5 Ways to Deal with Conflicts at Work – Resolve Conflict at Work Fast
All managers need to deal with conflicts at work. Even in the best teams, conflicts arise, and how you deal with conflicts at work will make a significant difference to the team’s motivation and productivity.
Unresolved conflicts quickly sap individual and team energy and motivation, creates a worsening atmosphere to work in and really does harm what the team can deliver. I will take you through how to manage conflicts at work.
Certain types of conflict, managed well, can be good for creating ideas and robust solutions as a team, airing differences, and promoting understanding between colleagues.
If negative conflict at work arises, then chances are it will not reduce or go away without changing what is causing the conflict. Towards the end of the article, we go through the steps to take to effectively deal with conflicts within the team and hostility between colleagues.
5 Ways to Deal with Conflicts at Work
- Not all Conflict is Bad
- Remove Areas of Potential Conflict
- Deal With Behavioural Problems & Incompetents
- Understanding Goes a Long Way
- Proactively Manage Negative Conflict
Watch on YouTube
Listen on Podcast
Not all Conflict is Bad – The first Way to Deal with Conflicts at Work
We all have different backgrounds, different beliefs, different ideas, and different reference points. These differences can be a very good thing for a team to have as well as being sources of conflict in the workplace.
In my view, you want team members to feel safe enough and confidence enough to voice their opinions and ideas. Confident enough to constructively challenge their colleagues. Collaborative problem solving, testing and evaluating assumptions and actively considering alternatives creates better solutions than individuals alone is most cases.
Actively discourage situations where the team acts as a group of individuals promoting their individual ideas to the exclusion of others, persuading others theirs is the right option, defending their positions and downplaying weaknesses. These behaviours are harmful to creating great solutions and collaborative working.
On the surface, these two situations can look fairly similar. When you look more closely, the interactions between team members will be quite different.
When considering how to deal with conflicts at work, encourage collaborative problem solving and be comfortable with differences of opinion, challenge, and heated discussions providing the individuals are working as a team towards creating great solutions.
If negative or destructive conflict begins within the workplace, then proactively take steps to resolve conflicts in the workplace. Doing nothing is by far the worst option as conflicts often have a big negative impact on the team’s motivation and performance.
Remove Areas of Potential Conflict – The second Way to Deal with Conflicts at Work
Conflict can arise within a team and between teams because of actions or decisions made by manager or other individuals that directly cause conflict.
For example
- if individual or team responsibilities have been set up with overlaps, or
- how operations have been structured, or
- if goals or targets have been chosen which are badly out of alignment, or
- how others have made requests that cause different kinds of overlap
Spend time trying to spot overlaps that might create conflict and remove or minimise to deal with conflicts in the workplace.
If you are seeing areas of conflict arising which are not caused through personality issues, dig under the surface and piece together the possible underlying sources to the conflict.
What to Check
- Areas of responsibility – ensure there is minimal or no overlaps between staff members and be clear what is to happen in the overlap.
- Goals or objectives – Work through the goals for individuals, teams, and departments to check if they might be causing conflict to arise between individuals
- Performance levels – differing performance levels for those in similar roles could be causing fears or perceived as a threat, or in teams and bigger groups.
- Managers – is the manager or management figures putting pressures or setting up individuals to potentially come into conflict. This might be you or other managers.
- Any other underlying reasons that are causing misunderstanding, threats to status or influence within the business, or impacting the work input or output of one or both parties to the conflict.
When you spot conflict, always find out what is causing that conflict and investigate overlaps and similar situations which might be the cause. If these overlaps are not resolved, the conflict will continue even if you spend time resolving the symptoms of the conflict with specific individuals.
To resolve these conflicts at work, making changes to areas of responsibilities, goals and working practices are essential.
Deal with Behavioural Problems & Incompetents – The third Way to resolve conflicts at work
Conflict between team members can be caused by people with behavioural problems such as bullies and it can be caused by incompetent people. Both situations need to be tackled to remove this potential cause of conflict at work.
