One of the most common sources of stress at work is other people, and yet organisations struggle to take an early intervention and prevention approach to managing complex interpersonal behaviour. Few managers have the skills to engage in these difficult conversations, and few teams understand how to address complex interpersonal behaviour before it gets out of hand.
This presents a significant challenge as organisations are now tasked with the positive duty to prevent harassment, discrimination, and bullying at work.
But what does prevention look like? While it may be about developing policies and procedures, regular assessment, or the promotion of values focused on inclusion, diversity, and equality, it is also about ensuring that people know how to talk about these issues in the workplace. Ideally, colleagues can raise interpersonal dynamics, perceived incivility, or behaviours with each other directly. However, power differentials and confidence can get in the way. This is where local area managers need to have the skills to step in and have these difficult conversations with their team members.
Too often organisations confuse early intervention with early reporting. Yet, when interpersonal issues must be reported outside of the team, it can create negative consequences for all involved. While formal reporting processes are critical for protecting people, too often they are the first port of call because people don’t know what else to do, and don’t have the confidence to raise these issues within their teams. We aim to develop capabilities within managers and their teams to resolve issues early and locally wherever possible.
Our approach is not only to help people to ‘speak up’ about complex interpersonal behaviour at work, but also to ‘speak with’ each other, and take a collaborative approach to these issues wherever possible, therefore enabling a pathway for early intervention and prevention.