Want a healthy and happy team? Welcome, spot, and resolve conflict.
The wonderful part of being in an early stage startup is that you get to be a part of a small team, you have …
The wonderful part of being in an early stage startup is that you get to be a part of a small team, you have a voice, you get to build, and you’re all plugging along towards a common goal of creating something that adds value. There are great problems to solve and you’re all hi-fiving each other after you solve them and go out for beers to celebrate. These are the precious moments that we all look forward to and its the reason we keep participating and being a part of the team. But there’s a dark side, one that no one really seems to talk about. It happens when you least suspect it to. One moment things are going great and then the next minute bam! You get sideswiped. Of course you didn’t see it coming or maybe you did? What am I talking about? Conflict.
On every team there is a point in time where one person (instigator) does something that for some reason seems to piss one or more people off. The pissed of party may hold it in for a period of time but at some point there is going to be an eruption. Regardless, conflict rears its ugly head and it needs to be addressed.
What I want want to cover in this post are techniques to spotting conflict and how to go about resolving them.
The thing about conflict is that you never know when its going to come up. So the surest way to minimize it is by taking an emotional pulse of everyone on the team daily. For a small team having daily scrums is a good way to do this, because it prevents the little annoyances like people being stuck or waiting on each other to complete tasks that can cause conflict to build-up.
Spotting Conflict
The founder of the startup or leader of the team should also have weekly 1-1s with each team member. I cannot emphasize this event enough. If you’re busy, reschedule, but make sure it happens weekly. As a founder, one of your primary responsibilities is to make sure that everyone on your team is happy and productive. The first step is to make sure their voice gets heard weekly. So during each 1-1 checkin to see how things are going. Everyone is different, and some people may initially be resistant to opening up, which is why you have to treat each 1-1 as a safe haven and treat all things discussed as confidential. Let each person speak, hear them out first and foremost, duct tape your mouth if you’re a chatty cathy! Let them have their time to speak no matter how long it takes and then start to address their concern.
The second most important thing you need to be doing as a founder or team lead is addressing concerns of individuals and you have to do it in a timely manner. Not saying drop everything but the moment they bring something up see if its valid and if so think of ways in which you can resolve the issue before it starts to grow. Then set realistic expectations for when it can be resolved. Some problems take time and others can be resolved in a matter of minutes. I’ve seen too many founders get caught up in their own work or projects to care about the issues of their teammates or be dismissive. If you want to be dismissive then you shouldn’t have assembled a team and you certainly shouldn’t be the leader, you’d be happier and save others mental anguish by being an individual contributor. Being a team leader is listening to people’s problems and coming up with a solution together. Dismissing a problem is not a healthy dynamic for team building.
You also need to create an atmosphere where confrontation is ok. I’ve seen passive aggressive behavior on many teams, which only compounds conflict. By passive aggressive behavior I mean: using email or some other form of communication to each other instead of having a face-to-face interaction, ignoring one another in common areas, or exchanging slight jabs or sarcasm while socializing. All of the above are inappropriate, should never be tolerated, and nipped in the bud.
Resolving Conflict
In general I like to let people resolve conflict amongst themselves, primarily because I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and I hate micro-managing and being micro-managed. But there are times when there needs to be a mediator because there is an impasse. When an impasse arises the first thing to do is to calm each person down. I know this seems silly, but there is no way you can understand what’s going on if people cannot communicate the issue to you. Next understand the issue, but don’t take sides. Get to the heart of the problem. The primary goal isn’t to conclude who is right or wrong, it’s that people have concerns or feel hurt and that needs to be resolved first.
The second goal is to resolve the problem in front of you. I’d take a two step approach. First make sure that people are in a calm mindset, that may require taking a break or a moment to calm everyone down. Once everyone feels good then proceed to solving the problem. When emotions are high no one is the right frame of mind to resolve anything and there will continue to be discord.
Once you’ve reconciled the conflict the third phase is what I call follow up. This needs to happen weekly and monthly. You want to make sure that the solution you put in place is working and that the conflict hasn’t come up again.
Finally, welcome conflict and learn to embrace it, because it means that people are actually passionate, alive, and thinking! What you don’t want is for there to always be calm waters or people who are too afraid to speak up. Having a team of complacent individuals does not lead to innovation, its leads to stagnation! That’s not to say you need to have a team of passionate prima donnas. There needs to be balance. To foster that balance you have to allow conflict, be ok with it, and realize its a natural course of human relationships. What keeps a team together is the way in which they address conflict and move forward towards building a team, a product, and ultimately a company!
