Olena Grygorchuk, Project Manager at N-iX.

1. Sharing PM experience: How to solve conflicts
not to "fuckup" the project
Sept 30, 2018

2. Agenda
• Emotional intelligence and conflict solving
• Preventing the conflicts through emotional intelligence
• Conflict areas and types in project management
• Conflict handling styles, techniques and best practices
• Intercultural communication and conflict resolution

3. Olena Grygorchuk
• Experienced mentor, QA, Team/QA Lead, SM, Proxy PO,
Agile coach
• 4+ IT PM in various business domains: B2B, e-commerce,
media and entertainment
• PMO expert and mentor at N-iX company
• Strategic PM, getting deep insight into client`s business
domain
• Practice agility, design thinking and EI development
• N-iX company values
 Data-Driven Decision Making
 Advocating Agile Approach
 Freedom to Innovate

4. What is EI and why it is important?
A set of skills and abilities that help us:
• to identify and manage own emotions and the emotions of others
• to interact successfully and in a positive manner with the people around us

5. Stats
TalentSmart tested emotional intelligence alongside 33 other important workplace skills, and found that EI
is the strongest predictor of performance, explaining a full 58% of success in all types of jobs.

6. EI benefits for PMs
• Build trust with the client
• Build relationships with the team AND each particular team member
• Be successful leader. Develop a sustainable high-performance climate
• Solve conflicts efficiently (negotiate)
• Communicate (write, present, prepare proposals and participating meetings)
• Helps you adapt more easily to change
• Conduct interviews. Improve employee engagement and vs

7. EI is a gateway to a balanced life
If you think emotional intelligence is only important for communications, think again!

8. EI competences to developed

9. TIPS
• Observe your feelings => identify your emotions triggers
• Control your emotions => think of ways to deal with each of them
• Practice responding, not reacting
• Stay humble
• Practice empathy
• Fill the blind spot with feedback
• Try not to make decisions in a bad or good mood
• Get out from the comfort zone

10. No empathy, No problems?
“To perceive is to suffer.” — Aristotle
“Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes.” —Steve Martin

11. EI importance

12. What is conflict? Sources and areas of conflicts

13. Types of team conflict
• Substantive conflicts arise over things such as goals, tasks, and the allocation of resources
• Emotional conflicts arise from things such as jealousy, insecurity, annoyance, envy, or personality
conflicts

14. Preventing conflicts
• Listen first, talk second
• Set clear expectations
• Encourage collaboration
• Spend significant time on new projects and new hires
• Discourage gossip and gossipers
• Get to know the different personalities and roles in your team
• Encourage friendships
• Do not micromanage (if applicable)
• Survey your team and conduct 1to1 regularly
• Understand communication styles of the team members
• When conflict arises, embrace it. Don't run away from it!

15. Is conflict Good or Bad?
When conflict is NOT handled effectively it may result in:
• Team members becoming frustrated
• Competition between team members of a win-lose environment
• Increased stress levels
• Low levels of job satisfaction and increased staff turnover
• Low effectiveness and performance
• Poor communication, gossip culture

16. Positive Conflict
• Encourage creative solutions to problems and generate innovation
• Clear the air between team members
• Raise issues for clarification and improve relationships
• Provide experience in conflict solving

17. Conflict handling framework

19. The Cultural Iceberg and what is CI?
Cultural Intelligence
A measure of a person's capacity to function
effectively in a multi-cultural environment

20. High and Low context cultures
High Context Culture Low Context Culture
• Indirect messages
• High use of non-verbal communication
• Use intuition and feelings to make decisions
• Relationships are more important than schedules
• Trust must be developed before business transactions
can begin
• Rule oriented
• Knowledge is public and accessible
• Interpersonal connections are brief
• Knowledge is transferable

21. Intercultural communication opposites:
• High Context Communication • Low Context Communication
• polite
• respectful
• not direct
• open
• true
• direct
High Context claims Low Context • Low Context claims High Context
• hiding information
• not trustable
• too formal
• too slow
• impolite
• “cannot read between the lines”
• too fast

22. What does this mean for building trust across
cultures?
In the US, trust:
• is a result of performance
• given to colleagues who deliver on time
In Arab, Asian and Latin American countries:
• building relationships is required to professional interactions
• building trust involves long discussions on non-professional topics and shared meals in restaurants
• work-related discussions start once your colleague has become comfortable with you as a person
How is Trust built in Ukraine?

23. Avoid fixed impression of a group of people
Through stereotyping, you will fail to appreciate:
• the diverse nature of people
• the special contributions each person can make

25. SUM UP
• Grow EI and make the rest of your life better
• Motivate people and reach your goals
“If your team is not excited about the work they need to do, it’s probably not happening.” source: Atlassian
blogs
• Face the conflicts and gain experience
• Understand cultural difference and build trust with your client, team or manager
My contacts:
Olena Grygorchuk
+380976108414
ogrygorchuk@n-ix.com

26. What to read?
• Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman)
• Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (Travis Bradberry & Jean Greaves)
• How to Win Friends & Influence People (Dale Carnegie)
• Body Language (Allan Pease & Barbara Pease)
• The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari (Robin S. Sharma)
• Everything is Negotiable (Gavin Kennedy)
• University of Kent
• When Cultures Collide: LEADING ACROSS CULTURES (Richard D. Lewis)
• businessinsider.com – communication charts
• https://www.pmi.org
• CONFLICT FREE LIVING (Joyce Meyer)
• CONFRONTING WITHOUT OFFENDING (Deborah Pegues)
• DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS (Douglas Stone)

27. THANK YOU!
ANY QUESTIONS?
Olena Grygorchuk