Conflicts at work
This blogpost is about a conflict within a group within a work environment. I chose to describe an example from a series on Netflix, namely Suits. The series is about a guy, Mike, that got a job at one of the best lawyer's offices in New York City. He got an assistent job at one of the best lawyers of the firm, Harvey. Harvey is someone that will do everything to win and will not think about the feelings of others. In the series, there are a lot of other characters as well, but two of them are relevant for this blogpost. Those are Louis, the other top lawyer, and Jessica, the CEO of the firm.
The conflict that I would like to talk about in this blogpost is about a combination of communication barriers and personalities. Harvey and Louis are not really good working partners, because Harvey always feels better than Louis. Louis is struggling with this and always tries to impress Harvey to show him that he is just as good, if not better. Jessica, the partner, tries to balance out those two personalities within the work environment, but this is a though job for her. Harvey doesn't always listen to Jessica about work decisions with clients and follows his own instinct more often.
One day, the lawyer firm gets a new potential client and both Harvey and Louis want to have this client, because this client would be good for their network, resume and income. However, the client chose to step to Louis to see if he could help. Harvey sees this and tries to steel Louis' client behind his back without him knowing about it. When Louis finds out, it is already too late and Harvey got the new client. Louis goes to Jessica for help, but she says that she cannot help him. Louis decided to keep it quiet and not talk about it with Harvey. He had a better plan and that was getting back on him with messing with his assistent by making Mike work for him instead of helping Harvey out, so Harvey would lose the case.
Clearly, the reaction of Jessica was staying out of this conflict and make them figure it out themselves. She chose to turn her back not hem, because she didn't know how to act in the situation. Mike didn't really know what was going on. His only reaction was when he walked to Harvey to ask him about what was happening, but Harvey didn't give him any information about the conflict. Within the firm, nobody was talking about it and until one point, when Harvey almost lost the case, there was a breaking point where Harvey became furious on Louis. They got in a huge fight where everything was said. After this fight they didn't talk about the conflict at all. The relationship between them became worse and it took time before they talked to each other again.
This conflict definitely could have been avoided. Harvey could have said to Louis that he really wanted that client as well. The outcome could have been to bargain with each other, so both feel good about the outcome who would get the client. Also, Jessica could have mediated between them in instead of making them work it out themselves. A third way that the conflict could have been avoided is if Louis said something about the behavior of Harvey so they talked about it before it got out of hand. The option was an arbitration to make sure it would not happen in the future and to make clear agreements about the behavior towards each other on a professional level.
