Peer Conflict
Manager
Calm
Mediating a conflict between two of your team members
Two reports are in an ongoing conflict that the team can feel.
Strategy
Meet each separately first, then together with a written outcome. Your job is not to decide who is right, it is to get a working agreement and hold it.
I have talked to each of you. We are here to leave with an agreement, not a verdict. Here is what I have heard. Jordan needs the specs before build starts. Alex needs feedback in the review, not after ship. So the agreement is: specs land Monday, feedback lands in the review window, and if either slips, it comes to me the same day. Can you both live with that?
If they push back
If one relitigates history: "I am not reopening what happened in March. If the new agreement breaks, that is a conversation. The old one is closed."
What not to say
- You two need to work it out
- I do not care who started it
- Just be professional
- One of you is going to have to change
Follow-up
Recapping our agreement so nobody has to remember it: specs Monday, feedback in the review window, escalate same day if either slips. Revisiting in three weeks.