From time to time, we all must deal with challenging situations. As school librarians we may face disagreements with students, teachers, other staff, parents, line managers, senior leaders and even members of our own library team. In this chapter we will explore how to defuse such situations and find resolutions that are mutually beneficial and safeguard us, as best we can, against similar incidences in the future.

What is challenging behaviour and why does it arise?

When friction, distrust or lack of empathy between individual team members comes to the fore we describe it as conflict. This does not necessarily constitute entirely negative behaviour as when dealt with properly it can result in increased understanding and cohesion, and improved knowledge. We explored in Chapter 1 how teams evolve, and ‘storming’ is part of that natural process. However, if conflicts are managed in the wrong way, real and legitimate differences between people can quickly spiral out of control.

As we learned in Chapter 3, the key to success in teamwork is open communication. The difficulties arise when, if faced with a challenging situation, we make assumptions rather than acting on factual information. As Colleen Kettenhofen (2008), a workplace coach, says: ‘When managing difficult people, most of us know what to do. We just don't always “do” with what we know.’

In part this is due to the Dunning-Kruger (Kruger and Dunning, 1999) effect where we believe we are better at a task than we are in practice. For example, we may consider ourselves better at resolving conflict than our peers. Yet we can see from the communication skills outlined in Chapter 3 how important it is to understand ourselves and our limitations.

There are many reasons for disagreements to arise when we work in teams. Chief is probably poor communication, or none at all, which leads to a misunderstanding. Our non-verbal communication and tone of voice might send an unintended subliminal message to the other person(s). Sometimes, we may feel we are being singled out or treated differently from our peers, or we are giving out signals of favouritism to a student for example. This can cause conflict through competition.