Workplace Conflict Resolution: Author Iris Clermont On How Team Leaders Can Create The Right Environment To Resolve Conflicts

Animportant component of leadership is conflict resolution. Why is conflict resolution so important? How can leaders effectively incorporate conflict resolution into their work culture? In this interview series called “Workplace Conflict Resolution: How Team Leaders Can Create The Right Environment To Resolve Conflicts,” we are talking to business leaders who can share insights and anecdotes from their experience about how to implement Conflict Resolution at work. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Iris Clermont.

Iris Clermont is an Executive Coach, author and professional mathematician. She holds certifications from Team Coaching International and Conversational Intelligence, and a Professional Accreditation from the International Coaching Federation. Iris’ mission is to motivate teams to work effectively and be solution-orientated and creative, while having fun and gaining energy from their business life for their private life and vice versa. With experience in a range of business consultancy and coaching roles, she has been living her passion over the last three decades in twenty countries worldwide.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

Mytechnical path was founded on my choice of studying Mathematics. Initially, I wanted to support people as a priest, which was at that time and still is not possible for a female in the catholic church. Additionally, I observed mathematical integrals and formulas in my song and meditation texts, which made me aware of my love for the beauty of mathematics, but I still wanted to support our world to become a better place. Now, as a business coach, both parts are combined and included in my daily life.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

In 2008, I left my career in an international telecommunication company and started my own coaching business. During the goodbye celebration, I was transitioning to a career in team coaching, which lead to my first team coaching service as a freelancer. Changing jobs is not the final goodbye. You can still keep in contact with your ex-colleagues, and the freelancing world opens up for more connections, especially co-creation with other instrusties.

Can you please give us your favourite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

I have two favourite life lesson quotes, one is ‘Do not take anything for granted’. This is my takeaway from each new project I embark on, as each one presents me with new surprises I took for granted based on my business and life experiences. The second one is ‘I want to make you smile’. This intention engages and reminds me to give my very best to add real value for my clients, family and friends, and each passing my way.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Through my experience as a freelancer, what I have learned stands out about me is the combination of technical and analytical inspiration, alongside the fact I am an accredited International Business Coach. With this combination, I can quickly jump into the centre of a business, supporting leaders and teams from the inside out and from the bottom-up.

During the first large project that I undertook as a freelancer, we managed to win an innovation prize with a virtual team inventing scripts to save power as a benefit with an international team. Because of my wide ranging skills, I was able to offer my analytical mathematical specialism to support the project content as well as my coaching expertise to inspire the diverse international virtual team.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

As a business coach, the main approach or character trait that I try to convey and encourage others to do the same with is to focus on the benefits we can add as a team in co-creation with the client’s team. Whenever emotional adrenaline is showing up in a project, I encourage my clients to take deep breaths and take some steps back as if they are in a museum, looking at a beautiful picture from a different perspective to gain more out of the different views.

A second key success character trait is my inner drive to improve, combined with an analytical, curious and creative mind looking for solution ideas for conflict or emotional discomforts. I can feel the playfulness and joy of a child happy to explore something astonishingly new. Exploring new ideas or deep wisdom in other human beings’ brains and hearts is an enriching journey combining analytical brain and empathy, supporting a room filled with ideas and resolutions. Business environments typically gain with simplification, raised effectiveness, and raised inspiration impacts.

The third character trait that contributed to my success is my intention that each person I meet can take something useful for their business and private life out of our communication exchange. Even though this does not happen every time, the intention and reflection on how to succeed with my approach and better fitting questions next time make the difference, at least from my perspective, and provide me with the daily energy to keep me attentive to those I meet..

Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader?

As a project leader, a client was not happy even though the project acceptance criteria had been fulfilled. The client’s culture focused on somebody’s need to be sweet to earn money. Respecting their cultural perspective, I decided to align with them to achieve beyond agreement with honest hard work. In the end, I did receive their approval.

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s start with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. What does Conflict Resolution mean?

Conflict resolution is visualising or naming aligned ways forward, and being committed to actions that will be the most optimal and most clever way forward out of all potential options. The way forward includes reviewing what is already working, and what needs to be changed, adapted or refreshed.

What are some common misunderstandings about Conflict Resolution that are important to clear up?

That agreeing on the way forward is sufficient. As we are all human beings and by no means perfect, continually reviewing and checking progress is critical to resolving a conflict in the long run.

