Resolving team conflict: a guide for team leads

Team conflict is part of everyday leadership the same way merge conflicts are part of everyday development: annoying, guaranteed to happen, and much more work if you leave it lying around for too long. The only difference is that with people, no tool highlights the lines that contradict each other.

This topic matters to me because team leads are often left on their own here. There are checklists for code reviews, deployments and incidents. For the moment when two people on your team only talk to each other through ticket comments, there is usually nothing but gut feeling. This guide gives you a tool to spot team conflict early, judge how far it has already escalated, and facilitate a clarifying conversation that does not end in a blame game.

In short

Team conflict is easy to resolve as long as both sides still want a shared solution. As a leader, you use the Glasl model to identify the stage and then facilitate in five steps: one-on-ones, framing, both perspectives, interests instead of positions, and an agreement you can check. The biggest pitfall is waiting too long and then acting as the judge yourself.

What you will learn in this article

How to recognize team conflict before it escalates
How to use the Glasl model to judge whether you can facilitate yourself
How a clarifying conversation works in five steps, remote too
Which questions and phrases help in difficult moments
When you should get support as a team lead

Is team conflict a bad thing?

No. A team without any friction is rarely a harmonious team. More often it is a team where nobody dares to disagree anymore. In software development in particular, you need people who say: “I think this architecture is wrong.” A conflict about the issue moves the team forward, as long as it stays about the issue and everybody keeps working together afterwards.

It gets critical when the question about the issue turns into a question about the relationship. Then it is no longer about whether DynamoDB or Postgres fits better, but about who wins. From that point on, every new argument is not examined but read as an attack. That is why your most important job as a leader is not to prevent conflict. You make sure that disagreements about the work can be discussed openly and that relationship conflicts surface early.

One term up front, because it will come up often: in this article, a position is what someone demands (“I want to build this feature on my own”). An interest is the reason behind it (“I finally want to own something myself”). Positions often exclude each other, interests surprisingly rarely do.

Spotting team conflict early

Most team conflict announces itself long in advance. The problem is that each signal looks harmless on its own. Only together do they form a picture. Watch out for patterns like these, for example:

Two people no longer talk to each other directly in meetings, but through you.
Pull request comments get longer, sharper and more often start with “as I already said”.
Someone suddenly copies you on messages you would never have seen before.
Decisions that were made long ago keep getting reopened.
The retro gets noticeably quiet, or only very general points come up.
Some people stop speaking up at all on certain topics.

What is different in remote teams

Remote, many of these signals disappear. Nobody sees two colleagues avoiding each other in the kitchen. Instead, there are other hints: cameras that are always off in certain meetings, questions that people prefer to send you as a direct message rather than in the team channel, or threads where people only reply with a short “ok”. Written communication amplifies misunderstandings, because tone and facial expressions are missing. I described how to phrase written feedback so it lands in Written Feedback in Remote Teams: Chat or Call?.

My advice: raise an impression once too early rather than once too late. A short “I noticed you two have been clashing a lot over deployments lately. How do you see it?” in a one-on-one costs you two minutes. If you are wrong, nothing happened. If you are right, you may have saved weeks.

How far has it gone? The Glasl model

Before you step in, an honest assessment pays off. For that, I like to use the escalation model by the Austrian conflict researcher Friedrich Glasl. It describes nine stages, grouped into three levels. For team conflict in everyday leadership, the key question is which level you are currently at.

The nine escalation stages according to Friedrich Glasl and what you can do as a team lead at each level.

Level	Stages	What happens	What you can do as a team lead
Both can win	1 Hardening, 2 Debate, 3 Actions, not words	Positions harden, discussions get sharper, at some point people simply act without talking.	Facilitate yourself. A well-run clarifying conversation works best here.
One wins, one loses	4 Coalitions, 5 Loss of face, 6 Threat strategies	People look for allies, the other side is exposed in public, threats appear.	Get support, for example HR, an experienced colleague from another area, or an external facilitator.
Both lose	7 Limited destruction, 8 Fragmentation, 9 Together into the abyss	Damage to the other side is accepted, in the end even damage to oneself.	Do not try to solve it alone. Mediation or a clear intervention by the next management level.

Glasl also maps forms of conflict resolution to the stages: moderation fits stages 1 to 3 best, process consulting and mediation the middle stages, arbitration and a power intervention the last ones. In practice this means: a team lead can achieve a lot in the first three stages. From stage 4 on, you quickly become part of the game yourself, because both sides will try to win you over as an ally.

