What to do when your team is in conflict

Words by George Karseras

Workplace expert, Acas, estimate that workplace conflict costs UK employers £28.5 billion every year, an average of just over £1,000 for every employee, so it’s in everyone’s interest to try and make sure it’s resolved as quickly as possible.

If there’s friction in your workplace, the first thing to do is not to panic, but remind yourself that some kind of conflict in a team is quite normal.

A team that doesn’t experience any conflict is probably not working as a team at all. Upsetting as it might be, when it’s visible you can take action. A team that avoids the elephants in the room will never be a high performing team.

What causes conflict?

Conflict is either task-related, inter-personal or both.

We know that inter-personal conflict is usually far more costly to the team than any task related conflict.

Interpersonal conflict arises when there are issues between team members who are not ‘getting along’ as people. Maybe they don’t trust each other’s capabilities, integrity or personalities.

Task-related conflict arises from differences in how team members solve problems and achieve their shared goals together.

Differences here are quite natural - in fact, we want them. We want diversity of thinking in the team as it helps the team be more creative and perform better, especially when there is more complexity.

The people you work with are people you were just thrown together with. I mean, you don't know them, it wasn't your choice. And yet you spend more time with them than you do your friends or your family.

- Tim Canterbury (Martin Freeman) in ‘The Office’.

Virtually all the conflict I have seen in 25 years of working as a team development consultant, task related or inter-personal, emanates from the existence of different sets of expectations between team members.

At Team-Up we have identified three sets of expectations that when not aligned, inevitably create conflict. These all sit in what we call the ‘Get Set’ phase of teaming.

These are in order of root cause:

• Expectations about the ‘Mission’ - of the team (its purpose, vision and goals)

• Expectations about the ‘Plans’ - of the team (its high level strategy, roles and responsibilities and immediate priorities)

• Expectations about the ‘Disciplines’ - of the team (the target norms it stands by, its meeting cadence and its reward mechanisms for working as a team)

A real-world example

Time and time again I see the root cause of any conflict sitting somewhere across and between these three sets of expectations. In one global transformation team the purpose of the team was not agreed.

Some members felt it was to do whatever it took to digitalise and transform the organisation, whilst others felt it was to do as much transformation as was possible given the budget they were allocated.

This difference led to different expectations about the goals, cost management responsibilities, and how they met to discuss their progress together.

This led to serious amounts of inter-personal conflict, which was the point at which I was called in to help.

First steps

When the team took the time to actually agree on their purpose, goals, roles and meeting agendas they found their conflict reduce significantly. Of course this also required the team leader to look at himself. I recommend you do this too. Are the expectations the team have of you as the team leader matched by how you expect to behave, and more importantly are behaving? Teams are interconnected systems, as team leader you influence this system more than anybody else.

Making agreements in the Get Set phase is your starting point but, as was the case with this transformation team, dealing with conflict doesn’t stop there.