Accepting conflict in group meetings is inevitable – and dealing with it is a fact of life for every facilitator.

Understanding the differences between debate and argument is critical. Healthy debate is essential.  A group that doesn’t express differences of opinion is incapable of making effective decisions. Unhealthy arguments however lead to disaster!

Use these 5 Tips to facilitate through conflict:

1. Debate v argument?

In Healthy Debates, participants…

• Are open to hearing each other’s ideas
• Listen and respond to ideas, even if they don’t agree
• Try to understand the views of the other person
• Stay objective and focus on the facts
• Adopt a systematic approach to analysing the situation and looking for solutions

In Unhealthy Arguments, participants…

• Assume they’re right
• State their own ideas without responding to the ideas of others
• Are not interested in how the other person sees the situation
• Get personally blamed and attacked
• Thrash out hot topics in an ad-hoc and unstructured way

2. Facilitator techniques

Facilitator techniques… that create healthy debate

• Stay totally neutral
• Point out differences so they are understood
• Insist that people listen to each other
• Have ground rules – use them politely
• Ask people to paraphrase each other’s ideas
• Check for concerns
• Make sure people focus on facts
• Problem solve concerns
• Invite and face feedback
• Facilitate assertively
• Get closure and move on

Facilitator techniques… that allow for unhealthy arguments

• Join the argument
• Ignore differences – hoping they’ll go away
• Ignore that no one is listening to anyone
• Let people be rude
• Allow people to make assumptions
• Sidestep hot issues
• Let people get personal
• Get defensive
• Squash dissent
• Stand by passively or react aggressively
• Let it drag on

3. Two steps in managing conflict

Facilitating conflict has two distinct steps:

Step 1: Venting Emotions

This involves listening to people so they feel that they are heard and any built-up emotions are diffused. People are rarely ready to move on to solutions until their emotional blocks have been removed!

Step 2: Resolving Issues

This involves the facilitator choosing the right approach to work through the conflict.

The approach can be:

• Avoiding                       (Tip 5)
• Accommodating            (Tip 6)
• Competing                    (Tip 7)
• Compromising               (Tip 8)
• Collaborating                 (Tip 9)

4. Venting Emotions

It’s the facilitator’s job to properly handle negative emotions as soon as they emerge, so that they don’t poison the dynamics of the group.

Strategies the facilitator can use include:

• Slow things down – get people to start over and repeat key ideas
• Stay totally neutral – never take sides
• Stay calm and composed – speak slowly and don’t raise your voice
• Revisit the ground rules – ask them to review progress against agreed norms
• Be assertive – insist that people speak one at a time
• Raise awareness – remind them of differences between debate and argument (Tip 1)
• Intervene – step in don’t let people fight or be rude to each other
• Emphasise listening – paraphrase key points and ask others to do the same
• Call time out – stop the action if discussion is spinning in circles
• Create closure – make sure the discussion is really going somewhere, clarify actions

5. Resolving issues – avoiding

There are 5 basic responses you can choose from (once emotions have been vented), in order to resolve the underlying issue…

Avoiding

Avoiding doesn’t deal with the issue.

Avoiding is ignoring the conflict in the hope it will go away; maintaining silence; trying to change the subject.

When to use it?

In the 10% of situations when issues can’t be resolved profitably.