When Resolving Conflicts, Stick to the Facts

Conflicts, whether between the board and owners or among owners themselves, are inevitable. But successful resolution isn’t.

Some of our experts have advice on how managers can help their boards handle these disputes so they don’t spin out of control.

“You have to get rid of the emotional baggage,” says Michael Kim, of counsel with the Chicago law firm Schoenberg Finkel Newman & Rosenberg, LLC.

“Situations can become unnecessarily challenging to resolve if the people involved have come to the point where their actions or interactions are essentially driven by emotion more than objective facts.”

For example, a board might perceive a particular owner as a troublemaker. Conversely, the owner might hold the board or another owner in low regard. Such a circumstance can color a dispute.

According to Kim, it’s important to identify whether either or both of the parties have been looking at the matter from an emotional perspective.

“If that’s the case, you need to try to figure out how to defuse that and restore a rational approach,” he says. “It may be just as simple as acknowledging the state of affairs — ‘we know you guys have a history of not getting along, but we have to look at the current situation.’

“You want to stay on the current problem, not what happened six months or a year ago. That’s totally irrelevant.”

For more effective conflict resolution strategies, read the full article now:

3 Tips for Effective Conflict Resolution

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President