Another common misunderstanding is that you cannot just understand the source of the conflict e.g. what causes anger or frustration and then leave the conversation. There must be an understanding of what you expect from one another in the future and understand how behaviours must change.

This might be intuitive to you, but it will be helpful to clearly express this. Can you please explain why it is so important for leaders to learn and deploy conflict resolution techniques?

It is really important to understand that just telling conflict partners how to prevent future conflicts is not productive. Behaviour is more likely to change when there is a benefit for the conflicting parties, and when they have the opportunity to add their ideas and express their opinions.

From my own experience with tools such as Judith Glasers Dashboard (detailed in her 2016 book ‘Conversational Intelligence: How great leaders build trust and get extraordinary results’), I have found that I can actually speed up and lighten the process of conflict resolution. Through using methods such as interviewing conflict participants, alongside team sessions and these professional IQ tools, conflicts can be solved within 30 minutes.

On the flip side, what happens to a work culture when there is not an effective way of resolving conflict? How does it impact employees?

Without an effective way of resolving conflict, the probability is high that people will speak about each other behind their backs instead of with and to each other, meaning a healthy culture is missing. The working atmosphere and team identity are lowered, resulting in high performers leaving and joining companies with a more healthy working culture.

Can you provide examples of how effective conflict resolution has led to increased team performance, collaboration, or innovation within your organisation?

As a freelance coach, I can provide a reference from one of my clients, a group leader in the medical sector: ‘The team now has a really clear direction and handles conflict and problems constructively. For example we always have transparency with ongoing tasks and planning, we are always retrospectively aware of what we have achieved, and we have agreed on common and committed targets. Moreover, the team has also agreed on common and committed targets, which makes collaboration and innovation a much easier process.’. His words demonstrate the rise of effectiveness by regularly solving conflicts and optimising ways of establishing agile retrospectives.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Five Ways Every Team Leader Can Create The Right Environment To Resolve Conflicts”? If you can, please share specific examples of a workplace conflict you’ve encountered, and how you applied conflict resolution techniques to address it.

1. Strengthening and encouraging failure culture by sharing one’s own failure and change experiences, as well as listening to the ‘Not-perfect’ song by Tim Minchin.

2. Using the Conversational IQ Dashboard from Judith Glaser to resolve conflicts.

3. Establishing a continuous improvement as is natural in things like sports through using a 360 feedforward method and commitment flow, which can be found in my book ‘Team Rhythm in chapters 7 and 8. One option is asking your key communication contacts what they value and what can be improved to gain better business results yearly and take concrete, committed actions to improve out of this feedback.

4. Using mathematics as a way to visualise conflict resolution, such as the basics of a triangle. Conflict resolution is successful when it is completed, accepted and committed from every side.

5. Practising the rhythm exercise from Chapter 5 of ‘Team Rhythm’, adding a different rhythm and growing conflict resolution skills from observing the effects. You start with a common rhythm from one of your famous songs and repeat the rhythm pattern with your team until the rhythm is synchronised and feels comfortable. You choose one person out of the team trying to disrupt the rhythm with diverse interaction, such as slowing down, adding a different rhythm, or any other disruptive conflict-creating idea. The goal of the disrupter is to convince the rest of the team that their beat is the better one. Reflecting on what happens when one person tries to disrupt the rest and transferring the rhythm experience into business practice helps to recognise business disruptive behaviour and find ways to synchronise.

A standout story is when I was called by clients because of colleagues working in the same workspace and not speaking with each other. Within a 30-minute session together where we looked at solutions to move forward, and activities were suggested and committed to, everyone understood the benefits of a new way of working.

In your experience, what are the most common sources of conflict within a team, and how do you proactively address these potential issues before they escalate?

The most common issue that I face is people thinking that they are always right, which is sometimes difficult to overcome. I tend to approach this by acknowledging that they are firmly convinced in their ways, but also posing the idea that they want to improve their business. In order to really expand and grow, it is important to consider that others are clever and can also add value to solving problems and building upon business.

To prevent escalation, you need to be clear in your intentions and ideas. This really helps to guide direction and purpose.

How can our readers further follow you online?

www.aiccoaching.com

www.facebook.com/iris.clermont/?locale=de_DE

www.linkedin.com/in/iris-clermont-9199b17/?originalSubdomain=de

https://twitter.com/aicclermont

www.instagram.com/irisclermont

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!

Thank you so much for the insightful questions from your interview.