Dealing With Conflict in Your Team

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Tough Leadership Conversations:  Dealing With Conflict in Your Team (download transcript)

Adam Lacey

Welcome to the Tough Leadership Conversation series. I'm Adam, the co-founder of Assemble You, the audio learning experts. I'm joined by Ruth Farenga, Executive Leadership Coach, TEDx speaker, host of the Conscious Leaders podcast, and author of the brilliant Next Level Leadership.

Together, we'll examine how to navigate some of the most challenging workplace discussions: think pay rise requests, performance reviews, managing managers, dealing with divergent views, and talking about mental health.

Unclear communication can lead to an erosion of trust, staff absenteeism, a breakdown of relationships, and a decline in performance, so getting these tricky conversations right is absolutely essential.

This series is as much about reflecting inward as a leader as it is about your day-to-day management practices and techniques. We'll discuss approaching situations with a positive intention. Fundamentally, we get the most out of individuals when we concentrate on what's working rather than what we perceive to be broken. So with that in mind, let's get started.

Okay, Ruth, what are we talking about today?

Ruth Farenga

Today, we’re talking about dealing with conflict in your team.

Adam Lacey

Oh, a juicy one! I’m looking forward to getting stuck into this. Maybe just start by explaining what do we mean in this context. What do we mean by conflict in a team?

Ruth Farenga

So conflict is any kind of disagreement or discord in the team. Maybe there are differences in how we’re handling personality types, and how we're handling a particular decision is made. Anything where the team feels like they’re pulling in different directions.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, and we’re not talking about hand-to-hand combat here, are we? Conflict here or anything physical. That’s a completely different podcast! This is more about handling people who are not getting along with each other in the workplace.

I’ve got an interesting stat from our research about just why this is so important. And I think this is worth calling out. This is from Acas, and if you’re in the UK, might know Acas are a very good HR website. They estimate that the cost of workplace conflict to UK organisations is around £28.5 billion. Billion with a b. Which is the equivalent of more than £1,000 for each employee. They say that close to 10 million people experience conflict at work each year, with more than half reporting stress, anxiety, or depression as a result. And they also estimated that just under 900,000 people took time off work and nearly half a million resigned, and over 300,000 employees were dismissed because of workplace conflict.

So this is a giant thorn in the side for a lot of organisations and a lot of managers. And that’s what we’re going to try and unpick today.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, it seems like a lot of wasted talent, wasted time and money.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, indeed. Just because people can’t get along for whatever reason. So hopefully, we’ll be able to outline some ways that you, as a manager, can help support your team if there is conflict ongoing. Ruth, let’s kick off with our first question. Why is this a tough conversation to have? Where are people struggling here?

Ruth Farenga

I think, it can feel like, as a manager, when our team isn’t getting along, something is wrong, like this shouldn’t be happening because it’s uncomfortable.

Particularly for us British people. I know we have an international audience, but as Brits, we thrive on things being very smooth, and we’re quite good at brushing things under the carpet. So when things are obviously not like that, when there’s discord in the team, it can feel really uncomfortable.

Adam Lacey

It can. And I think it’s a very emotional thing as well. If there’s conflict—if you’re not getting on with somebody—then emotions often are running high. You’re not always thinking completely logically. You’re not maybe putting your best thought processes or efforts into solutions because you’re focused on the fact that you’re annoyed or angry or you strongly disagree with what’s happening.

So it’s a tricky one. There’s a big pastoral element here as a manager or leader that you’ve got to be aware of as well.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah. And conflict isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There are always learnings we can make from it. Conflict can actually be a really positive experience for everyone when it's handled well and I’m sure we’ll get into that.

But if emotions are running high, people become reactive. And that means we’re probably bringing out the worst in each other. And that’s hard.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, exactly. Your point there about conflict being a good thing as well. I wanted to make sure we mentioned that because that is really important, actually.

And I think that almost an element of conflict or disagreement or disharmony in some ways is actually very good for a team and can be very good for a team in that it can, I think, can help build respect as well, provided it’s handled in the right way and handled in an adult way. It can help also achieve better results. Friction can actually lead sometimes to a better outcome than everybody just agreeing and you doing things the way that they've always been done, for example. So, yeah, I think there are a few real benefits to conflict.

But obviously, as we've heard from the Acas stats that I mentioned a second ago, there's obviously some really big dangers around it as well in people leaving, time off work, people actually being kind of let go, all sorts of stuff that negative elements of it where this isn't handled well.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah. And I guess we'll deal with the kind of broader picture of differing views and divergent teams in the divergent teams section. But here we're going to be talking about what to do in the moment when you've got conflict, right? So you're in a situation where the team is pulling in different directions, and what do you do?

