How To Deal With Conflict As A Team Leader

If you have ever led or worked with a team, you probably know it isn’t always easy. Groups of people with different skill sets and backgrounds working together can be a great solution for problem-solving and idea generation. However, no matter what team it is or who is involved, team conflict is bound to arise. 

As a team leader, it is your responsibility to effectively deal with the conflict on your team so that it doesn’t become a serious problem later down the line. This can be hard for leaders that don’t have the tools or know-how to start difficult conversations and work through the conflict on their team. 

As a leadership coach, I work with clients to develop the essential skills to effectively lead a team and handle disagreements as they arise. Keep reading to learn the skills and best practices that team leaders should master to successfully navigate tough conversations and resolve conflict on your team. 

How Leaders Handle Conflict

A team leader’s inability to effectively handle conflict on their team could lead to an even bigger problem down the line. Trust between a team and its leader lays the groundwork for resolving a conflict in the future. Team members should trust that their leader can handle conflict that arises promptly and with no bias or ill will. 

To effectively manage team conflict, team leaders need to understand best practices to take when conflict arises and the proper skills to initiate and navigate a difficult conversation. Refer to these core practices if you're unsure of what to do when dealing with team conflict.

Don’t take sides

Taking sides during a disagreement is an easy way to make the situation even worse. Leaders are expected to be unbiased conflict facilitators whose primary goal is to find a compromise that benefits the team.  

Know your boundaries

Knowing your boundaries means knowing when to interject when to hold your tongue, and where to draw the line. The best way to know your and your team members’ boundaries is by preparing for the difficult conversation ahead of time.  

Prepare for difficult conversations

Getting ready for a difficult conversation beforehand will help you be better prepared physically and mentally when dealing with team conflict. Difficult conversations are just that, difficult, and they’re even harder when you aren’t prepared for one. Having a general understanding of what to say, do, and behave while facilitating a difficult conversation will help the discussion navigate toward a compromise. 

Don’t let conflict fester over time

It’s easy to tell ourselves, “I’ll just deal with that later,” but what if later is too late? Conflict can fester over time, primarily if it's not addressed and dealt with right away. If you wait too long, tensions could grow higher, members could take sides, or communication could dwindle between the group, impacting the team’s ability to work together and collaborate effectively. 

Bring in outside help

Team leaders that aren’t experienced with handling team conflict may not even know where to begin. When in doubt, you can always work with a leadership coach who has experience coaching teams. Bringing in an outside facilitator to run a workshop can help teams work through situations and improve collaboration, and it saves you the time you would have spent just trying to figure out where to start. 

Leadership Skills For Managing Conflict

Team leaders should always be prepared to deal with and work through team conflict. Staying self-aware and having a game plan can significantly improve resolving a conflict when it arises. 

Being prepared for a conflict isn’t always enough to fix it, especially if the team leader is involved in the dispute. Team conflict is resolved when the team leader is equipped with the proper leadership skills and can proactively use those skills towards conflict resolution for the team.

Being Self-Aware

Recognize your feelings and give yourself permission to show up. These reflective actions are vital in having self-compassion and empathy. It also helps us practice taking responsibility for regulating our emotions. Team leaders can constructively handle team conflict when they ground themselves enough to pay attention fully to their team members.

Being Vulnerable

When we have a hard conversation with team members, we are committing to leaning into vulnerability. We don’t always know how the conversation will go or how people will respond, but we hope we have a soft place to land. Vulnerability is the birthplace of many behaviors that define leadership, including creativity and innovation, holding people accountable when someone has done something out of bounds, and difficult conversations (like negotiating, giving and receiving feedback, letting people go). Being vulnerable with team members creates a safe space that invites open discussion and conflict resolution.

Stay Curious

One of the most essential parts of a difficult conversation is finding common ground. We make many assumptions about what might be important to the other person or why they took an action. These assumptions play a major role in team conflict and could be the explanation behind your own inability to find common ground. This is a chance to test those assumptions and discover a bit more about how team members see the situation. Learn as much as you can about the other person, their point of view, and what they want to achieve.

Ask open-ended questions (who, what, when, where, why) and explore each other’s stories. Stay focused on behaviors that can be changed (instead of changing the person). We don’t want to shame people by criticizing their character or personality, but instead, point out behaviors or situations where you want things to be different. 

Developing these skills for team leaders comes with time and practice. It can be helpful to bring in a neutral third-party facilitator to help your teamwork through conflict until you build those skills. A leadership coach who has had time to master essential leadership skills will have the ability and knowledge to help any teamwork through conflict to find a solution that will benefit everyone involved. 

Learn How To Handle Conflict With A Team Leadership Coach

If you let it, conflict can tear apart a team from the inside out. Team leaders can get ahead of the game by preparing for conflict and having a game plan to address and work through it.

If you want to learn how to handle conflict as a team leader, let’s talk about your team’s particular needs.