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Ten Simple Rules for avoiding and resolving conflicts with your colleagues

2019; Public Library of Science; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006708

1553-7358

F. Lewitter, Philip E. Bourne, Teresa K. Attwood,

Healthcare Quality and Management

During the course of our personal and professional lives, we spend a significant amount of time communicating with others.In fact, communication is one of the most important, but possibly also one of the hardest, things we do, having the power to bring individuals and communities together or create divisions.Getting it right is therefore crucial.Modern technologies have had a significant impact on the ways in which we are now able to communicate, allowing us to share our thoughts with colleagues, family, or friends at the click of a button.But communicating more quickly does not always result in better communication-the technologies we use often divorce us from the visual clues that are so crucial to understanding each other's true meaning and make it easy to misinterpret each other's real intentions.For this reason, our interactions can sometimes be unexpectedly difficult or can go unaccountably wrong.Given that communication is vital to the health and productivity of relationships, how can we best make our interactions work, and how can we resolve situations when they arise?The following are 10 simple rules based on our experience that we hope will help.Many of these rules can apply to the kinds of communication we may have with colleagues, family, or friends.However, we focus this article on the professional environment: we begin with suggestions to help avoid disagreements or to help stop them turning into serious conflicts; we then reflect on steps that might help to resolve situations that have become confrontational.Most interactions with colleagues are cordial and are working towards a common goal.Sometimes, however, because of differing views, misinterpretation of something said, or just because you're having a bad day, communications can go awry and become heated; from this point, without resolution, awkward situations can quickly escalate.Practicing effective communication skills before a confrontation arises, or during a confrontation, is the topic of this article.For more general ideas about engaging in successful collaborations, see [1].To delve further into the area of conflict management in the work environment, see [2,3].To keep this contribution manageable, we have confined ourselves to peer-to-peer communication and not considered a larger ecosystem of interactions in which conflict occurs.We feel that is a separate contribution that should be written. Rule 1: Always treat people with equality and respectWhether interacting with your peers or not, treat people courteously.Don't prejudge individuals based on their rank or perceived academic abilities, or worse, their gender, race, or sexual orientation.Be polite, and treat everyone equally and fairly.