How to recognize the stage day to day

One simple test question helps me: do both sides still want the problem solved, or do they mainly want the other side to admit they are wrong? As long as it is about the solution, you are on the first level. If people start forwarding you screenshots, collecting “evidence” or pulling colleagues onto their side, the threshold to stage 4 has usually been crossed already.

Your role as a leader in a conflict

An uncomfortable truth first: as a leader, you are never fully neutral. You decide on assignments, you run the performance reviews, and both sides know it. That is why it matters that you state your role openly in the conversation. I like to separate two hats: as a facilitator, you make sure both people are heard and that there is an agreement at the end. As a leader, you set boundaries when behavior is not okay, for example with put-downs or personal attacks.

Do not wear both hats in the same sentence. If you notice that you already know who is “right”, treat that as a warning sign. In that case it often helps more to make a clear decision as your decision and explain it, instead of staging a clarifying conversation whose outcome is already settled.

When you are part of the conflict yourself

Sometimes you are not the facilitator but right in the middle: someone on the team fundamentally disagrees with your decision. Then you cannot lead and facilitate the conversation at the same time. In this case, bring in a third person who reports to neither of you, and keep in mind that the other person carries a much bigger risk by disagreeing openly. I describe how to build a climate where disagreement is not dangerous in the guide Psychological safety in teams.

Facilitating team conflict in five steps

The following process fits conflicts between two people in stages 1 to 3. It is based on the Harvard method that Roger Fisher and William Ury described in “Getting to Yes”: separate the people from the problem, focus on interests instead of positions, develop several options, and agree on fair criteria.

Step 1: One-on-ones before the joint meeting

First talk to each person alone, for about 20 to 30 minutes. You do not want to resolve anything in this conversation, you want to understand. Listen, summarize, and ask whether the person is open to a joint conversation. Make sure you do not carry anything from one conversation into the other unless you have explicit permission.

Helpful questions for this step:

How would you describe the situation to someone who was not there?
What exactly bothers you? Can you name a specific situation?
How would you notice in four weeks that things are going better?
How do you think the other person sees it?
What do you need for a joint conversation to feel safe for you?

Step 2: Set the frame

Plan 60 minutes for the joint conversation, and do not put it right before an important release or on a Friday afternoon. Open with three things: why you are here, what your role is, and which ground rules apply. A few clear rules work well: let each other finish, talk about your own observations instead of assumptions, and what is said in the room stays in the room.

A possible opening: “I have talked to both of you, and my impression is that working together is costing you both a lot of energy right now. My goal for today is not to find out who is to blame. I want you to leave with an agreement you can both work with.”

Step 3: Make both perspectives heard

Each person describes the situation from their point of view, without interruption. Afterwards, the other person summarizes what they heard. It sounds like a school exercise, yet it is the most effective part of the conversation. Often both realize for the first time that they are arguing about different things. Step in when summaries turn into counterarguments: “Stop, that is already your answer. What did you hear?”

Step 4: Interests instead of positions

Now it gets concrete. Ask about every demand: “What would you gain from that?” or “What are you worried about if it turns out differently?” Take a fictional example: Anna wants all infrastructure changes to go through her. Ben sees that as distrust and a brake. As positions, the two stances exclude each other. Underneath, however, there are interests that combine well: Anna no longer wants to deal with outages at night, Ben wants to ship without waiting.

Next, collect several options together before you evaluate any of them. In the example, these could be automated checks in the pipeline, one pairing session per week, or a clear list of which changes need a second pair of eyes. Evaluate the options against criteria both accept, such as “fewer outages” and “no waiting time longer than one day”.

Step 5: A concrete agreement and a follow-up

At the end, you have a written agreement with a few points you can check: who does what from when, and how will you know it works? Avoid vague phrases like “We will treat each other more respectfully.” Something like this works better: “From the third comment on a pull request, we discuss criticism in a short call.”

Schedule a follow-up in two to four weeks right away. There you check what works and what needs adjusting. Many conflict conversations fail exactly here, because after the good feeling at the end of the first meeting, nobody follows up.

