As your scope of responsibility grows, you’ll find that team members bring their conflict to you to resolve. This can happen especially when, as we talked about a couple of days ago, different teams form their own subcultures with slightly different values. What one person sees as efficient and crucial for real-world feedback, another sees as risky or even dangerous.
Or maybe there are perceptions of a breakdown of common shared values like respect or integrity.
For whatever reason, someone comes to you claiming that someone else in the organization is wrong or has done something wrong.
It can be tempting to take the bait and figure out the puzzle. You may want to gather the evidence and declare a verdict. But that’s not always the most effective response.
In many cases, especially when the conflict is over a matter of opinion, your best response is simply to broker a conversation between the two conflicting parties. I recall a story of one leader who had an employee visit his office with a complaint about another employee. The leader interrupted the story and placed a speakerphone call to the other employee and told the two of them to come to an agreement.
In rare cases, you may be dealing with something more substantial, such as harassment or abuse of power. When this happens, it may not be safe to encourage a direct confrontation. Still, you probably don’t have to bear the responsibility of finding the truth. If you have a department such as Human Resources or People Operations responsible for investigations like these, follow their guidelines for reporting.
I know it can temporarily be rewarding to feel like the problem solver, but the more you can delegate your conflict resolution, the more successful you’ll be as a leader. And if you’d like a thinking partner to look at a specific situation you’re facing, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.
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