Tackle those with behavioural problems such as bullies, or overly demanding people or difficult people. For some, their behaviour can be changed through coaching, good management, or taking away the stresses or fears causing their behaviour. For others, it is more appropriate to use formal processes to address their behaviour or approach such as starting a performance improvement plan.
Incompetent people are those that are not able to keep up with the demands of the job. For instance that have been promoted too far, or the job has grown too big for them to manage properly. Their lack of knowledge, skills and experience leads to problems for those around them. For instance – actions taken or inaction, or decisions made – make situations worse not better. These stresses and problems lead to creating conflict within the team.
Options to resolve these types of conflicts include:
- Intensive training, mentoring, and coaching to upskill the individual
- Moving the individual to a more suitable position within the company
- Moving them out of the company
Get these individuals into positions in which they can make a much more positive contribution to their colleagues and the company.
Take action to remove conflicts caused by dysfunctional people and incompetent people.
Understanding Goes a Long Way – The fourth Way to Deal with Conflicts at Work
If you are paying attention to the non-verbal signals from the staff around you, watching the interactions between staff and asking questions in your one-on-one meeting with staff, you should find out about conflicts fairly quickly.
A lot of conflicts come about through a lack of understanding. Employees know and understand their position. They may not know about or understand the other person’s position. Our emotions can get in the way of us sitting back and putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes for a moment. Alternatively just outright ask them where they are coming from.
If the individuals don’t find out about the other person’s position on their own, then you can step in to ask questions of each person to get them talking about why they are taking their position.
A question to ask could be:
“James, you have quite a different position to Debbie – please can you explain what assumptions and decisions you have made to arrive at that position?”
In this case ask Debbie to listen. Then ask Debbie to explain and James to listen.
The act of both people actively listening to the other party, taking in and considering their point of view does wonders to defuse a lot of the conflict.
The approach of promoting understanding works well in meetings and when the conflict is new. Your role is to remain impartial and facilitate better understanding. For entrenched positions where emotions such as anger and fear are blocking understanding, then take a more structured approach.
Proactively Manage Negative Conflict
To deal with conflicts at work that have escalated or have become a lot more emotionally charged, a more systematic and involved process helps considerably.
Take the role of mediator rather than manager. Remain impartial and be very careful not to appear to support one party over another.
5 sensible steps to resolve conflicts at work are:
- Speak to each person separately to understand their issues, view points, pressures etc. Don’t take sides.
- Bring the two parties together in a private meeting, and act as the mediator.
- Ask questions to build the understanding and discussion between the two parties in conflict. Don’t tell them information or your opinions.
- Help both parties reach a compromise, or mutual understanding which both parties feel is acceptable
- Hold both parties accountable for implementing the agreed solution or compromise
If the main cause of the conflict is external to the individuals (or teams), then additional actions are likely needed.
[Download this step by step guide of the steps to take to resolve conflict quickly]
in summary
The causes for conflict between team members coves a wide range from individual to individual through to teams and functions being in conflict within a business.
When conflict between employees or teams occurs, take action to reduce or resolve the conflicts as quickly as possible. Get as much support and help as you need.
The 5 ways to deal with conflict at work are
- Not all Conflict is Bad
- Remove Areas of Potential Conflict
- Deal With Behavioural Problems & Incompetents
- Understanding Goes a Long Way
- Proactively Manage Negative Conflict
Take action to resolve conflicts are work as quickly as possible. Manage team interactions and behaviours to ensure that discussion, challenge and creating solutions does not cross the line into negative conflict.
Good luck.
I have seen a lot of conflict resolved through better understanding of the other party. Other conflict where emotions are high requires a more systematic approach, facilitated and mediated by the manager.
Managers themselves are the cause of a lot of conflict at work through poor thought out processes, areas of responsibility and goals and targets. Alignment and clarity while avoiding overlaps solves of these problems.
Take action quickly to resolve conflicts at work – everyone will be better off because of your efforts.
