Create discussion forums
If you want to resolve conflict in your organization, it’s pretty simple — have a meeting.
While it may not sound like a novel concept, it’s one that Sprecher has sworn by since he started ICE. Growth results in changes, and change can breed conflict.
“Good companies recognize that there’s going to be conflict, but you recognize that it needs to get resolved,” he says.
To resolve conflict in his company, each week, Sprecher has a meeting with 25 people. Those 25 people are mostly employees with at least a vice president title, but not every single person with that title is invited to come. Instead, if there are multiple people within a division, Sprecher chooses the one who can best represent the whole group.
“The people that are invited to that meeting are people that we think touch a lot of other people, so we’re trying to find the neck of the funnel,” he says.
The meeting is very rarely canceled, and everybody has to go around and answer: What’s on your mind, and what are you working on that everybody should know?
“The rule that we have is that everyone in that meeting can comment on anybody else’s issue, even if you have no domain knowledge or no expertise,” Sprecher says. “Everything is fair game for everybody to comment on, and that’s the forum to make the comments, and it’s not behind someone’s back. If somebody has been particularly on your case on an issue, it’s fair game when their issues come up that you can get on their case.”
Being able to talk about the issues facing you and the issues you have with other people helps keep ICE open and moving forward.
“The only good way to do it is to talk everything out, even if it takes a lot of time,” he says. “You have to get to the end of that conflict so it doesn’t manifest itself in unhealthy ways.”
Sometimes you’ll find that you have two people who are particularly passionate about a topic, but they’re at different ends on the solution. In those kinds of cases, let them duke it out verbally.
“When you get into conflicts where it boils down to two people who have very strong views, you kind of have to let it play out,” he says. “Everyone else just has to kind of sit back and let those two debate the issue until they get every possible angle on the table, and then we all kind of know how to sit back and let that happen, and then we’ll jump in.”
While most meetings last about two to two and a half hours, when these kinds of debates ensue, it could be much longer.
“Sometimes you can’t resolve the issue, and you agree to table it, and it’s the first topic when you get back together again,” Sprecher says.
It’s important to let things play out, but if people get nasty toward each other or aren’t sticking to relevant information for the topic, then you need to call them out.
“You throw the bullshit flag,” he says. “You have to say, ‘Stop,’ and you challenge somebody that this has gone far enough, you’ve made your point.”
