In an ideal workplace, teams would work together in harmony, celebrate each other’s accomplishments and support each other, while spending quality time together. The reality is that 85 percent of employees across levels report conflicts at the workplace.
The Team leader plays a great role in controlling conflict, but needs to understand that not all conflict is bad. Conflict fuels change, and is necessary for emotional, intellectual and moral growth of the team members.

An Ideal Workplace And The Need For Conflict

Some team members start to become envious if others get promoted instead of them. This can breed toxicity in the workplace.A leader can minimize damage by:<ol><li>Find out other growth opportunities for the disheartened employees like making them in charge of new projects, committees and special events.</li><li>Instead of letting the other employees find out through company-wide emails, tell them yourself.</li><li>Keep a close eye on team interactions and address any problems that arise.</li></ol>

Team Promotions

According to a survey, all employees have been annoyed by some coworker/team member. People with different personalities often gravitate towards hating others who are not their type or annoy them for reasons personal to them.As a leader, you need to:<ol><li>Talk to each team member and find common ground, leading to a possible solution.</li><li>Lead by example and show your employees that you practice what you preach.</li><li>Set boundaries and demonstrate what kind of conduct is not acceptable.</li></ol>

Team Members Hate Each Other

Sometimes there are workload issues, bottlenecks and mismanagement of information, leading to missed deadlines and lost productivity. The leader can:<ol><li>Seek regular feedback, making each meeting a productive time to uncover bottlenecks and roadblocks.</li><li>Use the right kind of tools, suggested by employees themselves, to work efficiently.</li><li>Use the ‘five whys’ technique where one moves towards first principles, addressing the real problem. Ask ‘why’ five consecutive times to get to the root cause of the problem.</li></ol>

An Unworkable Process

Team members have all kinds of working styles, from the quiet introverted ones to the aggressive, loud ones. Keeping the various types of people happily working together is a challenge for any manager.A Leader can facilitate working together by:<ol><li>Creating personalised instruction manuals about work preferences, feedback preferences, availability hours and other details of the entire team.</li><li>Finding out the strengths of the employee and providing them engaging work that lets them make use of their skills.</li></ol>

Different Working Styles

Not sure how to smooth rocky team waters in a way that’s productive and positive? Let’s take a look at some of the most common team conflicts, along with advice for addressing each one. 

Different Working Styles

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