Consensus Building and Managing Conflicts

Ranjeet Nambudiri
Indian Institute of Management, Indore

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 Consensus

• Overwhelming agreement
• Necessarily the outcome of a good faith effort to meet the interests of all
stakeholders
• Demands / positions : What people say that they must have
• Interests: Underlying reasons that explain why they take these positions
• Indicator: Everyone agrees that they can live with the final proposal
• Not necessarily unanimous
• Unanimous OR Strong OR Weak
• Robert’s Rules of order ?
– Straw poll / Leader Decision

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 Consensus building process

• Convening
– Bring the parties together and initiate the discussion
– Decide who all should come to the table – thus reflect all stakeholders
– Assess the disagreement
• Clarify responsibilities
– Facilitators, mediators, recorder, Executive office (decision maker)
– Set rules of involvement – tacit and overt
– Agenda for discussion and timelines
• Deliberating
– Express concerns constructively
– Active listening
– Strive for mutual gains
– Find out why they want what they state

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 Consensus building process

• Mediation: Helping parties deal with strong disagreement

• Recording: Creating a record of what has been discussed and decided
• Decision:
– Iterative process
– Sometimes, adding to the recommendations
– Keep on asking “Who cannot live with this decision..”

• Respect for others

• Confrontation
• Participation
• Trust
• Power equalization

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 Interpersonal Conflict

• Illustrate the diagnosis of group process

• Causes of interpersonal conflict
– Interpretation
– Assumptions
– Beliefs
• Antecedent conditions / Symptoms
• Dual concern model of conflict resolution
• Techniques for resolving conflicts

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 Conflict – Symptoms

• Intense comments
• Impatience with others
• Ideas are attacked before a person completes speaking
• General feeling among people that they are not understood
• Repetition of opinions
• People taking sides
• Advice giving, body language cues (finger pointing)
• Sarcasm in arguments

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Nature of conflict situations
PROCESS
• Goal conflict
– Desired outcomes are different or at cross purposes (more common for
inter-group conflict
• Task conflict
– Opinions of participants are inconsistent (based on variance in knowledge,
information, analysis etc.)
– Task conflict: exists when there are disagreements over the content and
execution of task
PEOPLE RELATED
• Relationship conflict
– Feeling and emotions of participants are incompatible (arising out of
backgrounds, values etc.)
– Relationship conflict: arises out of interpersonal incompatibilities
• Behavioral conflict
– Behavior of participants in unacceptable to others
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Some reasons for conflict

• Task interdependence: Need for working closely with other individuals

/ groups

• Inconsistent performance criteria: Non-standardized across people /

groups

• Status inconsistencies: Between supervisor and subordinate

• Unclear boundary conditions: Where does responsibility end and

begin

• Resource competition:Limited resources and unlimited uses

• Communication: The eternal bane

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 Managing conflict – Dual concern model
Dual Concern Model

High Accommodation / Collaboration

Smoothing

Concern
About
Others
Outcome Compromise

Inaction / Competition / Forcing

Low Avoidance
Low High
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 Some techniques

• Physical separation of the group

– Does not change attitudes, but
– Allows things to cool down
• Use of rules and regulations
• Limit the interaction only to issues of common interest / relevance
• Intermediary – acceptable to all concerned
• Confrontation and negotiation
• Identify important goals – which help to highlight the importance of
group cohesion
• Rotation of members – break up cliques
• Vision for change

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 Thank you for your time and attention

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