6 Simple Strategies To Make Conflict Work For You (And Your Team)

Working with conflict can feel intimidating.

As an engineering manager (EM), it’s your job to:

Think about your team’s well-being
Ensure a good atmosphere
And help people work together well

However, conflict will arise despite your best efforts. When it does, you may naturally worry about it affecting the mood or making your individual contributors (ICs) miserable. This makes sense because if it does, it makes it harder for everyone to do their job.

But conflict is a natural part of communication, even of human nature. The trick isn’t getting rid of conflict – it’s learning how to make it work for you.

**1 - Know that conflict will help your team**

Most people try to avoid conflict. Some get anxious and try to resolve (or ignore) it as soon as possible. Others may feel nervous because they think having conflicts on their team means they’re a bad manager.

Nothing is further from the truth. In reality, conflict is only negative when it erupts unexpectedly and disrupts team processes.

So, don’t look at conflict as a problem. Instead, look at it as a gift.

It brings up background tension that probably would have emerged sooner or later. With it out in the open, you can work toward a resolution and address its root causes. Once done, team atmosphere will be healthier than before.

For example, an engineer tells me a task will take a month to complete, but I know it’s a simple task that shouldn’t take more than a few days. Things could get heated, or I could ask him why it would take so long. It might turn out he wanted to do a few more things along the way that he didn’t share with me.

Once I know this, I can suggest breaking down the task into steps so the required work gets done first, and then the engineer has time to add things later.

Resolving a conflict like this means we’ve aligned everyone’s understanding of each other, which is good because I personally believe most conflicts happen due to misunderstandings, and it helps us work better together. If it weren’t for the conflict, we might not have known we were out of alignment until something disruptive happened.

2 - Keep an eye out for escalation

Making conflict work for you and improve team dynamics requires understanding how things can escalate.

And there are many reasons why this happens, such as:

Our tendency as humans to turn off our logical brains and get emotional
Team members can get so focused on their issues that they can’t see their teammate’s needs or preferences
Sometimes, someone just wants to be petty – they know what you want but still act like they don’t understand

Conflicts also escalate differently depending on who’s involved. Each group requires a different approach to resolve. For example:

There can be two team members who need you to mediate between them
These team members can start involving others, turning them into “teams” that support one or the other
Sometimes, you have a conflict with someone and find it hard to reach a neutral solution

The last case requires the most patience and skill. It can also happen that no one wants to admit there’s a conflict. Instead of addressing the issue openly, people can be passive-aggressive or give each other the silent treatment.

But even with these differences, many of the principles for managing conflict are similar. You need to clear up misunderstandings, address people’s needs and feelings, and keep an eye on the big picture.

As a manager, it’s your job to think about the team as a whole and bring people into alignment. When conflicts emerge, it’s best to see them as an opportunity to enrich your team dynamics.

3 - Cool down and think

Conflict makes us emotional. Our rational brains often shut off when we get worked up about something. It becomes harder to see both sides, and little issues start feeling like the end of the world.

But fighting takes more energy than stepping back and thinking critically about the situation, even if this means walking away frustrated or disappointed.

As an EM, you can help your team members resist this tendency by:

Asking both sides to step back for a moment (maybe take time to grab coffee)
Reminding people of their more rational selves (“I know you like to think about things carefully. Let’s take a look at both sides here…”)
Remind them it’s okay to make mistakes so they feel less anxious about possibly being wrong, making it easier for them to admit such

It’s much harder when you’re on one side of the conflict yourself because you can’t defend your interests like other people can. After all, you’re not just anyone. Unlike your team members, it’s your responsibility to take care of the whole team, even the person you’re in a conflict with.

If you find it difficult, ask to take a quick break or bring in another manager to mediate. This does get better over time, and you’ll learn to keep your cool with practice, like first responders.

4 - Understand the misunderstanding

Think about frontend and backend engineers (or really anyone with a different role). They work together but approach projects with different perspectives. Certain issues will be more obvious to one than the other, which means they can easily misunderstand the other’s intentions or approach.