The clarifying conversation in a remote team

Remote, the process works the same way, with a few adjustments. Hold the joint conversation as a video call with cameras on, not in chat and not as a plain phone call. GitLab, a company that works heavily asynchronously, also recommends in its public remote handbook to switch to a live conversation as soon as a written exchange is stuck or people are talking past each other. In a conflict, that is exactly the case. A shared document in which you capture both perspectives and the agreement live gives both sides confidence that nothing gets lost or twisted.

Also pay attention to time zones and time of day: a clarifying conversation at 6 p.m. local time for one person and 9 a.m. for the other starts on unequal terms. After the call, plan five minutes for a short one-on-one with each person, because remote nobody can ask “real quick in the hallway”. You can find more rituals that carry remote teams in Leading remote teams: rituals that actually work.

Phrases that help in difficult moments

There are moments when a conversation is about to tip over. It pays off to have a few sentences ready instead of searching for words in the moment:

When it gets personal: “Let me interrupt for a second. Let’s stay with the situation, not the person.”
When someone generalizes: “You said ‘always’. Can you give me the most recent concrete example?”
When the conversation goes in circles: “This is the third time I am hearing the same argument. What is the core point you feel has not been understood yet?”
When someone goes quiet: “You have become very quiet. What is on your mind?”
When a break is needed: “I suggest a ten-minute break. After that, we continue with step four.”

Common mistakes with team conflict

The most common mistake is waiting. Many leaders hope that team conflict will sort itself out. Sometimes it does. More often it slips quietly one or two stages further, and then the conversation becomes much harder.

The second classic is playing judge. You listen to both sides and then announce a verdict. It feels efficient, yet it rarely solves anything, because the losing side does not feel understood and the cause remains. A verdict is only right when it really is about a decision that is your responsibility.

Other pitfalls I see often: discussing conflicts in front of the whole team before the people involved have been heard individually. Overlooking structural causes, such as unclear ownership or conflicting goals that inevitably make two people work against each other. And finally, the agreement without a follow-up that nobody remembers three weeks later. Many of these patterns can also be surfaced early in a well-run retrospective, before they turn into a personal conflict.

When you should get help

Get support as soon as one of these applies: the conflict has reached stage 4 or higher, you are part of it yourself, it involves discrimination, harassment or other allegations with possible legal consequences, or a person shows signs of severe strain. In these cases, HR, the works council, a mediator or your own manager are the right people to talk to. That has nothing to do with failure, it is part of your responsibility.

My take

I believe most team conflict in tech does not start as a personal conflict at all. It grows out of unclear ownership, time pressure, or architecture decisions where nobody ever said openly who decides in the end. That is why I always look at the structure after a conflict as well: what do we need to change in the team so the same friction does not show up again with the next pair?

At the same time, I am not a fan of facilitating every team conflict right away. Adults can sort out a lot on their own, and a team also needs the experience of handling a disagreement without a leader. Your job is to recognize the moment when that no longer works. And then not to look away.

FAQ

How do I resolve team conflict as a leader?

Start with one-on-ones to understand both perspectives. Then facilitate a joint conversation with clear ground rules, in which both sides describe their view, interests rather than positions are discussed, and you end with a written agreement and a follow-up date.

What are Glasl’s 9 stages of conflict escalation?

Hardening, debate, actions instead of words, coalitions, loss of face, threat strategies, limited destructive blows, fragmentation, and together into the abyss. In the first three stages both sides can still win, the last three lead to both sides losing.

Should a team lead step into every disagreement?

No. Disagreements about the work are healthy and should be discussed. Step in when the issue turns personal, when collaboration suffers, or when the team starts forming camps.

When do I need mediation?

When the conflict has reached the middle or late stages, when you are part of it yourself, or when it involves allegations with possible legal consequences. Then a neutral, trained person helps more than any conversation you lead yourself.

Your next step

Go through your team in your head: is there a spot right now where two people keep talking past each other? Then take one single question into your next one-on-one with one of them: “How is working with … going from your point of view?” That is enough for a start. If you want to go deeper into giving difficult feedback along the way, read Giving feedback that lands.

And now I am curious: what helped you most in a team conflict, as a leader or as part of the team? Feel free to share it in the comments.

Sources

This post was created with AI assistance.

👉 Next step: Preparing a first one-on-one? My question cheat sheet puts the best questions on one printable page.

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Originally published on sascha-ms.de. More articles on serverless, AI in everyday development and leading tech teams: sascha-ms.de/en