It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow, and while love is certainly in the air, this week’s newsletter is all about a topic essential to ensuring healthy, long-lasting relationships and positive dynamics: conflict resolution.
In any relationship, even the healthiest ones, conflicts naturally arise from time to time. And the workplace is no exception. Whether it’s a disagreement between teammates or tensions across hierarchies, conflict at work is essentially inevitable, and how it gets both addressed and resolved can truly define organizational culture, dynamics, and productivity.
As a manager, what you say – and don’t say – during a conflict really matters, which means you need to be extremely intentional about the way you navigate these situations. If your employees sense bias or feel that you’ve made up your mind before getting the full story, it can trigger distrust and long-lasting resentment – which is not healthy or sustainable.
So, how should you address conflicts involving your team members?
Communicate openly
Just like in any healthy relationship, communication is key. That’s why it’s so important to establish a culture on your team in which your employees feel comfortable coming to you about their concerns and challenges – to ensure that if and when conflicts arise, you can get looped in before things escalate. Building this kind of dynamic starts with small efforts like asking your employees how they’re doing during one-on-one meetings, embedding honest feedback into regular conversations, checking in to see when and how you can offer your employees support, and actively following up with them. All of the above helps set a foundation in which your team members can feel safe coming to you about anything, including conflicts, which ensures that issues don’t get pushed aside or get left brewing until they’re unresolvable.
Lead with questions
It’s nearly impossible to resolve a conflict when it feels like you’re being attacked. And the same is true at work. So when you witness or hear about a conflict with one of your team members, be careful not to approach them in a way that can come across as angry or accusatory. Be careful with your choice of words and avoid kicking off the conversation by simply sharing the negative feedback you received about them. Instead, ask questions and keep your initial takeaway pretty vague. For example, “I heard there was an intense disagreement about the strategy, so I wanted to check in. Do you want to tell me about what happened and how you’re feeling?” is much less attacking and triggering than “I heard you weren’t receptive to the new strategy, so I’d like an explanation.”
Additionally, in these early conversations, things are still pretty fresh so it’s important to simply make space for your employee to process what happened with you, rather than trying to jump to decisions or conclusions. Give them the chance to share so that you can get the information you need to determine how to act in the most appropriate and effective way.
Pause to process
If a team member comes to you about a conflict, it’s extremely important to avoid taking a clear stance before you have all of the context. Of course you can immediately validate their feelings, but try not to respond impulsively or say something that could wind up being held against you later on. When it’s the first time you’re hearing about the conflict, take a moment to digest the information and then respond in a way that acknowledges their feelings and conveys that you’re going to do something about it without explicitly taking a side. For example, “Wow, that’s a lot to digest. I’m really sorry this happened and that you’re feeling so frustrated. I’m going to look into everything and then follow up with you so that we can figure out together how to resolve this and ensure you don’t feel this way again.” Then, you can talk about the steps you plan to take to gain a better understanding of what happened and support your team member in resolving the issue.
Try to stay objective
Regardless of your personal experiences or perceptions of any of the individuals involved in a particular conflict, recognize that your role as the manager is to help your employees resolve the issue – not to simply determine who’s to blame or most at fault. So when a conflict arises, try to guide the conversation in a way that focuses on the facts and what happened in that specific scenario, rather than allowing personal judgments or opinions to cloud solutions. Your choice of words is really important here so try not to say “always” and “never,” and help your employees lead with “I” as opposed to focusing on what the other people in the conflict did or said. The more objective you can be when discussing the conflict, the greater the likelihood of identifying the source of the problem and resolving it quickly.
Encourage your employees to take ownership
Conflicts can’t get resolved unless everyone involved feels like the solution resonates with them, which is why it’s so important not to try and fix things yourself. Recognize that your part as the manager is to help your team members find solutions on their own when possible so that they can actually learn and grow from the experience. Of course you should be there to listen and help them identify their underlying feelings and frustrations, but do your best to encourage them to take responsibility in resolving these delicate situations.
A great way to do this is by asking intentional questions that empower your employees to recognize their power in improving the situation going forward. For example, “What do you think will make you feel better going forward,” “What do you think you would do differently if something like this happens again,” and “How do you want to talk about it with the other people involved?” Ultimately no one enjoys unhealthy relationships at work, and when your team members feel like they played a key role in resolving the issue, they are way more likely to walk away feeling empowered and satisfied.
Celebrate healthy resolution
Recognize that conflicts are an opportunity to improve the status quo and build stronger relationships within your organization. The most effective teams are those in which individuals can feel comfortable respectfully disagreeing with one another and expressing different opinions because that’s what spurs innovation and stronger decision-making. Conflict resolution requires skills that are essential to workplace success like thoughtful analysis, problem solving, and effective collaboration, so help your team members see the value in these experiences and in the power of achieving constructive resolution together.
On that note, be sure to give credit to your employees who manage to successfully resolve conflicts and handle themselves in a professional way to signal the kind of behavior that’s valued on your team.
