How good are your managers at managing employee conflict?

Posted on: December 1, 2024

Conflict is a natural part of day-to-day life and is inevitable.

But a lot of people hate any sort of confrontation and are really bad at managing it. The thought of addressing something or confronting someone really stresses people out.

And, if you do pluck up the courage to address it, you probably handle it in the wrong way. Everything gets heated, people get sad and the whole situation blows up in your face.

This doesn’t need to be the case…conflict doesn’t have to be stressful.

Using the right techniques, you can address any sort of conflict calmly and get it resolved quickly, without any upset, so that everyone can crack on with what they do best.

How to manage conflict step-by-step…

Step 1: Understand what’s causing the conflict

First, it’s important to understand what’s causing the conflict, and you can do this by having a formal or informal conversation with the people involved to hear their side of the story.

If it’s between two people, or different parties, it’s probably better to do this on a 121 basis so they feel it’s a safe place to share what they think is going on.

Step 2: Provide a safe space to talk

To help you to understand the cause of the conflict, it’s important for you to create a safe space where colleagues can discuss issues without any recourse.

Step 3: Listen, impartially

As someone managing the conflict, your first job is to be impartial and listen.

The more you listen, and the more the people involved in the conflict feel heard, the greater your chances of resolving the conflict will be.

Step 4: Investigate

Once you’ve heard both versions of events, you may need to take some time to investigate and think about the best course of reconciliation.

Step 5: Create a common goal

When you bring both parties together to resolve the conflict, it’s important to first set a common goal that everyone agrees on. This could be “Create a happy working environment for everyone” or “Working together to achieve X, Y, Z”.

Step 6: Agree on what individual actions are required to achieve a common goal

Together, you can then decide what needs to happen practically for both parties to be happy and achieve the common goal. These actions need to be clear, recorded and accountable.

Step 7: Keep an eye on how things are going

Once you have an action plan in place, it’s important to monitor how things are going with regular check-in meetings. This could be daily or weekly, depending on the severity of the issue.

What happens when you can’t resolve the conflict yourself?

Mediation is your answer…

Mediation is a great way to manage if you can’t handle the situation yourself or it’s too complicated.

It’s a voluntary process that involves bringing in a neutral third-party mediator to facilitate a discussion between the parties involved. The mediator’s role is to help the parties to reach a mutually acceptable solution to the conflict.

Here are some of the key benefits of mediation: