When Goliaths Clash: Book Reviews
'Goliaths' provides good advice, few answers
By Annemarie Kropf
Journal Staff
Issue Date: 08/01/03
If you're looking for the magic answer that will rid your offices completely of any internal conflict, "When Goliaths Clash: Managing Executive Conflict to Build a More Dynamic Organization" by Howard M. Guttman is not for you. However, if you'd like to tap into the energy behind the conflict and focus it elsewhere, this book offers suggestions on how to accomplish this.
Well-written and chock full of real-life examples, "When Goliaths Clash" provides a road map for those wondering how to manage the two pit bulls, ... er, executives, in corner offices. The book's seven chapters include topics such as "Anatomy of Conflict," "Why Goliaths Clash," "High-Performance Teams and Conflict Management," "The Road to High Performance," "Conflict Management as Art and Skill," "E-Conflict," and "Leadership in Conflict Management."
The theme of this book is that conflict has gotten a bad rap and deserves a place in the corporate environment. "Conflict should be managed, not eliminated," Guttman writes. "The biggest misconception that people hold about conflict is that it is intrinsically bad. But conflict in and of itself is an inevitable social and organizational reality."
Guttman does admit that destructive conflict needs to be harnassed in order for a company to beat its competition. "A company that does not manage internal conflict will not succeed, regardless of its efforts to reengineer structures and processes, rev up sales and marketing efforts, develop and acquire new products, and dot-com the business. When conflict is ignored - especially at the top - the result will be an enterprise that competes more passionately with itself than with its competitors," Guttman writes.
He's got a point. Guttman sees conflict as any other business issue, and urges readers to stop taking it personally. One reason for why people take conflict personally is because they all have "going-in stories," or past experiences that shade their views, he says. Guttman suggests "[using] the input of others to build, modify, test, and perhaps abandon perceptions. By asking other people for their opinions and by probing how those opinions were formed, we open ourselves up to entirely new ways of looking at the people and events around us." For leaders, learning how others perceive them vs. how they perceive themselves can be an eye-opening experience. If a leader is perceived as unapproachable, this could lead to resentment from employees, and the leader may have no idea of its source. Learning how one is perceived can help manage conflict.
Shutting oneself off from colleagues is another root of conflict that can be managed, Guttman notes. "While we are not advising showing home movies of your soul to colleagues, the more information about ourselves we share with others - the more of an 'open book' we strive to be - the less likely that we will find ourselves in conflict with others," he writes. "By maintaining a false façade, we set ourselves up to be misunderstood."
Guttman offers other tips to manage conflict such as "don't triangulate" [a.k.a. complaining to someone else about a problem in the hopes that he will resolve it for you]; "don't recruit supporters to your point of view," "resolve or let it go," "don't accuse in absentia," and "don't personalize issues." He suggests making these protocols that all team members should follow. As expected, money can also be used to manage conflict. "One way to ensure that team members put their common goals first is to tie their compensation to the achievement of the team's goals," Guttman writes.
While this book might not resolve all conflicts, it definitely helps put a leash on them.
The Central New York Business Journal
www.cnybj.com