At conflict with your colleagues?

Conflicts are unavoidable as you spend a third of your day with your work mates. Here are a few tips on how to cope with the subject

The saying goes that you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends. But what about colleagues? You don’t get to choose them, yet you spend a third of your day with them. To a certain extent they become your family away from home, and, as it goes with family, there are clashing personalities and different viewpoints. At work there are also the added pressures of deadlines and demanding bosses and clients. Conflict is bound to happen. How you handle it makes all the difference.

We all deal with conflict in our own way, whether effective or ineffective. The most common responses are confronting the person, avoiding the person, accommodating and compromising. These may seem very grown-up, but they all have their drawbacks, ranging from resentment, frustration, humiliation and being taken advantage of. The best approach is cooperation. In other words, finding a solution that leaves you and your colleague feeling satisfied. So how do you go about it?