Put down your weapons and make peace

China currently suffers from a chronic shortage of talented, qualified managers. With such talent becoming increasingly difficult to recruit, it is vital that you do everything you can to develop the talented individuals you already have, so that they can fill managerial roles in the future. With this in mind, I thought I would introduce some techniques that could help you to develop your existing staff, and help you develop yourself, so that you can manage your organisation's HR needs with greater effectiveness.

For this article, I have drawn inspiration from Michael Carroll, author of Awake at Work. He identifies four techniques for managing clients (both internal and external): making peace, inspiring, attracting, and destroying. In this issue, I will deal with the first two factors, making peace and inspiring. In our next issue, I will look at attracting and destroying.

#1 Making Peace with Clients:

This is the most important of the four techniques, and the one that you and the aspiring managerial talent within your organization should strive to perfect. This is the ability to deal with conflict smoothly and confidently. An all too common approach is to view business difficulties as obstacles. For many, a very natural reaction to this is to become nervous and to develop a strong urge to remove such conflict - and the negative emotions that accompany it - as soon as possible. In this situation, inexperienced managers often feel uncomfortable and choose to make excuses, defend their actions, or blame others. In such tricky situations, making peace is the ability to take a deep breath and understand others, to explore what the other people involved are thinking and feeling. This ability involves changing your perspective on the situation. You are no longer a soldier looking to fight a battle, instead you must become a mediator approaching the situation not as a conflict, but as a negotiation. This means that your goal changes from seeking a victory for yourself to forging a winning agreement for both sides. By creating peace from the seeds of conflict, we quickly realise that the discomfort we were suffering was unnecessary and caused us undue stress.

Without the added weight of the weapons and armour that we wear when we approach a conflict as a warrior rather than a peacemaker, we can focus our attention on others and on resolving the conflict. This allows us to ask important questions to better understand the situation. What is at stake in the situation? What idea is the other party trying to express? What do they feel would be helpful? By asking before we act, actively listening, and appreciating other people's points of view, we will find that our clients - both external and internal - will see us in a better light and will help us forge strong bonds in the future. Let me give you an example where the above technique worked like a dream. It centred on the typical situation of an employee not getting along with their boss - a situation I am sure you will have dealt with at some point in your career. I recently gave a seminar during which one of the trainees asked me whether making peace with her new line manager was the right course of action. Before we spoke, she was considering the option of leaving her company and finding another job. She felt that her manager was not recognising her hard work and was failing to guide her on a strong career path. Furthermore, the manager frequently criticised her in front of her colleagues, whilst behind closed doors, he begged her to help him with tasks that were outside of her job description. She had worked for her company for four years prior to the arrival of her new line manager, but after just a few short weeks with him she was exhausted. I asked her to imagine what the new line manager might be afraid of. She thought for a few moments and answered that he might fear his boss and be under too much pressure from his own manager. My advice was to try to make peace with her line manager by asking him questions to understand his fear. She then went back to her company, asked him these questions and tried to understand his situation. She discovered that he felt threatened by her. However, he appreciated that she had taken the initiative to talk with him and understand his situation. From that point on, he spoke to her first about decisions he was thinking about making for the team, used her suggestions, and recognised her contributions during team meetings. This was an outcome that would have not have been possible had she approached the situation armed with weapons for conflict rather than with the olive branch of peace and a mind toward conciliation.

#2 Be an Inspiration to Clients:

By trying to inspire others, we support and encourage people - even those perceived as ‘enemies' - during times of conflict. Traditionally, when we face conflict, we feel the need: to protect ourselves, to guard the image of or organisation and its services, to express our opinions, to support people who deem to be on ‘our side', and to achieve our objectives. In short, we feel the weight of our weapons and armour. By acting as an inspiration to others, we realise that we do not need to limit ourselves to this closed mind-set. Instead, we can investigate a much wider set of opportunities to help expand our point of view. If we enlarge our point of view by seeking options, promoting win/win solutions, offering assistance and building alliances, we put ourselves in a position in which we not only protect ourselves, but in which we can also guide our ‘enemies' by showing them how they can protect themselves too. We can promote resolution by inspiring others to feel empowered and supported.

Inspiring others is no easy task, However, let me share an example that might just point you in the right direction. A friend of mine works as an engineer for a manufacturing company in the United States. Just over a year ago, the company announced that it would be moving all of its product lines to China and India, and closing down their local plant. My friend was shocked by this news and feared the worst for his family. He began to ask himself some very tricky questions: What would he do about his house payments and savings accounts? How could he support his wife, two sons, and daughter for the rest of their lives? Did he have the education to transfer or find a new job with another company? He and all the other employees felt that they must stand up and defend their jobs, even though they knew from past precedents at other companies around the country that they may well be fighting a losing battle. However, instead of dressing up like a soldier and heading into battle, my friend decided to ask about opportunities to share his experience with engineers in China and India. It is safe to say the company was shocked by his approach. This inspirational attitude persuaded them to offer him an attractive deal. Because of my friend's peace-making example, the company's management team decided to offer him and several other American engineers the opportunity to travel overseas to share their knowledge and experience with their new overseas colleagues. The ability to cast off the weapons of conflict in favour of the inspirational attitudes of alliance building takes maturity, thoughtfulness, and self-discipline. However, you and your organisation will be well-served by its practice and application.