If any of this has happened with you, chances are that you are a victim of a common corporate ailment: conflict. So, how do you tackle conflict? With psychotherapy. For the first time in the country, a corporate is using a psychotherapy-led module called "Conflict Clearing" to improve its business.

When environmental and water management major Ion Exchange's chairman GS Ranganathan felt that conflict between senior members of the management was influencing their direct teams and alsohaving a negative impact across the board, it was time to act.

Conflict clearing at Ion Exchange

Ion Exchange knew that for success they needed to deploy people to the best effect and that the success of every team assignment hinges on the quality of teamwork behind it -- on team members who collaborate and synergise their personal strengths for optimal results. It found that working in teams was posing areas of conflict due to differences in personality traits, perspectives, perceptions and assumptions, lack of role clarity etc.

These problems were occuring despite the fact that the company's top brass met regularly for "business retreats" and did internal management introspection on the business, on the company's business values, et al. Says Ion Exchange's Leslie D'Souza, "The aim of those meetings was restricted to integrating the business goals with common values of the management."

D'Souza heads Ion Exchange Training Resources (ITR), a Rs 1-crore division of Ion Exchange floated around ayear ago which provides customised training in business management and utility and environment management.

The company initially tried to deal with conflicts by starting team building workshops for integrated and cross-functional teams. However, a chance meeting with world-renowned psychotherapist Dr Christoph Thomann made Ion Exchange discover a proven module called "Conflict Clearing" to tackle the problem directly.

What is conflict clearing?

Conflict clearing in management parlance is an organisational development (OD) intervention. Thomann has built the module as an instrument to implement the intervention. The module, which was standardised by him in 1981, has since been used by many multinationals like ABB, Unilever, Siemens-Nixdorf, IBM Aerospace Computers and Zeneca. Thomann, however, warns that the scope of the module is only for addressing business-related personality issues and relationship conflicts. Interestingly, the module used by Thomann remains the same, irrespective of what kindof conflict exists in the company. Also, Thomann believes that any manager with the right training can be a good conflict clarifier.

When Ion Exchange invited Thomann to use the conflict clearing module at a three-day session at Nashik, it was no easy sailing. Thomann started the day by asking gathered people to list their problems with each other. He got no response. Says Thomann, "At the end of a three-hour session, not even one person owned up that he/she had a problem with the others." As a result he decided to wrap up the meet. The chairman then took the lead to point out the people who were having a bad relationship with each other. "And then", beams Thomann, "there were three full charts of conflict issues!"

According to him, such hesitancy is unique to Asia as the European and American people are much more forthcoming. "No one points fingers at anyone in public (in India)," he said. He adds that nearly 80 per cent of conflicts in companis are person-to-person while only 20 per cent or so aredepartment-related.

The process at work:

Once the group participants from Ion Exchange opened up, Thomann categorised the conflict issues under two heads: emotional and theoretical. Referred to as the beginning phase (see chart), this part mainly establishes contact with all participants in the process. Thomann then moved on to the self-clarification stage where he got all participants to actively listen to the participants. In this stage the aim is to get an understanding of the issues rather than agree or disagree with them. Next came the dialogue based on truth where the conflicts are clarified further on the premise that truth comes before beauty. Says an Ion Exchange source, "It was a no-holds barred session; we didn't even know that two of our senior managers just hated each other's guts!"

As at this stage a fair degree of openness and candid communication is a must, Thomann used his "doubling technique" to get a spontaneous response as well as create a spirit of understanding and desire towork for the common organisational goal. The technique is a tool used to initiate and facilitate the sessions by Thomann, helping people articulate their reservations and perceptions which might have been buried in them for years.

Then came the phase of solutions. Here, Thomann started working on various arrangements and agreements using the clarifications given by the group. Finally came the closing stage, where the procedures of solving the conflict were communicated and a feedback and monitoring schedule was set in place.

A total of three days of dialogues and a few hours of solution-finding enabled Ion Exchange to solve problems regarding relationships, power-related issues and self-esteem and humiliation-related conflicts.

Not a permanent solution:

So, is the module a panacea for all corporates? Definitely not, says Thomann. According to him, conflict clearing will have to be done from time to time as people and situations in a company keep changing. Also, it will work only if the top manis fully committed to it as it is a totally voluntary process. This is because if the chief executive officer (CEO) is not sensitive to conflict issues, the process will not trickle down the ranks.

Adds D'Souza, "As an OD intervention, the module is a tool which has to be available on tap with companies. It is more of a programme to be used when needed and not an operational system for a company."

While Ion Exchange could effectively use the module, D'Souza says that it was a tough call, mainly because the entire process is done publicly. Also, one had to stop short of hurtling towards solutions and end the discomfort thrown up by all the "frank talk". However, successive meetings helped the process to move on its own momentum.

Says D'Souza, "In Ion Exchange's case, the module has worked so well that ITR is now planning to make this module a part of its OD training programme and offer it to other companies and industries."