How do I manage a conflict?
Transcript
How do I manage a conflict between two team members?
Talk and get an understanding of the individual positions. Let's say if it's two people, talk to both of them. Try to understand what is behind this? What did you understand? Why is this happening? Individually. Not putting them together straight away. Built a perspective that you understand of what's the trouble, why is the conflict there?
Sometimes it's very, very simple things. I would be the mediator between them. I would not take a decision most of the time because what I've learned for myself is if you jump in and solve it, then you have basically taken a decision on one side.
I always try to empower the people to solve the conflict themselves. If you empower both of them individually: "Okay, understand your perspective. See your point ". Without agreeing with it, "How do you think that you could agree with him or her? How do you believe that you could take this conversation to the next level?
How do you think you could solve this?" And then you ask them to reach out to eachother. And one of them will always do the first step, except this conflict is happening over a couple of years already. Then it's often very, very hard. But still you can be the mediator. I'm always trying to, not stepping in and helping them to understand this, and if they can't solve it themselves, then I put the two people together.
I would put them together. and again, mediate the conversation. Not taking a decision, have clear boundaries inside of the conversation. This is what we talk about. There's no personal attack, there's no this, there's no that, There's no shouting, there's no this. Let's have a conversation.
The goal of this conversation, which you need to state very, very clearly from the beginning, is to solve this. And that you expect them to find a solution. Then you take a step back and give them the possibility to have a conversation around this and find a solution, and that might take a couple of weeks, couple of months, depending on how difficult the situation is.