How to help others manage conflict

About a month ago, I was in the middle of brainstorming blog post ideas when a close friend of mine called. After we chatted for a bit, I thought I’d take the opportunity to get a little inspiration. She’s the leader of a team, so I asked her, “What’s the biggest leadership challenge you’re facing right now?”

She had her answer immediately: helping others manage conflict. I asked her to tell me more. She said it’s so hard when someone on her team complains to her about one of their colleagues. Both of these people report to her, and she wants to be fair to both of them. She doesn’t want to take sides or create conflict between herself and either person; she just wants to make sure the issue gets resolved.

What’s worse, she said, is that sometimes, it feels like people expect her to solve their conflicts for them. They just kind of dump the conflict in her lap, and she's not sure what she’s supposed to do.

Everything I know about managing conflict I learned the hard way. In my early years as a leader, I, too, felt extremely challenged by situations like these. All I wanted to do was help, but I often got in the middle, and it only made things worse. It’s taken me a long time to learn how to help others resolve conflict, and everything I’ve learned has been a result of getting it wrong. So, in case you are in the same position as my friend, I want to share some of my best advice for helping others manage conflict, and ultimately, build trust:

Resist giving feedback on someone else's behalf. If you've been part of the Human Leadership Program, you've heard me talk about the drama triangle. The drama triangle happens when someone is upset with someone else and they ask you to address that person on their behalf.

Spoiler alert: The drama triangle almost never ends well. You might think that by being involved, you can help both parties build trust by bridging the gap in understanding between them. At least, that’s what I used to think. But in my experience, you’re just going to end up making things worse. If you give feedback on someone else’s behalf, the person you give it to is just going to wonder why they're hearing it from you and not directly from the other person. Rather than creating trust, the drama triangle only breaks it further. Even worse, you are now caught in the middle.

Hold people accountable to solutions. So many times throughout my leadership journey, people have come to me to vent their frustrations about other people. Often, it was the kind of venting that my friend described: People would dump their conflict in my lap.

I’ve learned that when this happens, it’s important to remember what your role is as a leader. You’re there to help guide this person, to be a thought partner, and to hold them accountable to resolving their conflict. You’re not there to do it for them. If you get into the habit of resolving conflict for people, you're not giving them any reason to want to step out of their comfort zone and learn how to do that themselves. When I find myself in this situation, I hold people accountable to having the conversation by reminding myself that it's not my issue to solve.

Sometimes, it does make sense to step in and facilitate a conversation between the two parties. It's okay to be there to help them build a bridge in that moment, to allow each person in the space to share their perspective, to help them see the other person's perspective, and to encourage them to find a solution. Facilitating a conversation is not the same as inserting yourself in the drama triangle because you are not speaking on someone else’s behalf; everyone is in the room together, and you are helping create the space for an honest conversation.

I can remember a time when I facilitated a conversation between two people who really didn't see eye-to-eye. Before we talked, I gave them each the book The Four Agreements and asked them to read it. The Four Agreements is about what it takes to make a relationship work. I thought it might give each of them a different perspective going into the conversation, and it did: We talked through it all together, and we were able to restore some of the trust that had been lost between them.

Address conflict promptly. Conflict builds up quickly. Small disagreements or incidents can snowball into bigger issues before you know it. By the time someone brings up an issue with you, you have no way of knowing how many other people they’ve already talked to about it, which means the drama triangle might already be out of hand.

When someone comes to you with a conflict, I encourage you to help them confront that issue within 24 hours. The quicker the issue is addressed, the better the chance of recovering trust and resolving that conflict promptly. The longer the issue goes unaddressed, the more we risk losing major trust and making what could have been a small issue even bigger.

Avoid talking about the conflict with others. Another lesson I learned the hard way: Keep the conflict to yourself. Gossip breeds toxicity, and it can lead to an even bigger lack of trust, especially if word gets back around to the person who thought they spoke with you in confidence. If you absolutely must talk about it with someone else because you need help or an outside perspective, do so only with a person who is far removed from the conflict. Ask that they be a thought partner to you and make sure that after that conversation, you take action toward helping the people involved resolve their conflict. When you do, acknowledge that you had a thought partner to help you think through it and be transparent about that.

In my experience, trust eroded by gossip is one of the hardest things to repair. Even when it’s done with good intentions, it can be very hurtful to those involved.

Encourage curiosity. When someone comes to you and says they're really frustrated with someone else, encourage them to think about things from the other person's point of view. Encourage them to seek to understand how the other person might be feeling, why they're behaving the way they are, and what could be underneath the conflict.

As a leader, it’s important to make everyone feel like their viewpoints and feelings are valid. It’s also important to point out that there may be a reason for the conflict that they don't see or understand until they take the time to get curious. I really believe that curiosity is what helps create empathy and compassion. I encourage people to approach these kinds of conversations with curiosity and to use the steps of listening, saying things like, “Tell me more” and remembering that it's a dialogue, not a monologue.

In really difficult moments, I've asked people to create an empathy map. An empathy map has two parts: First, the person thinks about what's important to them, what matters to them, and why they're frustrated. Then, they try to look at the situation from the other perspective: what might matter to the other person and why might they be frustrated. Finally, I encourage them to look for the commonalities. If they can go into the conversation having thought a little bit about the other perspective, it can help make the conversation more open and empathetic.

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Conflict is one of the hardest things to manage as a leader. If someone had asked me the same question that I asked my friend in the early days of Student Maid, that would have definitely been one of my top challenges, too.

If you find yourself caught in the middle of conflict on your team, I hope these tips help. And to my dear friend—you know who you are: Thank you for inspiring this post! You’ve got this!

Big hugs,

Kristen