Adam Lacey

Yeah, cool. Let’s get into that.

So, you know, the context is we're a manager. We have a team of people working for us and there's clearly some disharmony between a couple of those team members. Big disagreement, and maybe you can start to feel that it's escalating a little bit. There's some kind of snide comments coming through. You know, there's an undercurrent that you can feel.

What do we do as a manager? What’s our play?

Ruth Farenga

We’ve all been in those situations where you could cut the tension with a knife.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, I was thinking exactly that.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah. And I've got seven steps. I do like a seven steps but we'll summarise as well.

But, yeah, the first thing I'd say is catch it early. So we don't want this conflict to fester. We don't want poor behaviours like people sniping at each other to continue. The earlier we get it, the easier this is to resolve. So catch it early.  

The second is listen to all perspectives. So give everyone involved, if we've had a fallout, let's just say that this is a fairly major blowout in the team. Various snide comments were made at a team meeting and now we need to deal with it. Go around and get all perspectives. You know, quite often this is not about the situation we're disagreeing on, it's about something else.

So the third step is to identify the root cause, try to get to the bottom of what this is really about. You know, it's like we're really listening beyond the words here to what's going on. So it could be about the root cause is about unclear communication channels or unclear roles and responsibilities. So what is it that is really causing this deep down?  

And then the fourth is focus on facts and behaviours. So it's really tempting to be quite opinionated yourself or to side with people and, you know, most of our listeners will know this. We need to stay quite neutral in this. Even if we do actually agree very clearly with one side, we might, it’s not that we're a robot. But we don't want to get into making judgmental conversations about someone like saying they're lazy or they're, you know, kind of always irresponsible or something. You know, we don't want to collude with one side to any degree. That would be unfair for people.

And then the fifth is work towards a common solution collaboratively. So bring people together. Once you've spoken to people individually, it might be that, let's just say it's two individuals, three individuals. You've allowed them chance to talk to you individually and let off steam. Now we're bringing them together to help resolve this. And this may need the odd day or two in between just to let people settle down. There's been a big blowout, sometimes people need that time and you want to allow people to take that time to kind of wind down.

And then when you've allowed them to collaboratively think about how to go forward, make sure you're setting clear expectations if they haven't done that themselves. They may be really good at coming up with this stuff themselves. You can more facilitate or if you think that's not happening, you can be a bit more directive and set those clear expectations. That could be about things like behaviours. People may have apologised to each other, that would be ideal. But you might go back to your team values if you have them and the behaviours they represent because the way we speak to people is important. You might have values around honesty or directness or kindness. And if you're able to pull out that behaviour and set it against those values, you can say, this is how we behave around here. So if anyone, whether it's you or anyone else in the team, if you're not behaving like that, let's call it out. We all need to be responsible for our behaviour. So we keep that collaborative nature and so set clear expectations going forward.

And finally follow up. You know, this issue may seem resolved, it may seem like it's blown over, but check in a week or two later with everyone how they're doing. Are they feeling like things are better now? You know, you'll know whether to periodically check in further so that you can keep a watch on this that it's not brewing up again.

Adam Lacey

Fantastic. So catch it early, listen to all perspectives, identify the root cause, focus on facts and behaviours, work towards common solution in collaboration, set expectations and then follow up. Can we dig into a couple of them? So one you mentioned, you know, go away and listen to all perspectives. So if you feel something is happening, maybe in a meeting live, it's not great, you know, do you call it out there and then or do you actually wait till the meeting's over? Take people aside and have those kind of one-to-ones separately. Is there a kind of a formula that you found has worked in the past around that?

Ruth Farenga

I would say it depends how extreme the behaviour is. If the behaviour is very subtle, like little snide remarks, you may not even notice till afterwards, or it may only just be coming aware to you as you're going through the meeting. So you don't want to dive in too early. But if the behaviour is quite extreme and someone's being nasty, I would certainly call it out there and then and say, "Hey, we're going to need to chat about this later. That's not how we behave in these meetings. If you need to take a break, please do."

I think this is another one of those tightrope moments for leaders because you don't want people treating each other poorly, but you don't want to over-escalate the situation either. So you've got to make a judgement call in that moment whether you're going to step in or not.

Adam Lacey

Great. And then, you know, when we're working towards a common solution in collaboration, what happens if there isn't a compromise? If we can't find one and there's, you know, some lines drawn in the sand here or some red lines either side won't cross almost, how do we de-escalate if we can't find common ground?

