Managing conflicts within your business

Disagreements, miscommunications and misunderstandings are never absent in any organisation, even in business teams. There will always be varying opinions and work styles because each individual is different and you cannot always control how they respond to certain situations. But when all these arise into a conflict, how do you handle them so that the entire team is not affected and work will not be jeopardised?

Before a conflict can escalate into something uncontrollable, it is better to nip it in the bud, come up with a resolution and review ways on how you can avoid such situations in the future. These are some tips and insights on how you deal with conflicts and ease the tension within your team. The aim is that differences and problems will be resolved, build better working relationships and lessen similar instances going forward.

Have an open and honest dialogue

The first thing to do when there are misunderstandings and opposing sides on certain issues is to come together and have a dialogue between the parties involved. A mediator can help neutralise any agitation and encourage a calm and genuine discussion. It’s good to see each other’s side as to where they are coming from, where the gap happened and where both parties can be heading after the dialogue. 

“For us, open and honest conversation is the key to conflict resolution; overseen by a third party if it cannot be resolved between team members,” shares Nitasha Badhwar, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sunpower Renewables.

Nitasha explains, “Company culture is very important in instilling a strong sense of ownership of a common goal within the team and our shared common objectives act as a strong unifying force. We do have a lot of passion and enthusiasm within the team, which sometimes leads to frayed nerves and strongly differing opinions. Ultimately, as team members with a common objective and compassion for the environment (being a renewable energy company with a focus on sustainability) and one another, it is easy to find our way back to a resolution. The understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities from the ‘buddy days’ also creates a better understanding of each other’s perspectives while working towards resolving the conflict.”

Clarify intentions and interpretations

Conflicts sometimes happen due to communication errors. It could be that the message was not conveyed clearly, the message or the feedback was misunderstood, or there were gaps along the way, such as lack of information or delay in communication. People may perceive things at one angle only, and thus, often arrive at a different conclusion, which may raise antagonism or discord. This is often a challenge nowadays, especially with the lack of face-to-face communication among colleagues and co-workers.

John Bevitt, Managing Director at Honeycomb Strategy, acknowledges this as a concern to having effective team communication. “I would say that the majority of ‘conflicts’ that happen within the team occur because of a miscommunication or misunderstanding – which has only been enhanced during COVID-19 and lockdowns when everyone’s working remotely and predominantly communicating through email and Slack.”

So, how do they address such concerns? Here’s what John imparts. “With 93% of communication being non-verbal, you miss all the cues that help to understand someone’s intentions when you communicate through text. So the first thing we do now whenever we feel there’s a risk of a misunderstanding is jump on a Zoom or phone call to discuss. Once something has been discussed, having the other person playback their interpretation of what’s been covered and clearly communicate next steps and actions help further minimise the chances of miscommunication and make sure that the team is in alignment.”

Create a culture of care and compassion

There’s a saying that “prevention is better than cure”, and it’s the same with conflict. It’s better to mitigate things and prevent them from escalating into a full-blown dispute. This is what Karl Simity, Managing Director of Canopy, tries to achieve within his team by having a corporate culture where members extend kindness and understanding to one another.

He illustrates, “Our focus is on making sure that it never gets to ‘Conflict’. I believe that a major contributor to this is having the value of first-class communications embedded within our culture. First-class communications to us are anticipating concerns and communicating any problems before they become an issue. We pride ourselves on always being clear and honest in the way we communicate with one another. In being authentic with our communication, we avoid any conflict and challenges are dealt with head-on and resolved from a place of care and compassion.”

How do you handle conflict in your workplace? Share with us your tips and experiences.

The value of training in organisational development

How do you nurture your organisation’s human resources? Every member of your team is valuable on how to bring your business forward and achieve its goals. But as you take in new challenges, aim for greater heights and expand your horizons, how do you equip your people to ensure that you can all move towards the same direction and at the same speed?

When you want to grow your company and develop your organization, it is also necessary that you upskill the people within your team so that they’d be able to perform better and increase their productivity. What kind of training do you provide to your team that contribute to your business growth? Entrepreneurs share their experience on how they value training and how this has benefited their people and their organisation.

Areas where they can excel

Having some expertise in a particular skill, field or area is beneficial to individual team members as well as to the entire team because it facilitates growth in your organisation and establishes authority within your industry. Honing your people to be great at something can boost their morale as well as your customers’ confidence in your business.

Understanding the benefit of this to his business, Karl Simity, Managing Director of Canopy, supports the growth of his staff by equipping them through proper training. “Training for our team is a key focus, both in-house and external. If our team isn’t growing, the business won’t either. We encourage and coach our staff to look for areas where they want to excel in or areas where they could improve and then we build specific training plans for them,” he stated.

