Resolving Conflict Between Team Members

Triage before facilitating

Meet each person separately to understand the events, impact, desired outcome, prior attempts, and current ability to work safely. Explain the limits of confidentiality and the manager's responsibilities. Do not promise to keep information secret if policy requires action, and do not begin by asking each person to compromise equally.

Determine whether the issue is a task disagreement, relationship pattern, role conflict, resource dispute, conduct concern, or something else. Informal dialogue may not fit allegations of harassment, discrimination, threats, retaliation, serious misconduct, or a power imbalance that prevents voluntary participation. Use established reporting and qualified support routes in those cases.

Prepare a fair process

If a shared conversation is appropriate, explain its purpose, structure, and behavioral boundaries. Ask each person to bring specific examples and describe work impact and needs rather than diagnose the other's motives. Decide whether the manager can facilitate impartially or whether another trained person is more suitable.

Clarify the work decisions surrounding the conflict. Ambiguous ownership, competing goals, scarce resources, or inconsistent management may be sustaining the dispute. The manager should not ask colleagues to repair personally what leadership must decide structurally. Resolve or name those operating issues as part of the process.

Facilitate understanding and options

Let each person describe a bounded event while the other listens, then summarize areas of agreement and dispute. Separate observation, interpretation, and impact. The aim is not to make both stories identical. It is to establish enough shared understanding to make responsible decisions about future work and any needed repair.

Identify interests beneath positions. One person requesting approval may need risk control; the other resisting approval may need timely autonomy. Generate options that serve legitimate needs and fit role authority. Test each option against actual workflows, affected colleagues, and likely exceptions rather than celebrating a vague promise to communicate better.

Agree, follow up, and escalate appropriately

Write specific commitments: who will do what, in which situation, through which route, and how a miss will be addressed. Include managerial actions such as clarifying ownership or removing conflicting goals. Agreement does not require friendship. It should make professional work possible and define how future disagreement can be raised.

Check the agreement in practice and ask each person about current behavior and work impact. Do not guarantee that one conversation will resolve conflict. If commitments fail, new facts emerge, or safety and conduct concerns appear, reassess and use the organization's formal process. Avoid retaliation and seek qualified guidance for employment decisions.

Resolve a review ownership conflict

An engineering lead and security partner repeatedly accuse each other of delaying releases because review ownership and evidence requirements are unclear.

1. Hear each account separately, verify that informal facilitation is appropriate, and identify disputed events, work impact, interests, and decision authority.
2. Map the release workflow and acknowledge that management has not defined when security review begins or which evidence is required.
3. Facilitate a discussion of specific cases, distinguish delay from risk-control needs, and test options against actual release scenarios.
4. Document the clarified ownership, evidence route, escalation behavior, and follow-up, including the manager's responsibility to maintain the process.

Conflict assessment and agreement

Use this preparation record to decide whether informal facilitation fits and to make any resulting commitments observable.

• Assessment: events, impact, interests, power, safety, policy, prior attempts, willingness, and formal-route indicators.
• Work system: roles, goals, decisions, resources, handoffs, managerial contribution, and unresolved structural questions.
• Conversation: purpose, facilitator, boundaries, examples, shared facts, disputed interpretations, needs, and options.
• Agreement and follow-up: behaviors, manager actions, exceptions, repair, review, escalation, records, and qualified support.

Common mistakes

• Forcing a shared conversation before assessing safety, power, policy, and whether participation is genuinely voluntary.
• Treating every conflict as a personality clash when unclear roles or competing goals sustain the problem.
• Ending with a promise to communicate better that names no behavior, owner, situation, or follow-up.

Try one

Sources

• CIPD conflict management factsheetProfessional guidance on recognizing, addressing, and learning from conflict at work.
• Atlassian working agreements playA facilitated method for agreeing how a team will communicate, decide, and work together.