Conflict Resolution Strategies for Engineering Managers

My four-step framework to manage conflicts. 🎁 Contains $500 in FREE credits for DoubleCloud.

As an Engineering Manager, there's one thing you want to avoid at all costs: unresolved conflicts.

I learned that the hard way.

Early in my career, I believed that conflicts should be resolved independently by the individuals involved. This approach led to losing great team members and putting entire projects at risk.

That experience taught me the importance of conflict resolution, prompting me to develop these essential skills actively.

So, in today’s newsletter, after having navigated and solved many conflicts, this is what I’m going to cover:

• ❓ What is conflict, and why does it arise in Engineering Teams

• 🩺 My four-step framework to deal with conflicts

  • How to recognize them

  • How to identify involved parties and root causes

  • How to solve them

  • How to follow-up

• 💡 Some tips coming directly from my experience

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❓What is Conflict?

Conflict in engineering teams typically refers to situations where team members have differing opinions, goals, or approaches regarding their technical work, project management, or communication.

Like in any group setting, these conflicts arise from the interplay of varied personalities, professional backgrounds, technical perspectives, and project roles.

Why Conflict Arises in Engineering Teams?

From my experience and observation over the years, conflicts in engineering teams or between team members usually arise for the following reasons:

• 🛠️ Technical Disagreements: probably the most frequent; these occur when team members have different views on solutions, methodologies, or the implementation of technologies. For instance, conflicts might arise over the choice between different programming languages, software architectures, or engineering processes.

• 📊 Resource Allocation: conflicts may emerge from disagreements over allocating limited resources like time, budget, or people. Team members might have different priorities on how these resources should be allocated to various project components.

• 🔗 Interdependence: engineering projects typically require close collaboration among various specialists. The interdependent nature of their work means that decisions and actions by one individual or subgroup can significantly affect the outcomes of others, leading to conflicts when there is misalignment.

• 🗣️ Communication Issues: poor communication can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts, especially in large or geographically distributed teams. This might involve misinterpretations of technical requirements, unclear responsibilities, or inadequate information sharing.

• 🤝 Personal Styles and Values: differences in work styles, personal values, or professional ethics can lead to conflicts. For example, a conflict might arise between team members who value rapid innovation and those who prioritize thorough, risk-averse approaches to problem-solving.

🩺 How to Deal with Conflicts as an EM

Over the years, I have encountered many conflicts. Initially, I approached them with a bit of improvisation, but eventually, I developed a structured framework that has successfully helped me manage them.

This framework is heavily inspired by technical incident resolution techniques and includes the following steps:

• Recognize the conflict

• Identify involved parties, root cause, and conflict resolution styles

• Solve the conflict

• Monitor and follow-up

Let's go through each of these steps.

Recognize the Conflict

Recognizing a conflict might seem obvious, but most of the time, when the conflict becomes obvious, it is already late and challenging to solve.

That’s why recognizing a conflict in its early stages is crucial for timely and effective resolution.

These are some common signs that a conflict could be around the corner:

• 🗣️ Communication Breakdown: a clear sign of conflict is a noticeable decline in communication, such as team members avoiding discussions, unanswered emails, or meetings becoming tense or unproductive.

• 😠 Changes in Behavior: look for increased irritability, withdrawal, or aggression among team members, as well as stress behaviors like becoming unusually quiet or overly critical.

• 🤼 Group Fragmentation: when groups start to fragment into factions, it can indicate underlying conflicts, disrupting team unity and collaboration.

• 📉 Decrease in Performance: conflicts often lead to a drop in productivity, with projects stalling, missed deadlines, and a decline in work quality.

• 📢 Complaints: an increase in formal and informal complaints can be a sign of conflict. Team members may express dissatisfaction about colleagues or project directions.

• 🚫 Resistance to Change: consistent opposition to new ideas or processes without constructive reasons can suggest deeper non-alignment or discontent.

• 🙅 Body Language and Non-Verbal Cues: pay attention to body language such as crossed arms, lack of eye contact, heavy sighs, or rolling eyes during interactions, which can signal disagreement or frustration.

While all these signals will work similarly in a remote environment, it goes without saying that it will be even more challenging to recognize these.

Identify Involved Parties

There is no one-size-fits-all recipe for resolving conflicts, so it's important to understand the involved parties.

These are the four cases you'll most likely encounter:

• Two team members have a conflict

• Two teams have a conflict

• You (the manager) and a team member have a conflict

• You (the manager) and a team have a conflict

While the actions you will need to take to address the conflict are similar, there are slight differences between these situations, particularly in cases where you are involved or not.

• 🚫 Not involved: when you are not directly involved and have to manage a conflict between two parties, it’s crucial to remain impartial and act more as a facilitator to help resolve the conflict.

• 👥 Involved: in this case, I suggest setting aside the manager’s hat and trying not to let your role influence the situation. Making everyone feel equally important and on the same level when resolving a conflict is crucial. Although I believe a good manager should be able to resolve their own conflicts, in some delicate cases, you might need to involve an external facilitator.

Identify the Root Cause

Understanding what is causing a conflict is the first big step to resolving it, and it can be one of the hardest tasks, especially if issues have accumulated over time.

This is what I usually do to identify the root cause:

• Collect Perspectives: request all parties involved to expose their views on what caused the conflict, better if in written form. This approach helps capture each person's perspective.

• Analyze each Perspective: use these individual points of view as the foundation for discussion. This helps ensure that all viewpoints are considered and can clarify any misunderstandings.

• Find Common Ground: identify overlapping concerns and unique issues from the discussion. This step is key to understanding the core issues driving the conflict.

