“I don’t get it,” said a senior executive. “Things are looking brighter and our business is rocketing back. We should be fired up that our normal lives are just around the corner. But in many places, I look, I see people acting in erratic and unpredictable ways, almost like an office version of road rage.”
When Crisis Management Becomes Conflict Management
We’re in a new psychological phase of the pandemic, which is manifesting in increased confrontation on many teams.
April 11, 2022
Illustration by Jason Schneider
Summary.
The psychological toll of the pandemic has challenged workers and managers in a variety of ways. As we head into the third year of Covid, a new issue has sprung up: “splitting,” a mental defense mechanism which allows us to tolerate difficult and even unbearable emotions by seeing someone or something as either heroes or villains, good or bad, “with us” or “against us.” This can result in tension and conflict. To manage it, leaders need to focus on three areas: identifying splitting triggers in themselves, spotting splitting behavior on their teams, and focusing on reuniting and reintegrating relationships.