How to Resolve Conflict

This is one of the commonest issues our clients come to us for advice as conflict is a natural part of day-to-day life. It’s normal, healthy and inevitable. But so many people find managing it really hard and the thought of addressing something or confronting someone really stresses people out.

This doesn’t need to be the case…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. 

Understanding the different types of conflict is essential if you want to manage them effectively. There are three types of conflict at work:

1. Interpersonal 

This type of conflict happens between people. This may be between you as the employer, and one of your employees, or between employees themselves. There can be any cause for this type of conflict such as a difference in personality, opinion, and values. 

2. Organisational 

This type of conflict happens between groups or cohorts of individuals, based on their shared responsibilities. Take two departments at work for instance, the sales team might be angry and feel as though the marketing team haven’t supported them correctly. Or you might have individuals that are frustrated with management about pay or working conditions.

3. Role 

We’ve all heard of an employee stating, “I don’t get paid for this” or “this isn’t my job role”. This type of conflict happens when there’s a disagreement about job responsibilities or expectations. 

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 an 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 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 to 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 version 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 set a common goal that everyone agrees on first. 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 on what needs to happen practically for both parties to be happy and for them to achieve the common goal. It’s important for these actions 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 keep an eye on how things are going with regular check-in meetings. This could be daily or weekly depending on the severity of the issue.

So that’s a very basic outline of how to handle conflict. But what happens when you can’t resolve the conflict yourself, it is too complicated for you to try or you just don’t feel confident? Mediation could be the answer.

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 reach a mutually acceptable solution to the conflict. 

Here are some of the key benefits of mediation: 

• cost-effective
• confidential
• quick and efficient
• preserves relationships
• empowers individuals
• adheres to employment law

This is a skilled role and done right can be incredibly effective. We can recommend mediators that we have used to help you with this, and it probably isn’t as expensive as you may fear!

How can we help?

We can talk you through the options for dealing with any conflict in your team and help you work out the best way to manage it. You can purchase pay as you go time directly through our shop if you are not already a client to allow you quick access to our team of HR experts. CHARITY10 gets you 10% off our prices for our charity clients.