Motivating Leading or Conflict Management in a Healthcare Environment
Physician executives face low to mid-level intensity conflicts, day-to-day issues and problems associated with pressures and changes in the health care environment. Such conflicts can be sorted on the basis of relationship, duration, and intensity. Complex interpersonal conflicts are inevitable in the high speed, high stakes, and pressured work of health care. Poorly managed, conflict saps productivity, erodes trust, and spawns additional disputes (Aschenbrener and Siders 1999). Well managed, conflict can enhance the self-confidence and self-esteem of the parties, build relationships, and engender creative solutions beyond expectations. Just as thoughtful differential diagnosis precedes optimum treatment in the doctor-patient relationship, management of conflict is greatly enhanced when preceded by careful assessment. The July/August issue of The Physician Executive cited a survey in which 115 members responded that they spent at least 20 percent of their work time dealing with conflict (Aschenbrener and Siders 1999). Most conflict occurs because of a fundamental problem inherent in every organization. There are different levels of conflict, individual and group. Individual is when the locus of the dispute is the individual and the group is when between two or more people (Shortell and Kaluzny 1997).
Physicians tend to avoid conflicts in hopes that they will go away and although it’s a part of the culture of the health care organization, avoidance often triggers an increase in the intensity of the conflict. When conflict arises, it may be helpful to determine whether the issue is: (1) something you want or want to avoid, (2) something you have and want to keep, (3) some belief you hold, or (4) some action you want or don't want to take. Conflict that is poorly managed may have an adverse impact elsewhere in the organization and conflict that is well managed may have broad positive effects (Shortell and Kaluzny 1997). . The physician executive skilled at effectively managing the common low-to-mid intensity conflicts in the workplace is more likely to get more of what he or she wants and less of the griping, sniping, and gossiping that waste time and undermine productivity. There are many strategies for managing conflict, including those that are planned as well as those that emerge as conflict is experienced.
Conflict management is defined as the use of strategies and tactics to move all parties toward resolution or at least containment of the dispute, in a manner that avoids escalation and the destruction of the relationship. The authors apply the five major modes of conflict management--competition, avoidance, compromise, accommodation, and collaboration--to specific scenarios taken from their work in health care and suggest guidelines for managing conflicts with peers, supervisees, and authority figures. In this article the authors also present a