This can lead to a disagreement over the best way forward, especially if people are under pressure from a deadline. Arguments can get personal, and the situation can pass the point of no return and require a manager to come in to help.

One of the worst things you can do is judge the situation by the way people are communicating. You have to dig deeper to get to why people hold their positions.

In my opinion, what you’ll find more often than not is a misunderstanding. Your best tool here is precise, pointed questions.

When people are heated, they’ll often talk in generalizations such as, “This is never done that way,” or, “This is never going to work.” It’s your job to ask questions to clarify what exactly they mean, such as:

“When does something not work?”
“What needs to be done to avoid the problem?”
“Is it always like this, or just in this case?”

Remember that while being the EM gives you the big picture, you won’t see every important detail. So, whenever you feel satisfied you’ve gotten to the bottom of a dispute, share how you see things out loud. That way, the people involved can confirm if you’ve understood the situation correctly.

5 - Translate people’s concerns

Keep in mind not all team members, let alone all engineers, have good communication skills. Some people need help communicating what they need to someone else, even when there’s no argument involved.

So once you’ve understood the situation and have a good idea of the needs of the different sides, it’s up to you to help them understand each other.

As the EM, you should have a good understanding of the personalities on your team. You know their individual quirks and how they may behave in a conflict. This gives you insight when you try to translate one side’s needs and communicate them in a way the other side understands.

For example, a designer may be interested in the user experience, while an engineer might care most about code that’s quick to write and doesn’t break. It’s their job to explain to one another how quick/unbreakable code benefits users or how the project makes no sense unless people can actually use the product. And it’s your job to help if they fail and teach them how to communicate better in general.

If emotions still run hot, ask that communication between the sides happens through you. Ask them to explain to you why they want something done a specific way, and make sure each understands the stakes involved for the other.

If they word something in a biased or offensive way, rephrase it so it’s not. When things cool down, you can go back to a more direct communication style.

6 - Know what to do when you aren’t neutral

Mediating or translating people’s needs is always easier when the conflict involves others. It’s no less important when you’re involved in the conflict, but it’s much trickier.

Regardless, repeat all the steps listed above:

Take a minute to calm down first
Ask questions to figure out any misunderstandings
Translate your concerns into a language the other easily understands
Think of yourself not as one side against another but as a mediator between your understanding and theirs

But know this only works when you have a sincere desire to mediate between yourself and the other party. Remember, if you speak to convince instead of be understood, they will know.

If this happens, the other side could feel attacked or manipulated. They may feel the need to defend themselves even more, given that you’re an EM and they’re “just” an engineer. They’ll continue to shut down, and in the future, they may not believe you have their best interests at heart.

My best advice: be ready to lose sometimes.

Model things like:

Being humble
Finding compromise
And admitting mistakes

It may feel like no one will respect you after this, but often, it’s the very opposite.

In my opinion, humility and openness to compromise build trust and show your team you value group success over saving face. This improves team relationships and builds a culture where it’s safe to discuss mistakes as well as successes.

The short version: focus on problems, not people

In all these conflicts, as well as others you face at work, you need to be focused on the issues at hand and not on the people caught up in them.

We all:

Get hijacked by emotions
Have misunderstandings
And get caught up in the moment

But on the job, you are united by your common purpose as a team, and that makes you allies.

As the engineering manager, it’s your job to rise above the emotions and think about how conflicts can serve you and your team. Even though they are complicated to address, they bring up otherwise hidden dynamics that are better to resolve now before they explode and make things worse.

Here are some ways to do that:

Understand that conflict is a gift
Keep an eye on how a conflict escalates
Help people (yourself included) take a step back and calm down
Understand where the misunderstandings are
Translate the needs, feelings, and experiences of one side to the other
Remember that your primary loyalty is to your team and not to your personal interests

Do these things, and you have a much better chance of making conflict work for you instead of against you.

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Originally published on Medium.com