The quality of our lives depends not on whether or not we have conflicts, but on how we respond to them.

~Thomas Crum

How is a conflict in a hybrid/virtual environment different from a conflict in a physical workplace?

What is the role of an employee in a workplace conflict?

4 Tips For Dealing With Conflicts In Hybrid Workplace Write an image caption

How does an employer manage a team in a conflict in a virtual world?

Curious enough?

This post is for you!!!

In today’s world, most organizations have employees across the globe, employees may belong to different cultures and hail from diverse backgrounds, hence the communication style may vary from employee to employee. Quite often, lack of transparency and open communication may lead to conflicts in the workplace.

But, that's not it, when you are in the virtual world, it's different in the way it is handled.

Let us try to get the idea by reading a quote about how managers think about the problems and mediate in between.

"When managers think about conflict resolution, they picture two employees facing each other and talking through their problems with a mediator. This format is great in the traditional workforce, but what about in the modern workplace, where remote employees span across departments, continents, and time zones?"

~The uncommon league

Here are the pearls of wisdom from our guest speaker on The Guiding Voice podcast Suba Lakshminarasimhan, on Conflict management in the virtual world:

When you conflict with someone in your office, you know that you are going to meet them regularly, and solve that easily. But, in the virtual world, it's not the same. You don't know what the person on the other side is going through.

When you are the boss in an organization, which is working from home, you should not feel that your employees are available 24*7. They have a life too, and you just respect that.

Draw the boundary line of personal and professional life when working from home.

Design with Hybrid teams is different, both as an employee and as the boss, from the employee's perspective, you have to learn to take initiative and for the employer to be more flexible.

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So, the bottom line is that, when you are a manager in a team of the virtual world, you must respect the time of your employees, you just do not think that because they are working from home, they are available all the time.

Employees have their own lives and family. The fine line between personal and professional must be drawn properly and being empathetic to employees' concerns will help in building great rapport thereby leading to a strong working relationship!

Having a clear understanding about roles and responsibilities, right expectation settings, transparency, and open/frequent communication will help in avoiding the conflicts in the first place.

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Conflicts should not be considered as bad, but timely resolution is important!

We would like to understand from you the best ways to handle a conflict in a virtual team. Share your conflict management stories.

Please see first comment for the link to #TGV193, episode on dealing with conflicts in Hybrid work environment.