Healthy Ways to Handle Team Conflicts

Conflict has a bad reputation. It’s viewed as something to avoid, something that breeds problems, something that you should keep out of your organization at all costs. In reality, however, some conflict is healthy — even beneficial to your team. 

At Building Champions, we know managing conflict is a big part of leadership. You might have to mediate clashes between team members, find common ground for opposing viewpoints or facilitate a mutual understanding between departments. However, we also believe your conflict management skills should go one step further to creating healthy conflicts for your team. 

In this blog, we’ll outline some common causes of unhealthy team conflicts and how to resolve them. Next, we’ll discuss the differences between healthy and unhealthy conflicts, common causes of conflict, and key conflict resolution skills every leader needs to effectively manage their teams.

Healthy vs. Unhealthy Conflict

Most people in the world believe they need to avoid conflict. Conflict is often perceived as aggressive, destructive or just plain impolite. What few people realize is that with the right mindset, conflict can be incredibly productive, especially in the workplace. 

The difference between the healthy and unhealthy conflict rests in goal of the debate:

• A healthy conflict’s goal is to find the best solution for the team, group or organization. 

• An unhealthy conflict is all about winning. One person wants their point of view, opinion or idea to be adopted whether or not it’s the best choice for the group.

As a leader, it’s your job to monitor (and sometimes promote) conflict situations so that each one can move your team or company toward the best possible solution. Before we move into techniques to accomplish this, however, it’s important to understand where conflict comes from. 

Common Causes of Workplace Conflict

Although every conflict is unique, the causes usually aren’t. When left to their own devices, your team members might turn these situations into unhealthy conflicts. Instead, you need to ensure these friction points become healthy avenues for conflict so the team can develop trust, understanding and move toward the best solution. 

There are five situations that typically cause conflict among team members:

1. Miscommunication. Communication is not only a leadership skill, it’s a life skill. Without clear communication, teams might be confused about the task at hand or the deadlines involved. This can lead to delayed projects, frustrated team members and unmet expectations. 

2. Personality differences. Every person has a unique personality and work style. That’s what makes diverse teams so strong! Sometimes, however, it’s also what causes employee conflict. Personality differences can create an unhealthy conflict when two people clash in an unproductive way. Maybe one person is taking over a project and the other feels like their boundaries and talents aren’t being respected. Or someone might simply be accustomed to a process that doesn’t match the other person’s needs. It’s key to breed a culture of belonging and inclusivity on your team to help manage these types of team conflicts.

3. Unclear expectations. Nothing causes frustration among your staff like not understanding your expectations. When there are no ground rules or clear directions, team members often feel confused about their role and how their work contributes to the company goals. This can lead to conflicts with you, as their manager, while they look for solid footing in their roles. Employees need leaders who are consistent. This builds trust, which is the foundation for healthy conflict.

4. Poor habits. Your organization is made up of people with varying skill sets at all different levels of their professional careers. This means some might have had more opportunities to develop positive work habits than others. Those with poor habits can bring down the morale of the entire team if they are constantly relying on others for help to finish their work. It’s important to coach team members on how to build positive habits so they can be successful in their roles and avoid these basic conflicts with their coworkers.

5. Resistance to change. Perhaps the most common source of workplace conflict is when employees resist changes in your organization. Whether it’s changes in company structure, company culture or company leadership, team members will be naturally hesitant to accept the new status quo. Truly great leaders stand out in this scenario because they rely on the trust they’ve built with their team to guide employees through the transition without unhealthy conflict.

Key (Healthy) Conflict Management Skills

We believe in a coaching leadership style, which empowers and engages employees as it develops their professional skills. One of these skills is becoming comfortable with and successfully navigating healthy conflicts. 

Through your leadership role, you should find opportunities to encourage these discussions and emulate the proper behavior and responses. 

Active Listening

Good managers are great listeners. Above all else, people just want to feel heard. They want to know they had the chance to express themselves and that their opinion was considered before the group moves on. That’s why listening is the most important skill in conflict management.

When there’s a disagreement on your team, encourage your employees to explain their viewpoints. Listen intently and ensure others are as well. You can even ask clarifying questions if needed. Once both parties feel like they’ve been heard, they’ll be much more willing to agree on a productive solution — even if it isn’t their idea.  

