Leading Effectively e-Newsletter - July 2005 Issue
Identity: A New View for Leading in a Diverse World
Identity and Conflict: A Leader's Role
When people with far different cultures and views find themselves working together, clashes, differences of opinion and even serious conflicts are bound to occur. As a leader, what can you do to help minimize the costs and maximize the gains of social identity difference?
Identity-based conflicts — those associated with age, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, nationality and socio-economic status — are a fact of life in the modern organization. Effective leaders and organizations are able to manage and learn from these tensions in order to create constructive and efficient outcomes rather than inefficient, destructive outcomes.
"The challenge for leaders is to effectively manage and resolve such conflicts or, better yet, anticipate and prevent them from happening at all," says CCL's Patricia Ohlott.
Leaders first should know that identity-based conflict is difficult to recognize and diagnose. "They may appear at first to be tensions over resources or individual differences," says Ohlott. "But when a conflict devolves to the identities of those involved, issues of group loyalty, solidarity and self-protection enter the equation."
Being attuned to issues of social identity, learning from mistakes and working on an ongoing basis to bridge differences are a leader's best tools for leading in contexts of difference.
"Traditional leadership approaches that presume a common environment, a common culture and common values are not necessarily effective in diverse, complex organizations," Ohlott explains, adding, "Unfortunately, there has been little direct research on how leaders can effectively address social identity issues." Nevertheless, taken with a considered approach, these strategies and techniques may be helpful:
Create routine contact. The simplest and perhaps best-known strategy involves constructing situations so that individual members of different groups come into contact with and experience one another. Arrange opportunities for personal interaction among supervisors and subordinates and among team members. This creates one-on-one interactions that are person-based rather than category-based.
Mix it up. Either randomly or systematically rotate work group roles in a way that involves people from different identity groups. Again, this softens boundaries between groups, and team members have more opportunities for interpersonal interaction.
Identify with the organization. Foster a collective identity by emphasizing that everyone belongs to the same organization and is working toward a common goal. The organization becomes an all-inclusive identity group and differences between groups are minimized.
Share the status. If groups are tightly formed around identity, create situations in which different groups are given equal status. Structure a project or a team so that members of each group have distinct but complementary roles in reaching common goals. This strategy is potentially risky, however, because differences between groups are made apparent. But if the situation is handled well, individuals learn that they can maintain their group identity and also value another group's unique contributions.
And Now for Something Completely Different ...
New issues demand new approaches. If social identity or issues of difference are deeply entrenched, traditional conflict resolution may fail or even make the situation worse. "Compromise is nearly impossible in such situations because the core needs and values of the group members are at stake," says CCL's Patricia Ohlott. An alternative strategy for resolving conflict comes from Jay Rothman, author of Resolving Identity-Based Conflict in Nations, Organizations, and Communities (Jossey-Bass, 1997). His ARIA framework is described as a "dialogue and reconciliation process" and involves four steps:
- Antagonism - surfacing group differences to understand the reasons for conflict.
- Resonance - enabling both groups to understand their deepest hopes, fears and cares.
- Invention - exploring options for resolving problems.
- Action - implementing solutions.
For more information, visit www.ariagroup.com
Expert: Patty Ohlott
