What To Do When Your Best Employees Fight on consultis.com

What To Do When Your Best Employees Fight

How to manage potentially disastrous office riffs.

Over the course of a healthy career, we’re all bound to work with at least one colleague we disagree with professionally or personally. Even if you make it your mission to hire a team that fits perfectly in with your company culture, conflicts do happen. How management chooses to intervene in such instances can either lead to disaster, or develop new alliances.

4 tips on how to mitigate office drama

While it’s certainly not a constant, being good at their work can make a person a little, or a lot, more difficult to work with. The following 4 suggestions can help cool off office tension, and keep your crew on track to success.

  1. Identify the problem. Office conflict can result from a spectrum of causes, so the first inquiry needs to be directly into the root of the problem. Discuss the problem with all parties privately so you can understand each of their perspectives and share those perspectives when applicable as their mediator.
  2. Open their minds. By the time a conflict becomes heated, it can be extremely difficult to concede any fault. Asking questions such as, “why do you think they did that?” can help ease them into seeing things from the other’s angle without pointing fingers and insulting either perspective.
  3. Don’t engage emotionally. As management, your role is to stay calm, neutral, and level headed. Losing your temper only makes things worse, especially if it reveals a bias toward either employee. It’s important to keep in mind that you want their continued respect, and cooperation. Getting involved in the drama will make you look bad to your superiors and your staff – the cooler you stay, the more respect you’ll gain.
  4. Realign their relationship. Assuming neither employee is so bent out of shape that they’re ready to resign, a simple fact of their lives is they need to learn to work together. Give them a chance to settle down, and then encourage them to talk it through. It can be helpful to remind them they’re on the same team, and that their goals and values are in line, however, in jeopardy as long as they’re not able to resolve their conflict.

Relationships at work matter

It’s not a secret: being happy at your place of work makes you more productive, and overall better at your job. Conflicts between employees can affect the performance of even your most talented team members. Consultis has more than 33 years of building relationships between companies and top talent. For more information on how we can help you find an amazing IT talent that are a perfect fit for your company, connect with us today.