What Managers Get Wrong About Team Conflict
Updated: 7 days ago
By Paul Gerhardt, PhD, management professor, leadership author, and host of The Better Workplace.
A quiet team is not always a healthy team. Sometimes people have stopped disagreeing because they have stopped believing anyone will listen.
To manage team conflict, begin with observable events, hear the different perspectives, clarify the shared work, and agree on actions you can review. The goal is a fair, workable response grounded in what actually happened.
Workplace conflict deserves a closer look before a manager labels someone difficult or tells everyone to get along. People may be working from different information, unclear priorities, or competing expectations. A conversation about personalities can miss the conditions that keep creating the disagreement.
This companion lesson to Episode 7 of The Better Workplace offers three practical steps for approaching tension with more care: hear perspectives, find common ground, and agree on next steps.
Hear perspectives before choosing sides
Ask each person what happened, what they understood, and what made the situation difficult. Separate observable events from assumptions about motives. Instead of asking who started it, ask where expectations or communication broke down. Listening does not require you to agree with every account. It gives you a better basis for a fair response.
For example, a sales employee may promise a fast turnaround to protect a customer relationship, while an operations employee refuses because the schedule is already full. Calling one careless and the other unhelpful leaves the underlying problem untouched. They need a shared way to confirm capacity before making commitments.
Find common ground without forcing agreement
Ask what both people want to protect. Customer trust, reliable work, respectful treatment, and realistic deadlines can provide a starting point. Then clarify the actual decision: What must happen, who has authority, and what information is missing? Different perspectives can help the team improve its work when people can challenge an idea without attacking a person.
Agree on actions people can observe
Close with specific commitments. Who will confirm a deadline? How will concerns be raised? When will the team check whether the new approach is working? A promise to communicate better is too vague to guide the next difficult moment.
Respect also needs clear boundaries. Listening to different perspectives does not excuse threats, harassment, or repeated disrespect. Address conduct through the appropriate organizational process while examining the work conditions that need attention.
Try this in your next conversation
Ask: What do you need the other person to understand? What outcome can we work toward together? What will each of us do differently before we meet again?
Better workplaces are built one conversation and one follow-through at a time.
A conversation opener you can adapt
“Here is the situation I need us to resolve: [observable event]. I want to understand each perspective before deciding the next step. What information or expectation was different for you?”
After listening, summarize what you agree on and name what remains unresolved. End with: “Who will do what before [date], and when will we check whether that helped?” This is a discussion prompt, not a guarantee of agreement.
Paul Gerhardt, PhD, teaches management and leadership with a practical commitment to helping people build better workplaces. The examples and exercises in this article are teaching illustrations, unless identified as research findings.
Related leadership lessons
For a story about difficult conversations, employee accountability, and rebuilding workplace trust, explore Professor G’s Guide to The Conversation Nobody Wants.
For a workplace story that takes this lesson further, The Team That Took Sides follows a disagreement over customer commitments as it divides a team.
Practical leadership lessons, once a month
Keep practicing clearer, more respectful workplace conversations. Subscribe free to The Better Workplace Monthly Lessons for practical leadership insights and updates on books and resources.
Comments