Ruth Farenga

I mean, I've done quite a lot of mediation with individuals that aren't getting along, and let's just say it was two individuals just for simplicity here. Once you allow people to properly listen to each other in a structured way, usually things de-escalate. In fact, I've never been in a situation where it hasn't. I'm not saying it's not possible, but that requires quite a lot of time and patience on your side and a bit of structure.

So you might do something like this: you might say at the beginning of the mediation, if you're going to act as mediator—obviously, you can use external mediators or coaches if this has got really serious—but if you are acting as mediator yourself, you might start the conversation by saying, "Okay, the purpose of this call is for us to understand each other's perspectives. I saw that unhelpful behaviour between the two of you in the meeting. I'd like you both to listen to each other. That means one of you is going to speak for up to five minutes, and the other one is just going to listen.

For the one listening, you might have to sit on your hands. This might feel quite difficult because you'll be thinking, “Yeah, but me, but!” you know, hold yourself back as best you can and control that reactivity. You'll get your turn in a moment.

So when they're finished, you move on to the other person, and you're quite a strict chair in this. There is going to be no interrupting whatsoever. So you're going to have to be pretty firm with that. If anyone interrupts, call them out and say, "I'm sorry, I'm going to need to bring you back. You need to be silent while the other person is speaking."

As you're listening, see if you can understand it from their perspective. This is going to be hard at first, but just listen as best you can. Then you're going to go back and forth. It might be five minutes at first, and then you say, "Okay, we're going to do another round—three minutes, five minutes."

When you respond, I want you to play back what that other person is saying—what you're hearing and understanding. When someone says something, we can easily misinterpret it, right? So we're trying to get a bit of understanding going in a live way. Because when we go back and forth again, they might be like, "No, no, that's not what I meant. You're misunderstanding me."

So we're trying to get down to proper understanding. This could take an hour. You know, this is not a quick job, right? You could be going back and forth. Sometimes, I don't necessarily think face-to-face or online is better—you'll know your team. But I've done it in both environments. These things can be really heated, so sometimes doing it online can be good when you're in the comfort of your own home.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, I was actually thinking—you could mute the other person if it's online as well, couldn't you? You could say, "Right, you're going on mute. This person's going to talk, and then you'll come off mute, and they will go on mute." So, yeah, that's obviously trickier in person. Yeah, I think you're right. There's an element of it where if you're sat in the presence of somebody face-to-face and you're having to describe why you disagree with them or why you think what they've said is complete rubbish or whatever, that is difficult. It can feel confrontational sometimes, or it can be perceived as confrontational even if you don't mean it like that.

And some characters find that a lot easier and are much more comfortable in that environment compared to others, who may just close down a bit. So, yeah, actually, maybe an online call is easier.

And I guess in that situation, would you ever do… I guess you probably don't want to be an intermediary passing messages between people, do you? They need to be in the room together or on a call together.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, yeah. You want to be helping them communicate skillfully with each other.

And you asked what happens if this really escalates? Like I said, I've never seen it not work out. But if people can't resolve it, then that's a performance management discussion. I’d get people to to refer to our difficult performance management module here about how they're handling difficulty listening, empathy. You know, that's another step.

Adam Lacey

How about—here's me continuing to play devil's advocate on this one—but how about agreeing to disagree? Is that an effective way forward, or does that just kick the problem down the road?

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, I think we can all agree to disagree, like you said, but as long as we have a common… When I was at Intel, we used to have a policy called "disagree and commit."

So you would acknowledge that, that was part of the culture of the company that if people had different views, at some point we needed to find a way forward. People would actually say, "I'm going to disagree and commit to your way forward because I can see the majority of the group agree with that," or, "I don't want to disagree any longer." That can be a policy you implement.

Adam Lacey

Okay, so that's the next stage. Once they've listened to each other, once they've understood, once they've deployed their active listening and empathy skills, it’s then as the facilitator, you're then saying, "Okay, so this looks to be the common ground here," or, "This looks to be a way we can reconcile.

What’s the way forward?” Is it your job as a facilitator or manager to come up with that, or is that something you are firmly encouraging your team to lead on?

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, I would always canvas ideas from the group. They may have great ideas—better than yours—about how they can resolve this. So the more non-directive you are and the more you ask questions, the more they’re going to take responsibility for the actions going forward.

Adam Lacey

Okay, and then what are some of the things that we definitely shouldn't do when dealing with conflict in a team? I know maybe the reverse of the seven steps are the things we shouldn’t do, but are there any big clangers that we should be keen to avoid as managers?

