Survivor’s Guilt

Hello again to Learning Curve. I recently watched the movie Up in the Air (2009) with George Clooney. I can only but recommend this film and here is the trailer for those who haven’t seen it: 



As Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a downsizing expert the movie demonstrates well how to deliver high impact messages and captures the different reactions of the employees receiving bad news. I thought however that I would like to talk with u about an aspect of the layoff process that often seems to be neglected: Survivors Guilt

The term Survivors Guilt describes an inner conflict that arises in employees that survive a layoff. It is often assumed that those employees should be happy, excited and relieved and while that holds true for some, there are many employees that survive a layoff who react with a combination of anxiety, guilt, anger, stress and depression.

And to be honest this is not too hard to believe. Just take a moment and imagine that half of the colleagues you spent your lunch and coffee breaks with are gone. Your work relationships are heavily influenced by that and we all know that this is an important part of a harmonious and motivated working environment, am I right?

But it is not just the working relationships that can affect you negatively. The question of how all the work is going to get done with so few employees around arises. The prospect of being stretched so thin, possibly beyond your area of expertise may just seem impossible. I remember my mother, being very stressed and upset about exactly this phenomenon when her department was downsizing.

But lets talk a bit more about where this inner conflicted is coming from. Hodgkinson and Stewart (1991: 166) explain that the feeling of guilt can be understood as an unconscious attempt to deny or undo a sense of helplessness.

This helplessness is also associated with the loss of certainty or in psychological terms the loss of faith. I am not talking about religious faith here but about the fact that A follows B, so the faith that life has a certain continuity or predictability. And even though we may deny it, but we all do love our certainties in life: the same coffee shop girl that knows your order as soon as you come in, the same bathroom cubicle or even if it is just your favourite tea mug.

I count myself lucky that I have not yet been in a position to experience Survivors Guilt but I am very curious about it. Hence I would love if you could share your experiences with me if you have ever been exposed to a situation where you survived a layoff and how you felt during this process. Moreover I am curious how your managers tried to accommodate you during this difficult phase?

Thank you all and see you soon, Laura

What's your conflict style?

Hello and welcome back to Leaning Curve. Today I want to talk to you about conflict behaviours and an experience I made not too long ago which was quite upsetting at the time. I am currently doing some corporate design work for a client as part of my degree. Unfortunately the client is based in Germany so our communication is limited to E-Mail and Skype conferences. 



About two weeks ago we had a conflict situation about a logo design and the expectations of my work outcome. To quickly give you an understanding of the situation here a short recap: Owner1 did not communicate directly with me, letting Owner2 explain the discrepancy in expectations regarding my work. My reaction was probably too impulsive writing an email demanding further details and defending my actions.

Long story short: Our very different conflict behaviours hindered us to effectively talk to each other to overcome the conflict and the situation resulted in upsetting all parties.  



In the aftermath I realised many things I could have done differently to promote better communication but you always know better afterwards right? So I thought I take this opportunity to explain some of the different conflict resolution approaches to give you a better understanding of your own conflict behaviour and maybe help you to find a quicker and better way to resolve your next conflicts.

 

1) Competing / Forcing
This approach is power oriented meaning that you use what ever measure that seems appropriate to defend the position you believe is correct. 



 

2) Accommodating
This individual neglects his own concerns to satisfy the other party involved.



3) Compromising
This approach is about finding a quick agreement that partially satisfies all parties involved.

4) Avoiding
This person does not deal with the conflict by withdrawing themselves from a threatening situation or postponing issues until a ‘better time’.

5) Collaborating
This approach involves all involved to work together to find a solution that satisfies all concerns. This is the most desirable style as it fully takes underlying needs of the individuals into account leading to a creative solution.

Reading through these approaches, I can see that my Forcing-resolution style was counterproductive in the situation I explained above. Unfortunately I noticed that I can get very passionate about my stand points in conflict situations, not willing to settle for less. However knowing this I can now work on my conflict resolution skills trying to be more patient to collaborate towards a mutual satisfying solution.



But enough talk about myself. I am curious to hear from you now. Which conflict behaviour do you find yourself using? And have you ever experienced a situation like me, where differing resolution approaches kept you from finding a solution for your problem?

Thanks for reading and commenting. Laura


Conflicts make you think outside the box

Hello and welcome to my first blog post on Learning Curve. The reason why I started this blog is an argument I just had with my housemates about the TV remote. I guess everyone has been there before, right?


But as we were arguing I could not help thinking about how complicated it must be for a manager to deal with conflict situations with ten, fifty, or maybe even hundreds of people when us three housemates don’t even manage do come to an agreement. So how do managers do it? 



Firstly I think it is important to talk about what is understood by a conflict. For that I will use Huczynski & Buchanan’s (2010) definition where conflict is described as a process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected something the first party cares about. This is a fairly straight forward definition I can fully agree with. A conflict arises when I want to finish my movie but my housemate does not want to miss his Sunday football.



In fact as we were arguing I realised that my female housemate has a very traditional view on conflict management. She kept insisting on stopping the argument, saying that it was bad for our relationship and you could see the negative effect it had on her emotional stress level.  And I guess in some respect she was not too wrong, as conflict can be upsetting and disruptive. 



However in my opinion it is not the argument that was bad but rather the way we were arguing and accepting (or in our case not listening to) each others needs. Quite on the contrary to my female housemate did I welcome the conflict as a constructive force. Because only due to our exchange did we fully understand each other and were able to reach a conclusion that will help us in future to determine who has control over the TV remote.



The more I think about it the more I have to agree that conflict is a constructive agent for change and quite motivating. Every situation I can remember I had a conflict in a working or even university environment my performance improved tremendously and I felt motivated and energised as long as all parties ensured that it remained a functional conflict.




While I take this new knowledge back to my housemates I am curious to hear your opinions and experiences with conflict situations. Has a conflict ever motivated you to outperform yourself? I would also like to see if you agree with me on my opinions about the constructive nature of conflict?



Take care and keep your conflicts functional ;) Laura