Managing a Team

The Dos and Don’ts of Managing Conflict

Don’t rely exclusively on consensus or voting. Consensus can appear morally authoritative, but that assumes that everyone involved in the voting process is impartial, has an equal stake in the various outcomes, and has equal knowledge of the context. These conditions are rarely met on teams where each person has different levels of expertise and different roles. As when the team voted down Charles’s work, consensus can be downright cruel. Don’t set people up for votes that you know will fail instead of taking the responsibility as a manager of delivering that bad news yourself.
Do set up clear processes to depersonalize decisions. When you want to allow for group decision making, the group needs to have a clear set of standards that they use to evaluate decisions. Start with a shared understanding of the goals, risks, and the questions to answer before making a decision. When you assign the ownership for making a decision to someone on the team, make it clear which members of the team should be consulted for feedback and who needs to be informed of the decision or plan.
Don’t turn a blind eye to simmering issues. Another way that conflict avoidance manifests is an inability to address problems until they’ve gone on for way too long. As a manager, if you’re giving negative feedback in the course of a performance review, it shouldn’t be a major surprise to your employee. There may be nuances that you didn’t think through until writing the review, but if there are major problems with someone’s work, that person should know about them as soon as you notice them. If you don’t notice these problems yourself but learn about them during the review process via feedback from several peers, that’s not a good sign. It’s probably an indication that you are not paying attention, and not making space in your 1-1s for your team to discuss problems they’re having with their colleagues.
Do address issues without courting drama. There’s a difference between addressing conflict and cultivating dysfunction. You want to allow space for people to express frustration, but mind the difference between letting off steam and a real interpersonal issue. Use your judgment as to what should be addressed and what should be dropped. The key questions to ask are: Is this an ongoing problem? Is it something you’ve personally noticed? Is this something many people on the team are struggling with? Is there a power dynamic or potential bias at play? The goal is to identify problems that are causing the team to work less effectively together and resolve them, not to become the team’s therapist.
Don’t take it out on other teams. Ironically, conflict-avoidant managers often seek conflict when it comes to other teams. They identify strongly with their own team and will aggressively react to what they perceive as threats from outsiders. When something goes wrong, like an incident that spans across teams, the manager turns into a bully and demands justice for his team, or blames the problems on the other team. Sometimes, this behavior is an outlet for the manager’s suppressed feelings about his own team. As one friend put it, “I was not telling my people the 10% of things they needed to be improving because I was afraid they would miss the message about the 90% of things that were good, and so I took that desire for accountability out on other teams. I really just wanted everyone to be fully accountable, and I needed to figure out how to express that internally and externally in a healthy manner.”
Do remember to be kind. It’s natural and perfectly human to want to be liked by other people. Many of us believe that the way to be liked is to be seen as nice — that niceness is itself the goal. Your goal as a manager, however, should not be to be nice, it should be to be kind. “Nice” is the language of polite society, where you’re trying to get along with strangers or acquaintances. Nice is saying “please” and “thank you” and holding doors for people struggling with bags or strollers. Nice is saying “I’m fine” when asked how you are, instead of “I’m in a really crappy mood and I wish you would leave me alone.” Nice is a good thing in casual conversation. But as a manager, you will have relationships that go deeper, and it’s more important to be kind. It’s kind to tell someone who isn’t ready for promotion that she isn’t ready, and back that up with the work she needs to do to get there. It’s unkind to lead that person on, saying “Maybe you could get promoted,” and then watch her fail. It’s kind to tell someone that his behavior in meetings is disrupting the group. It’s awkward, and uncomfortable, but it’s also part of your job as his manager to have these difficult conversations.
Don’t be afraid. Conflict avoidance often arises from fear. We’re scared of the responsibility of making the decision. We’re afraid of seeming too demanding. We’re afraid people will quit if we give them uncomfortable feedback. We’re afraid people won’t like us, or that we’ll fail when we take this risk. Some fear is natural, and being sensitive to the outcomes of conflict is a wise habit.
Do get curious. Thinking about your actions is the best way to combat fear of conflict. Am I pushing this decision to the team because they really are the best people to decide, or am I just afraid that if I make an unpopular but necessary decision people will be mad at me? Am I avoiding working through this issue with my peer because she’s truly difficult to work with, or am I just hoping that the issue will resolve itself because I don’t want to have to discuss it and possibly be wrong? Am I holding back on giving my employee this feedback because he really was having a bad day and it’s just a one-off, or am I holding back because I’m afraid he won’t like me as a manager if I tell him? Be thoughtful about your behavior, and it’s unlikely that you’ll seek out unnecessary conflict.