In a recent conflict that I was
engaged in involving myself and a manager from another department, we used the
collaborating method to reach a solution. At our update meeting that takes
place half-way through the shift every day, he did not agree with a decision that
I wanted to make. The decision I wanted to make would have been good for our
department and the morale of my team, but may not have been the best for the
building. The other manager had been in the building for 5 years so he was much
more tenured then I was, but I felt like the decision I wanted to make was the
right one and that his decision was going to have a negative impact on my team
without actually helping the building.
We discussed it briefly during
the update in front of the other managers, but decided to discuss it between
the two of us in another room. We talked with one another for about 15 minutes,
discussing the positives and negatives of each one of our points of view and
how it might impact individual teams and the building as a whole. We eventually
made the decision to rotate one of my team members to another department rather
than let my team go home early. This prevented one of my teams from going home
an hour early, which lowered morale of both the team and the individual who had
to work in the other department.
In the end, the move did not do
the building any good because of several other variables that night. I had to
repair the morale of the team the following week and explain to them why I made
the decision I did. I thought it was worth a try to help the building without
favoring one team over the other, but the team did not see it that way. I am an
operations manager before I am a manager for specific teams, so I felt like I
had to support the opinion of the other manager who I had the conflict with. Our
relationship allowed us to effectively manage the conflict, even though it did
not have the intended results.
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