When different people work together – whether it be a growing business or a high intense environment – tensions are bound to emerge. Dealing with conflict properly is a management skill you'll need to master.​

Disagreements are pretty much unavoidable in the workplace – and small businesses are known to thrive off of this. Quick organizational growth often means that employees have to adapt by wearing hats they didn’t necessarily sign up to wear. When those disagreements fester and grow into conflict, it means trouble.

Every person has a different personality, skill set and style of working; they will have their own ideas on how to move forward and what their individual career goals might be. Diversity is good as it breeds original ideas, but it also needs occasional management and mediation. In the absence of a dedicated HR team, you’ll need to play an active role in conflict resolution.​

Conflict is, obviously, unpleasant – and not only for the parties involved! If in-fighting is left to fester, your workplace will become tense and other employees might feel as though they’re expected to take sides! Your authority will take a hit and job satisfaction is likely to drop dramatically. In a major survey of US workers by job-search platform Randstad, 58% of people had left or were planning to leave their jobs as a result of negative office politics. At any stage in your business’ journey, you need to keep talented employees content and on board.

The net result of conflict is lower productivity and a drop in motivation – fighting is a distraction that slows down the decision-making process. By hitting the right balance between micromanaging and being too hands-off, you’ll be avoiding negative impacts on your business’ culture and productivity.

.

Here are some ways to handle conflict within your team!​

1.Know the signs: Some conflict emerges and then vanishes quickly; some can be sorted out between team members; and some requires an outside observer to step in. If you know your team and how it functions, you should be able to pick up early signs about things that require you to step in. Along with one-on-ones, keep an eye out for angry or passive-aggressive words and body language in individuals and meetings that are abandoned.

2. Don’t wait around: Don’t waste any time confronting it! Calling out disruptive behavior as it happens, or booking in a meeting to go through task-specific disagreements is the best way to go. If you let conflict grow, it will morph into something much harder to resolve, and will start to impact other staff members and your bottom line.

3. Meet with each individual: This is especially handy if you aren’t 100% sure what’s happening and want to assess the situation before a full-scale mediation meeting. It can be informal, but make your commitment to confidentiality and impartiality clear from the outset. Likewise, if you know exactly what’s going on, meeting with each party separately is a good place to start the resolution process.

Let them know that you’ve noticed an issue, and get their go-ahead to try to fix it. Don’t scope out solutions yet – the point of these meetings is to make each person understand that you’re listening, and to calm any strong feelings that will get in the way of moving forward rationally. Encourage each employee to vocalize things they’d be reluctant to with the other people there. Tell them to come prepared to your joint meeting with an open mind, a clear idea of why they’re upset and some tangible thoughts about what would help.

4. Schedule a meeting with both sides: Get everyone together in the same room, making time limits and ground rules clear from the very start. Explain your own position as mediator: you are an impartial third party, looking to facilitate them reaching their own solution.

5. Figure out the problem: Allow each person to recount their perspective and viewpoint, zoning in on what’s fact and what’s emotion or assumption. Practice active listening throughout, using non-verbal cues to show you’re paying attention, and taking breaks to ask clarifying questions and to summarize what’s been said.

6. Figure out the solution: Now that a full picture of the conflict has been created, any ill will caused purely by poor communication should have eased and each side should have a better understanding of the other’s point of view. Reassert your business’ goals, values and other common ground as a framework as you move towards a solution. This should be a collaborative process, although expectations about listening must remain the same. Open an exploratory discussion of the different paths that could be taken, establishing a list of tangible things that will change. There will be compromise involved, but make sure both sides actively agree to the next steps.

7. Follow up.Don’t just finish the meeting and immediately move on. Thank and reward team members for making contributions and reaching an effective conclusion. Check in with each group to ensure nothing was left unsaid and that they’re getting on with their list of actions as promised. All of this will solidify bonding and constructive change; it will help to ensure things don’t go straight back to normal; and will foster a healthy approach to conflict – and dealing with it – in your team.

8. Make the right organizational changes.It’s likely that this conflict will have exposed flaws in working situations, which you can change. That could be problems with unrealistic deadlines, workload, people’s responsibilities, the overall process or something else entirely. You should think of what measures and tweaks you can bring in to avoid similar grievances emerging again.

.

Conflict comes in many forms, from clashing egos and goals to disputes over what it means to work cooperatively. All of these can impact your employees’ mental health and productivity, and your business’ bottom line.

• There’s a difference between healthy tension and conflict – you need to identify when hostility emerges and stop it in its tracks.

• Holding a structured conflict-resolution meeting – and practicing active listening – is key to resolving problems and finding the right solution to move forward.

.