Conflict in Teams: Why It Happens and How to Handle It Productively
Last week we started to discuss the practical and relational reason why all work teams should start with protocols in place. Protocols are your safeguard. They’re the “how we behave, meet, decide, and resolve” rules that hold the team together. If you miss this step, you’re basically driving without guardrails.
Here’s the reality of teams: when you have eight to ten people on a high-stakes team, conflict is inevitable. What matters isn’t if you’ll run into it, but how you engage with it. Study after study shows unresolved workplace conflict drains productivity. One report found employees spend roughly 2.8 hours per week on conflict.
But when a team accepts conflict as normal and builds a protocol around it, everything changes. This is your second protocol — the one that transforms conflict from destructive to generative.
It starts with a core assumption: Conflict is normal. Then you build a clear set of behaviors and steps:
Acknowledge acceptable vs. unacceptable behaviors in conflict.
Use structured tools for giving feedback (RISC) and receiving feedback (PAUSE).
Map out a step-by-step escalation: one-on-one → two-on-one → team-on-one.
This clarity reduces drama, accelerates recovery, and deepens trust. When handled well, conflict becomes a sign of a high-trust team — not a breakdown.
There are a few common pitfalls:
Teams wait until storming hits before they define their guidelines — so the protocol feels reactive, not intentional.
Members see conflict as a threat rather than an opportunity; they withhold information, treat others as adversaries, or assume they’re right.
Root causes get ignored — values mismatches, goal misalignment, work-style differences, power struggles. When you don’t isolate the root cause, resolution stays shallow.
It helps to view conflict through the lens of threat vs. opportunity. When it’s a threat, you get sabotage, secrecy, withdrawal. When it’s an opportunity, you get ideas surfaced, relationship strength, innovation.
Protocols might feel procedural — but this isn’t about rules. It’s about trust, clarity, ownership and behaving like a team deliberately. The moment you define how you’ll meet, decide and handle conflict, you move from “hope we’ll figure it out” to “we know exactly how we’ll handle it if we don’t.”
Conflict isn’t the signal of failure. It’s the signal of growth — when managed well.
Direct Application Challenge: Pick one conflict or tension in your team this week. Look at the root cause (values? goals? work style?) and ask: Do we have a protocol for this? If not, draft the first version together. If yes, test it: Did it work? What might we improve for next time?