“Right now, we are running an executive training with our leadership team. Our design team is doing further technical training and our consultants are doing some external sales training. An investment in our team is an investment in our future,” Karl added. 

Learning resource and follow-up sessions

Building a learning resource for your team can be a huge help in ensuring continuous growth and development within your organisation. This is what Nick Clift, Co-founder at Otto and Founder of DWM Solutions, had in mind when they established the Otto Academy.

According to Nick, they have “Leadership Training, Personal Coaching, Individual development plans for all staff.  We have recently launched our online Otto Academy, this is a great learning resource that enables our staff to develop both role-specific skills and various other business/soft skills.”

But it doesn’t stop there. As in most learning processes, having follow-throughs are essential to ensure that there is regular progress and growth. “We run monthly and quarterly team meetings, where from time to time, we bring a Subject Matter Expert to run a session for the team. This often leads to follow-up sessions to hone a particular skill or technical knowledge,” Nick explained.

Team development plans

“Personal growth and development is a massive focus at Honeycomb and we begin building team development plans as soon as someone joins the team,” John Bevitt, Managing Director at Honeycomb Strategy, shared.

It is often advantageous to create learning opportunities for your staff and team development plans early on. Sometimes, learning opportunities don’t always come knocking at your doorstep, so it is better to proactively search for them and then work on plans that will ensure the growth and development of your team. 

John expounded on this, “Rather than just looking at training that helps employees to perform better in their role, we look at learning opportunities that help make all of us (including leadership) become better, more authentic and well-rounded humans. We’ve learned from experience that you do your best work when you’re being your most authentic self. This makes working on Dev Plans really interesting and really diverse – sure, we definitely have on-the-job training and such, but I’ve also got team members who have added ‘learning to weld’ or ‘get my pilot’s licence’ to their dev plans.”

Learning can be done not just on skills development but also in honing the mindset of individuals. John further explained, “As researchers and consultants who need to understand behavioural psychology and consumer behaviour as part of our role, a big element of our team development plans is also around understanding our own psychology, why we respond on how we do, and how our underlying beliefs, values and motivations contributes to this. This also helps to build empathy and emotional intelligence, which makes it easier to understand consumer behaviour, but also connect with clients. We often bring in subject matter experts to help with this and even had half our team attend a virtual Tony Robbins conference recently!”

Cross-education

Having additional knowledge outside of one’s field of expertise can also be helpful to your organisation. It widens your staff’s set skills and enables them to support each other and work better as a team.

Nitasha Badhwar, Founder and CEO of Immersify and Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sunpower Renewables, illustrated how they do this in their business. “Our endeavour is to upskill our team members regularly. We have multiple internal departments, and for them to work better as a team, we found that it is important, every so often, for our staff to spend time in different departments to get a better understanding of other areas of the business. This cross-education has been crucial to our success, so far. We have implemented buddy days where they shadow a team member in a different department to learn about their job.”

This provides better coordination among departments and individuals. She added, “Learning and understanding each other’s roles and responsibilities, daily pressures, and deliverables creates a healthy and respectful working environment. In turn, this has created a much better workflow and has deepened the bonding between interdepartmental team members. This has the added benefit of making social and family days a lot more interactive and fun.”

Education and growth do not stop when we step out of the confines of the classroom. Learning continues in workplaces and it is necessary to develop your organisation and your business. There is a proverb that says “a chain is only as strong as its weakest link”, which is why it is critical to look after your people and ensure that they not only grasp the tasks or work assigned to them but also master what they do, be the best at it and expand their knowledge and set skills.

Corporate values and nurturing them in your business

Corporate values are important in every organisation because they provide a strong foundation for decision-making, team building, customer relations and driving your business forward. It is your company’s compass that directs you which way to go and the backbone on how to run your business successfully.

Every organisation has their respective corporate values, depending on the preference of the owners or board of directors or the purpose of the business for operating. Nurturing your corporate values strengthens your team and enables you to achieve your mission and goals. Here are some corporate values that entrepreneurs have in their businesses and how they ensure that these values are upheld in their organisations.

Integrity and accountability

Integrity is defined as “the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness,” while accountability is “the fact or condition of being accountable; responsibility.”

For Nitasha Badhwar, Founder and CEO of Immersify and Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sunpower Renewables, “Integrity and accountability are the most important values for us. In an organisation that values innovation, having integrity in what you believe in, what can be seen through to completion, and where time and resources need to be prioritised, is a crucial success factor.”

These two values are also often found in other organisations as they build trust within the team and from customers and third-party partners. Nitasha added, “We strongly believe that integrity in the workplace promotes an open and positive working environment that helps in developing happy, resilient, and successful teams with a strong moral, ethical and fair code of conduct.”

