You see it everyday. People milling around, whispering to each other—complaining about some slight that happened—whether from another employee or from management. It seems harmless, even petty, but these incidences are actually affecting your company’s bottom line. As every manager knows, office conflict not only affects productivity, costing the company in man-hours (approximately 2.8 hours per week per employee), but according to an article published on entrepreneur.com (www.entrepreneur.com/article/207196) , “nearly 10 percent [of employees polled] reported that workplace conflict led to project failure and more than one-third said that conflict resulted in someone leaving the company, either through firing or quitting. Those negatives translate into real financial losses for small businesses.”

Unfortunately, the statistics on how we are handling conflict in the workplace are not terribly encouraging. Experts have estimated that a typical manager spends 19-29% of his/her time resolving petty personality conflicts. Tim Roberts, a conflict management and transformation specialist at the University of Chester, in the United Kingdom, claims that managers spend 40% or more of their time dealing with conflicts in one form or another (www.bpir.com/workplace-conflict-resolution-bpir.com/menu-id-71/expert-opinion.html).

Being fairly conservative, let’s use the first statistic to calculate how much time managers spend “babysitting” employees rather than engaging in meaningful business activities. First of all, a manager taking two weeks of vacation a year will work fifty weeks annually. Now take those fifty workweeks and multiply them by 19% and then again by 29% to see how many entire work weeks are lost to negative conflict. If you do the math, you will see that that the average manager loses between 9.5 and 14.5 workweeks per year. That’s an entire business quarter lost!

To calculate the hard numbers of what this costs your company, try the following math:

1. Take the average salary that you pay a manager for one week’s work and multiply that by the total number of managers in your organization.
2. Take that number and multiply it by 9.5.
3. Take the same number and multiply it by 14.5.

If your organization fits within the normal, national average for time spent on negative conflict, you have just calculated the range of direct economic impact conflict has on the bottom line of your business. Of course, there are indirect costs as well. Think of the unnecessary stress, poor morale, turnover, and other issues that conflict causes. When people do the math, they usually realize they can’t afford not to deal with this problem.

Let’s talk about how and why this happens, and then how to use an understanding of the Color Code and motive to help resolve some of these issues.

Mary Rau-Foster, attorney and certified mediator writes, “Conflict arises from a clash of perceptions, goals, or values in an arena where people care about the outcome.” This means that a workplace setting must be an ideal location for breeding conflict.

The truth of the matter is, a business cannot survive without conflict. A business has to compete, or it has to fold, and the players within the business from the shareholders down through every level of employee understand this concept extremely well. And when you really think about it—what’s wrong with that?

Conflict can be the single most positive force that drives a team forward. It can also be the most destructive. In one of Shakespeare’s best-known plays, Hamlet, he writes, “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Here is where the knowledge of driving core motive and the Color Code can be extraordinarily valuable. Each of the colors processes information differently, but without this education, most of us assumes that everybody sees things the same way we do. Therefore, when stressful situations arise at work and people are on their worst behavior, oftentimes the end result is negative conflict.

This usually happens because people take what others say and do personally rather than simply dealing with the issue at hand.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that sales revenue is down, and unless it reaches an acceptable level, there will be a massive layoff. People spring into action. The atmosphere becomes intense. Every lead becomes more precious than it was a month ago, and co-workers are pushing each other for better results. If Brad, a salesman, fails to close on an important contract, his manager, Michelle, might have to give some very direct feedback about how he is not doing a good enough job at discovering the needs of his potential clients before he pitches the features and benefits of the product.

At that point, Brad has to decide how he will assimilate that feedback. He could turn it into a positive situation where he might ask Michelle to explain what she is observing and help him understand how he can perform more effectively. It could potentially be a turning point in Brad’s sales career, or at the very least a small improvement that will help him close a few more sales per month.

The outcome that is more common, however, involves Brad taking Michelle’s comment personally. He might think that she is picking on him, that she doesn’t like him, that she is trying to force him off the team, or that she is just simply being the jerk that she is to everyone. He might get defensive and fight back, or he might just pretend to agree to try harder until he can vent his frustration to fellow salespeople later.

Whenever someone personalizes, the result will be destructive.

With a basic knowledge of the Color Code, people are empowered to change the way they think about, react to, and communicate with others. Knowing that Michelle is a White, for instance, would help Brad realize that she is probably giving very objective and clear feedback and that she is not trying to attack him personally.

The Color Code also allows people to monitor their internal reactions to various situations. Brad might realize that as a Yellow, he has the tendency to run away from anything he would perceive to be negative or critical. Knowing that about himself makes it easier for Brad to redirect his reaction in a way that would allow him to revisit the situation more logically rather than retreat into a negative emotion.

There is true power in knowing what makes people tick. It allows us to be more forgiving of our differences, and to engage in a more constructive form of conflict. When people can give feedback in a way that is not easily misinterpreted, and receive it without having to personalize, a work team becomes much more competitive, productive, and profitable.