Patience

If you’re uncomfortable with conflict, it’s natural to want to solve the problem right away. At the first signs of conflict, you might separate the two parties and pass an overarching decision. This is an unhealthy approach to managing conflicts.

Conflict resolution takes time. You need to be patient as your team works its way toward a positive outcome, even if it’s uncomfortable. Some ways to ensure the conflict doesn’t become unhealthy during the debate include:

• Set ground rules for how to engage in conflict and what type of language is off limits

• Ensure the end goal is to find the best possible solution

• Encourage team members to use yourself or a human resources team member as a mediator as they discuss their problem

Each of these can promote a healthy debate and ensure no one crosses a line during the conflict. So whether you’re part of several conversations or a quick exchange, you know that your team is moving toward a positive outcome (no matter how long it takes).

Trust

You might not think of trust as a skill per se, but when it comes to handling conflict, you won’t be successful without it. Trust is the foundation of all your leadership efforts. It’s how you build relationships with your team members and show you’re always working in their best interest.

Your employees have to know that you’re on their side, even when you challenge them, and that you’ll be an impartial judge in difficult situations. There’s no playing favorites when it comes to conflict. You can only have a healthy conflict if everyone trusts each other to work toward a common goal. 

Coaching

You want to be a coach in everything you do for your team, and conflict is a great place to teach problem solving. Even if you can immediately see the root of an issue or a clear solution, find ways to show your employees how to reach the same conclusion. 

A coaching leader should not only guide conflict, they should take opportunities to promote and validate it. If a problem arises between two team members or two departments, encourage them to hash it out. Remind them that you value healthy conflict and it often is the best way to reach a truly valuable solution.

Making healthy conflict a regular part of the work environment is a great way to help people become more comfortable with it and develop the skills they need to navigate it.

Conflict Resolution Strategies for Unhealthy Conflicts

You can strive for exclusively healthy conflicts in your organization, but the truth is that unhealthy conflict will arise and leaders need to be equipped to handle it. There are three ways coaching leaders can address unhealthy conflicts by teaching healthy conflict resolution skills.

1.) Focus on Events and Behaviors

All too often, employee conflicts get personal. This is when someone crosses the line from a healthy debate to an unproductive attack. Your job as a leader is to act with emotional intelligence and be empathetic to the feelings at play in the argument.

Acknowledge each person’s feelings, then try to help them see it from an unbiased perspective. Guide the conversation so that each person is focused on the problem and not their own reaction. This will help your team members discover where their debate went off the rails and how to resume finding a solution together.

2.) Find Points of Agreement and Disagreement

Unhealthy conflict is often messy. Sometimes it festers so long that the involved parties don’t even remember what they initially disagreed about. When managing these conflicts, it’s important to help the two people establish their points of agreement and disagreement.

Start by focusing on what the two people can agree on, even if it’s just the nature of the problem. This establishes equal footing and starts the conversation on a positive note. It shows the two people are working toward a common goal and can encourage them to be more receptive to each other.

Next, help them identify their points of disagreement. Where did things go wrong? How can they come to an agreement? This is your opportunity to teach some of the healthy conflict management skills mentioned in the previous section. Encourage the team members to respectfully work through their problem until they find the best solution.

3.) Make a Plan and Follow Up

Conflict resolution isn’t a one-time event. In any type of conflict, finding the solution shouldn’t be the end of the line. Next, you need to create a plan to reach your new goal and follow up on your efforts.

After you help team members resolve their conflict, it’s important to check in with them to see how their solution played out. Was it actually the best choice? Were there other problems that arose because of it? Asking these questions encourages employees to evaluate their decisions as well as their process, which helps them improve their process the next time they engage in conflict. 

Take a Coaching Approach to Conflict

Not all conflict is bad. In fact, encouraging healthy conflict in your organization is the best way to find the best solutions to your problems. Start thinking of conflicts as an opportunity to develop your team instead of something to avoid. 

Coaching leaders know how to identify, promote and validate healthy conflicts on their teams. But becoming a coaching leader doesn’t happen overnight. Get our Becoming a Coaching Leader eCourse to learn how you can take a coaching approach to managing conflict.