How To Resolve Conflict On A Team

Conflict gets a bad rap.

The reality is that conflict on a team is inevitable. Conflict happens because people are different, they think differently, and they act differently. That means they don’t agree 100 percent of the time. And that’s okay. Because if they agreed 100 percent of the time, then they’d be redundant. There would be no actual teamwork, just one mind and lots of mindless automatons.

If we embrace this idea-that conflict on a team is inevitable-then we can have a more positive approach to how to handle conflict on a team. We can leverage the conflict that actually makes ideas and projects better and brings us closer to our goals. And we can intervene if and only if that conflict isn’t productive.

Because there are two types of conflict. And before we outline how to resolve conflict on a team, we have to distinguish between these two types.

There’s task-focused conflict, and there’s personal conflict.

And the best team leaders know they need to leverage the former and resolve the latter.

Leverage Task-Focused Conflict

Task-focused conflict happens when people on the team disagree about the task they’re focusing on. (I know, it’s not the most creative label). Task-focused conflict happens because…