How to manage team conflict

How many of us in the Canadian property and casualty insurance industry can relate to the iconic scene of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ star hockey players bickering with each other on the bench during the heat of the battle, en route to a crucial playoff game loss?

The business world has its own brand of team dissension — four types, actually — and dealing with these conflicts between employees can take up to about 20% of a manager’s time, say authors of a recent Harvard Business Review blog.

The authors, Randall S. Peterson, Priti Pradhan Shah, Amanda J. Ferguson and Stephen L. Jones, are prominent academics who’ve conducted comprehensive research of the source of conflicts within businesses.

“Over the past three decades, we have studied thousands of team conflicts — from management teams in multinational companies…to assembly teams in factories in China, to MBAs at top business schools,” the HRB blog authors say. “We have asked managers to share their stories of team conflict, surveyed executives, and observed conflict as it unfolds in boardrooms.

“Our aim has been to understand what team conflict looks like and how it evolves over time so that we can help managers improve team performance.”

The authors distilled their research into a simple typology of four main types of conflicts between team members:

The solo dissenter: conflict surrounds one individual
The boxing match: two people within a team disagree
Warring factions: two subgroups within a team disagree
The blame game: the whole team is in disagreement

Savvy and proactive managers will identify which of those four patterns are at play, and tailor their approach to resolve the conflict accordingly.

The Solo Dissenter

“Sometimes team conflict surrounds one individual on a team,” the authors write. “This person may be the ‘odd one out’ [who] is difficult to get along with, or is not motivated to engage with other team members. Or this person could be the ‘devil’s advocate’ that pushes the team, trying to get others to consider different ways of working when the team is too comfortable.”

Managers who wish to diffuse tension around this one person should not gang up on the individual, the authors say. For example, they shouldn’t conduct majority rules team votes that will constantly isolate and disenfranchise the solo dissenter.

Instead, the manager should work on asking for the person’s perspective during team meetings. Build empathy toward them, with the intent to show the team these people have genuine insights.

“Research shows that when people are exposed to different points of view, it makes them more likely to think divergently, and that increases their capacity to learn and understand the problems more deeply,” the authors write.

The Boxing Match

“The most common pattern of conflict in teams is when two people within a team disagree, comprising approximately 35% of team conflict,” the authors write.

Although managers may feel this type of conflict will cleft a team into two warring factions, in fact, research suggests people will refuse to take sides, meaning the two warring team members will fight until they knock themselves out – or until a referee intervenes.

Mediation is one way to resolve the conflict – generally by talking to the employees individually, and then bringing them together with a mediator. Alternate solutions are to put them on separate teams, if feasible, or reconstruct workflows to minimize their contact with each other.

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Warring Factions

When two subgroups on the team disagree with each other, the scenario could lead to an ‘us versus them’ mentality, when neither side wants to listen to the another, the authors write.

Managers make the common mistake of resorting to a vote when the teams split into two groups. But odds are that the losing side will feel excluded and not buy into the final decision.

To resolve this kind of conflict, the authors suggest the counterintuitive approach of introducing more perspectives for the team to consider. This could mean bringing on an outsider in to challenge the two groups’ perspectives. Or the manager could give the team more options to consider so that the team isn’t as focussed on opposed courses of action.

“Doing so allows subgroups to understand their underlying interests and make trade-offs between issues that are more and less important, providing a more comprehensive solution that both sides can support,” say the authors.

The Blame Game

“The prototypical picture of team conflict is of everyone arguing with one another, but, while this happens from time to time, it is relatively rare,” the authors write. “Less than 15% of teams ever experience this pattern of outright team conflict.”

When it happens, it can arise while starting up a new project, when everyone has different ideas about how to proceed. But more often, it’s the result of a negative team performance and/or feedback.

In this scenario, the manager needs to de-emphasize the team’s individuals and focus on the collective.

“For example, team leaders or members can articulate strategies that everyone on the team can improve or contribute to in a positive way — looking forward instead of rehashing who did what when,” the authors write.

Feature image courtesy of iStock.com/OJO Images