4.1 Useful tips for dealing with conflict

Here are some useful tips for dealing with conflict.

1. Create a place of psychological safety

   Make sure that other team members feel comfortable expressing their opinions and taking risks. It is important for the team leader to create the correct environment, encouraging contributions from everyone and making it clear that mistakes are ok. If you’re not the team leader, perhaps you could raise this with them.

2. Recognise that disagreement is expected

   Disagreement is actually what teams need in order to thrive. Make time for the disagreements and get used to questioning what other people in the team are saying. Be prepared to voice your opinion and back it up with facts and logic when probed by other team members.

3. Put emotions to one side and practice listening

   Accept that other members of the team are going to have different ideas and confronting these differences is not a personal attack but an attempt to open up thinking.

4. When you see conflict, label it

   Stating calmly that there are differences of opinion around the table helps people remain professional and see it as just that – differences of opinion. It helps to recognise that this is going to be a time for discussing these differences and can encourage quieter members to share their own opinion.

Watch this short video from CareerPrepped to see a useful example of how to deal with conflict.

Pollack (no date) explains that ‘in a remote setting, common workplace conflicts can escalate more quickly than they do with in-person employees’ and ‘can be much harder to detect’. He emphasises the importance of regular team check-ins to build trust and create space for team members to share concerns in a constructive way.

Next you’ll move on to look at different techniques for making decisions within a team, another area of work that requires appropriate communication skills.