Diversity

John Bevitt, Managing Director at Honeycomb Strategy, revealed one of their core values that resonate well with their team. “Of our three core values, I think one of the most powerful ones is ‘Celebrate our Superpowers’. I love this one as it helps to celebrate our diversity – no matter the role or level of seniority, everyone has a ‘superpower’ that helps make them unique from everyone else. It’s the one thing that, if focused on, trained and nurtured, makes everything else easier or unnecessary,” he stated.

It’s not a common corporate value, but it is something that can stick to everyone’s mind. John further explained, “Every team member has an idea of what their superpower is and we create a development plan homing in on it and using it to help achieve their personal objectives, share learnings with the team and create an environment focused on strengths, not on weaknesses. Having clarity on these superpowers and knowing how these can be combined across the team creates a multiplier effect and is what has helped to take our business to the next level.”

Drive for results

With the end of sight, Canopy Managing Director Karl Simity shared that “Canopy was founded with the vision to create inspiring workplaces that encourage and enrich the lives of workplace inhabitants to build and grow successful organisations.”

Corporate values are often anchored on the vision of the business and its owner. A corporate value aims to help achieve this vision. Karl cited an example, “One of our values is to ‘Drive for outcomes’, and this value is something I see all our employees live by in their day-to-day activities. What helps us create these inspiring workplaces is the drive our people have to make it happen, to always push for success, and their persistence over resistance to solve problems.”

People first

Businesses are made for people, with the aim of providing solutions to concerns and challenges affecting our society. Corporate values are also people-centric because they are to be lived out by people for the people that the business serves, whether they are internal or external stakeholders.

This is why for Nick Clift, Co-founder at Otto and Founder of DWM Solutions, people are significant pillars of their corporate values. He expounded, “At Otto, our key corporate value would have to be People First. We are redefining the industry and Humanising Technology. Otto, as a brand, represents the humans behind the technology — the human hands that make the tech work. Essentially, we are a human-led, tech company, so I guess you could say that technically, we are anti-tech.”

If you look through other companies, businesses and organisations, you will find varying corporate values, yet these values define who they are as an institution. Values put a soul to your brand, especially on how you and your people act and conduct business accordingly.

What are your corporate values and why have you chosen them as your values? How do you ensure that your people live up to them? We’d like to hear your thoughts.

Persistence and dedication to business: the difference between success and failure

“The more I practice, the luckier I get.” – Gary Player

This inspiring quote from golf legend Gary Player has taught Canopy Fitouts Managing Director Karl Simity about the need to work hard to be able to succeed in one’s endeavours. “Creating space that is perfectly fit for the user is what drives me. Sometimes there can be multiple roadblocks to creating a space that suits. However, finding the perfect solution is what I pride myself on,” he declared.

Karl started his business 5 years ago and managed to turn it into an 8-figure business in four years. “And I have never looked back. I love every part of it, from inspiring clients to working with my amazing team, as well as the exciting projects and stories of success that we get to play a small role in,” he shared.

According to Karl, “There are many different ways to create beautiful things, but from an early age, I decided to follow my passion for construction and people and make office fitouts my career. I’ve been lucky enough to live and breathe fitouts for half my life and I’ve seen just about every aspect that goes into a fitout.”

Throughout his entrepreneurial journey, Karl learned that one cannot just achieve success overnight. Several factors facilitate entrepreneurs to reaching their goals. “You need to have a product or service that has a good market fit. You need a good business plan. You need start-up capital,” Karl enumerated.

Having these conditions are essential, but it is also important to have the right attitude and mindset towards business. He added, “You need to accept that you won't always get it right. Most of all, you need to be okay with not having the answers. It doesn’t matter how many entrepreneurial or business fundamentals you get right. It will never guarantee success. But there is one thing that will always be key – you need to stand up, you need to hold your head high and you need to get on with it.”

Karl further shared, “I’ve worked on the ground getting crucial hands-on experience. In design, it is challenging thoughts and boundaries of what is achievable, and in management, it is overseeing projects from inception and site selection to relocation.”

“You have to do the work, put the hard yards in and turn up every day as your best self, being ready to tackle the challenges head-on. There is always going to be someone smarter, faster and someone with more experience, but you have to be the one willing to work the hardest. Your persistence and dedication to your business is the difference between success and failure and the difference between good and great,” he remarked.

The reward can be quite satisfying for him as it motivates him to take the extra mile. “Seeing people happy in their new space and using them as designed drive me to continue to challenge myself to come up with smarter, more inspiring solutions and alternatives to ensure I can deliver the perfect fitout.”

Karl recognises that there are high points and low points in the entrepreneurial journey. But what matters is that he keeps moving forward until he gets to his goal. “You won’t always get it right, but it’s about getting up doing the work and putting the time in. That’s why ‘The more I practice, the luckier I get.’”

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What entrepreneurial lesson have you learned in your journey? Share them with us through the comments section below.