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, and like all of these, many will be obvious to our audience, but definitely don’t let it slide. Don’t let it fester. Don’t let it get to a point where it’s really bad. If it’s already bad, okay, that is what it is, but next time, really think about catching it early.

It doesn’t matter if it’s really minor; if you’re noticing little jabs at people, I would nip that in the bud really early.

And, yeah, don’t take sides. You need to be factual and understand perspectives. It can be tempting to collude, but I would avoid that. It doesn’t mean you can’t empathise, and go, “That’s really hard when he or she talks to you like that” but you’re still maintaining an element of neutrality. You’re not their friend. You’re their manager.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, brilliant. And another devil's advocate question. I'm enjoying these especially given the topic that we're covering. I try to inject some conflict into the conversation.

So I guess one, one school of thought might be it's better to let people sort things out for themselves. And actually you getting involved as a manager maybe formalises the process a bit or flags it as a problem, as in they might feel that, “Okay, I disagree with this person, but I'm an adult, I can handle it.”

Do you know what I mean? And then you come and get involved and they're like, “Oh my God, I don't need a babysitter on this. I can do this.”

How do we look out for, I guess, when we do need to intervene? I think this is definitely a tightrope question, but how do we know?

How do we know when actually we should just let people sort this out for themselves. They're adults. Or actually we need to get involved now.

Ruth Farenga

Yeah, I guess you're going to make a call there. You know, we talked about just then about a kind of more extreme mediation situation, but it might just be a quiet word with one person that you want to have the catch it early is so important that, you know, you see it three times, act, you know, that's what I would say.

Adam Lacey

Yeah, I like that. And actually you may not need steps five, six, seven almost. If you've listened to all perspectives and you've had a one-to-one and a chat with them and you've identified, help them identify the causes, and the question could be, you know, “These are the facts, this is the behaviour I'm seeing. Are you comfortable sorting this out without me or do you want to turn this into a mediation? Do you want us to kind of step in?” You can put it back on them, I guess. Has this gone so far that it's becoming a little bit unreconcilable and so we need to definitely deal with it?

Yeah, so you can do either. So use the seven steps if you need, but just use the first few if you don't need them all. Fantastic. And then I guess let's go to our summary.

What are our kind of top points to remember? Let's run through those seven again, Ruth.

Ruth Farenga

So the seven steps and we're talking about this more extended conflict here, like you said, firstly, catch it early. Secondly, listen actively to all perspectives. Thirdly, identify the root cause. Four, focus on facts and behaviours. Five, work commonly towards a solution. And six, set clear expectations going forward. And seven, follow up later to see how people are doing.

Adam Lacey

Great. Yeah, and that's a really important one. I think that's one that's missed is that number seven. A lot of the time is, you know, you sometimes feel like, “Oh, my work here is done as a manager,” clap your hands together, “Job well done.”

But actually you need to make sure that this isn't what I would call a boomerang issue. An issue that you think is resolved is actually coming straight back at you within the next few weeks. So, yeah, that's a really important one. Ruth, thank you much. Really enjoyed that discussion on conflict.

Do join us for another episode in this Tough Leadership Conversations series. We'll see you soon.

You’re a team leader, and there’s rising tension between two of your team members, Zahra and Tom.

During recent meetings, they’ve exchanged passive-aggressive comments, and other team members are beginning to look uncomfortable when they speak. You’ve overheard one of them mention feeling “undermined constantly,” and the atmosphere in team discussions has started to feel tense.

You’re not sure exactly what’s triggered the conflict, but you know that letting it fester will only make things worse. You decide to step in before it escalates further.

1. How can you listen to Zahra and Tom in a way that makes them feel heard without appearing to take sides?
2. What steps can you take to guide them toward a shared solution that protects the wider team dynamic?
3. How will you follow up to ensure the tension doesn’t quietly resurface once the immediate conflict seems resolved?

Dealing With Conflict in Your Team

Dealing With Conflict in Your Team

Address issues as soon as they arise to prevent escalation and long-term tension.

Listen actively to all perspectives.

Understand each person's point of view without interrupting or making assumptions.

Look beyond surface-level disagreements to find the real issue.

Focus on the facts.

Stay neutral and avoid taking sides; deal with actions, not personal judgements.

Encourage open discussion and collaboration to work towards a shared solution.

Set clear expectations.

Define acceptable behaviours and ensure all team members understand the organisation’s values.

Follow up.

Check in later to confirm the conflict remains resolved.

When handled well, disagreements can lead to better teamwork, respect, and innovation.

(download infographic)