, but okay - you might consider ways in which you can improve the culture. But the best position to be in is to work in place that is honest, practical and rational. If you are considering a job, ask if you can just sit and observe the workplace, try to perceive the workplace culture, how colleagues treat each other, how stress accumulates or not. Ask about how errors are dealt with. Ask them to describe their ideal employee and ideal day. Ask how conflicts are resolved. Do all you can to find out if the workplace is for you.

Finally, we must never forget that all people - including you and me - are likely to be both fabulous AND utter disasters! Just depends on the day and time and situation. It's the enigma present in all human beings - we are wonderful but irrational, intelligent but emotional, we share values but are inconsistent and we are social beings but also frequently self-centered. Somehow, as long as you understand those ambiguities, you can remain relatively well-adjusted in a world that often seems pretty nutty.