How to Resolve Conflict Between Two Employees

Conflict between two people on a team rarely stays between two people. It shows up in meetings that go quiet, in work that gets routed around someone, and in the rest of the team picking sides or simply getting tired. Leaders often hope it will work itself out, and occasionally it does. More often it hardens, and by the time it reaches you formally, both people have a long list.

The cost is real. SHRM found that 53% of workers who saw or experienced incivility at work said it hurt their mental health, and those who got little support from their manager afterward were nearly 48% more likely to look for another job. Conflict that a leader ignores becomes a retention problem.

The method I teach for sales objections, LAARC, turns out to be one of the best tools I know for this too. Listen, Acknowledge, Ask, Respond and Confirm. The setting is different, but the human need is the same: people want to feel heard before they are willing to move.

Listen: meet with each person separately

Start with private conversations, one person at a time. If you bring two upset people into a room before either one feels heard, you will spend the meeting refereeing. Let each person tell their side fully, and resist the urge to correct, defend the other person or jump to a solution. Most people do not listen to understand, they listen to reload, and the person in front of you can feel the difference.

Take notes on specifics: what happened, when, and what it affected. You are looking for patterns and facts underneath the feelings.

Acknowledge: show you understand

Acknowledgment is not agreement. You can tell someone that you understand why that meeting left them frustrated without agreeing that their coworker did it on purpose. Repeating back what you heard in your own words is surprisingly calming, the same way it is reassuring when someone reads your order back to you. When people feel acknowledged, they become much more open to what you say next.

Ask: find the real issue

What people complain about first is often not the real issue. A fight over who answers the phone might really be about one person feeling that their work is not respected, or about two different ideas of what the job even is. Keep asking gentle questions until you reach the root. What would a good working relationship look like to you? What do you need from them that you are not getting? What do you think they would say they need from you?

Very often, both people describe the same problem from opposite sides, and that is where resolution starts.

Respond: bring them together

Once you understand both sides, bring the two people together with a clear purpose: not to decide who was right, but to agree on how they will work together from here. Share the common ground you heard, because people are often surprised to learn the other person wants many of the same things. Keep the conversation focused on behavior and work, such as how handoffs happen, how disagreements get raised and who owns what, rather than on personalities.

Handle one issue at a time. You cannot solve five problems at once, so start with the one that matters most and earn the right to the next.

Confirm: lock in the agreement

A conversation is not finished just because both people nodded. Write down what each person agreed to, share it with both, and set a follow-up date a week or two out. At that check-in, notice and say out loud what is better. If the agreement is not holding, that is the point to talk about accountability directly.

Address conflict early and consistently. Leaders shape culture whether they mean to or not, and choosing not to address something is still a choice the whole team sees. You can learn the full method in The LAARC Method.