Example of 5 Whys technique applied to a conflict between two team members

Especially when more issues accumulate over time, there’s a high chance that what you’ll get from a first investigation will not be the real root cause. This is where the Five Whys technique can help.

The 5 Whys is a problem-solving method developed by Sakichi Toyoda (Toyota Motor Corporation), which involves asking the question "Why?" five times or more until the fundamental cause of a problem is uncovered.

It's particularly useful in complex scenarios where the initial reasoning for a problem only scratches the surface.

Choose a Conflict Resolution Style

Once you identified the subjects involved and the root cause, it’s important to assess the specific conflict you are dealing with and decide what kind of style you want to adopt to solve it.

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) is a widely recognized tool for assessing how a person deals with conflict based on two dimensions: assertiveness and cooperativeness.

The assessment identifies five primary styles of conflict resolution:

• Competing: high in assertiveness, low in cooperativeness. This style focuses on personal goals at others' expense and is suitable for situations requiring quick, decisive action.

• Collaborating: strong in both assertiveness and cooperativeness. It seeks solutions that fully satisfy everyone's concerns, which is ideal for complex issues needing integrative solutions.

• Compromising: balanced in assertiveness and cooperativeness. Aims for quick, mutually acceptable solutions that partially satisfy all involved.

• Avoiding: low in both assertiveness and cooperativeness. It involves avoiding the issue or delaying resolution, which is beneficial when the timing is crucial.

• Accommodating: low in assertiveness, high in cooperativeness. Prioritizing others' needs over one's own is used to maintain peace.

This tool is useful for defining the approach you want to adopt to solve a conflict and understanding how involved parties will approach it.

Solve the Conflict

After gathering all the data about the ongoing conflict, it's time to work on its resolution. As I mentioned earlier, there's no secret formula.

If you are not directly involved, I suggest starting with the individuals who are. The best outcome to aim for is for the involved parties to resolve the issue by simply talking to each other.

This means you must work in "stealth mode," holding dedicated 1:1 meetings to persuade those involved in the conflict to take the first step. In my experience, this is the most genuine way to resolve a conflict, although it is undoubtedly challenging to achieve.

If this approach does not work, you must step in and act as a facilitator.

Here are some great tools and exercises you can use to facilitate conflict resolution:

• Role Reversal: in this exercise, each party is asked to present the other party's point of view as accurately as possible. This often helps each person understand the other's perspective better and can reveal common ground that wasn't apparent before.

• Interest-Based Relational (IBR) Approach: this technique, described in the book "Getting to Yes" (one of the best books on conflict resolution I know), focuses on the underlying interests of the parties involved rather than their current positions. By identifying and discussing everyone’s interests, this method aims to find solutions that satisfy the needs of all parties.

• Conflict Management Canvas: this great tool created by

  Gustavo Razzetti
  , which I recently discovered, is a structured canvas designed “to help teams address conflict by reflecting on past issues and identifying learnings to better prepare to solve current tensions”.

• Cooling-Off Period: taking a structured break during a heated discussion can serve as an exercise to calm down, collect thoughts, and reassess the situation with a clearer mind.

Monitor and Follow-Up

Rarely in my career have I seen conflicts resolve and never reappear.

That's why, similar to handling technical issues, it's important to "set alerts" and monitor conflicts once they are resolved.

You can use your 1:1 meetings to perform these health checks and take notes (you know I'm a big fan of journaling) to always have historical data available in case the same conflict arises again.

🏁 Conclusion and Final Tips

While challenging and energy-demanding, conflicts are a healthy part of team life. If managed correctly, they often lead to team growth and relationship strengthening.

That's why it's crucial not to demonize conflict itself.

Having a structured approach and sharing it with your team is a great starting point to help you navigate these situations.

Here are some more tips based on my experience:

• 🕰️ No rush: unless it's very practical and simple, solving a conflict is not something you can do in a day. Embrace patience and be prepared to invest part of your time.

• 🚫 No Blame: avoid pointing fingers and assigning fault. Focus on the issue rather than the people involved. This helps maintain a constructive atmosphere and prevents defensive reactions.

• 🏠 Create a Safe Environment: ensure everyone feels comfortable expressing their thoughts and feelings without fear of judgment. Initiate the conversation with a neutral tone and encourage honest exchanges.

• 🔧 Separation of Duties: in my experience, precise separation of duties and ensuring everyone has clear boundaries and responsibilities can avoid many conflicts in a team.

• 📚 Focus on Learning: every conflict presents an opportunity to learn something new about your team and its dynamics. Encourage everyone to view conflicts as chances for improvement rather than setbacks.

• ✔️ Follow Through: after reaching a resolution, continue monitoring the situation to ensure that agreements are upheld and the underlying issues are truly resolved. This follow-through will help prevent the conflict from reoccurring.

By integrating these practices, you can turn conflicts into opportunities for team development and deeper understanding among members.

📢 Weekly Shoutouts

• An Optimized WFH Setup by

  Ryan Peterman

• The Top 10 Lessons from our Podcast Guests by

  Luca Rossi

• How to prevent burning out in the engineering industry by

  Gregor Ojstersek

• 3 Critical Skills You Need to Grow Beyond Senior Levels in Engineering by

  Irina Stanescu

• Ground Rules of Fairness at Work by

  Michał Poczwardowski

• How I Upgraded My Conflict Resolution Skills by

  Akash Mukherjee

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✌️ That’s all folks

That's all for today! As always, I would love to hear from my readers (and if you've made it this far, you're one of the bravest). Please don't hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter and send a message. I always respond to everyone!