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Dealing with Conflict in a Professional Setting

Taking ownership of your professional relationships

Part of your responsibility in any professional setting is to treat your co-workers with a base level of kindness, pleasantness and respect.

While it's okay to decide that you dislike a person from your personal life and change your behavior towards them accordingly, co-workers should always be treated respectfully for the duration of the time you work together. This is to avoid creating a hostile work environment for you, them, and/or others.

Using a curt, passive-aggressive, or accusatory tone towards your co-worker is not okay in a professional setting—instead, if you have an issue with someone, focus on addressing that and mending your professional relationship (using the techniques in the rest of this handbook!)

Key takeaway: be proactive to build and maintain positive relationships with your co-workers, even when that requires effort (such as giving them feedback or getting support from a supervisor).

Addressing specific issues with co-workers

Plan A: constructive feedback

To position yourself to give constructive feedback to a co-worker, you must first assume positive intent in their actions.

Every action someone takes can be interpreted as having positive intent, or negative intent.

For example, imagine you’re observing me live while I’m tutoring and my learner struggles with a concept I'm explaining. You think you can help. You jump in to add your own explanation of the concept, but it ends up making the learner even more confused. Here are some ways I could interpret this situation in my head:

Assuming negative intent: "Ugh, this person didn't even give me a chance to expand on my explanation before butting in! They're so assumptive and arrogant, and they probably like the sound of their own voice. I'm going to avoid working with them from now on."

Assuming positive intent: "It seems like this person was worried that the learner was lost, and they were doing their best to help. Maybe after this session I can let them know that I felt like having them jump in may have been jarring for the learner, and we can talk about how to make it smoother next time. They might also be able to give me ideas for how I could have handled the situation better."

If it's clear that your feedback comes from a place of assuming positive intent, it will be much easier for your co-worker to receive and learn from.

In delivering your feedback, try to make clear that it’s not an accusation of wrong-doing, but rather a start to a conversation about how you can collaborate more effectively in the future.

Let’s say that you’ve noticed a tutor, Kaylin, interrupts you a lot and dominates the conversation, and you feel like you can’t get a word in. Here are two ways to broach this conversation:

Accusation: “Hey Kaylin! So I was nervous to share this because I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but to be completely honest, you interrupt a lot during meetings and end up dominating the conversation. It’s getting to be annoying. I’m not the only person who feels this way, I’ve heard a bunch of other people complain about this. Can you please let other people talk in the future?”

Conversation: “Hey Kaylin! Just wanted to quickly check in about the team meeting we just had. I noticed that there were a few times where you accidentally cut people off—maybe your internet connection was slow, so you didn’t notice they were trying to speak. In the future, maybe you could try to give a little more time before you start speaking, to make sure that other people get a change to jump in? I know it can be awkward sometimes to wait in silence, but it might help some of the quieter people speak up more. What do you think?”

Notice that in the second approach, we assume that Kaylin did not mean to talk over people, and assume that Kaylin wants to have a balanced conversation. This is another example of assuming positive intent.

Key takeaway: when you give a co-worker feedback, be sure to 1) assume positive intent and 2) focus on centering the conversation around how you can collaborate better.

Exercise: think of a recent piece of feedback you wanted to give to a co-worker, but didn’t actually share. How could you bring that feedback up in a constructive way that assumes positive intent? Please feel free to DM me your response, if you want to talk about it!

Plan B: escalation to a supervisor

If you’re having an issue with a co-worker and either you don’t feel comfortable with plan A, or plan A doesn’t work well, it’s a good time to reach out to your supervisor and let them know about the issue you’re noticing.

Remember that escalating an issue to a supervisor is not “tattling on them”—it’s a professional way to get support so that you can continue working well with this person.

When sharing your concern, make sure to focus on how the issue is affecting you or your team, rather than complaining about your co-worker’s personality flaws.

Supervisors can’t change people’s personalities, but they can take the necessary actions to minimize the harm caused to the team (e.g., through feedback, trainings, new processes, or team changes).

If you don’t feel satisfied with the way your supervisor handled a situation, share this feedback with them (or in a worst case scenario, escalate it to their supervisor).

Once you’ve shared the feedback, focus on what you can do to restore positivity and trust on the team. For example:

Consider whether you may still be harboring some personal resentment towards your co-worker, and journal or take a walk to process how you feel.

Write down a list of the things you appreciate about this co-worker.

Consider what’s next for the team! What are you excited to keep working on as you move forward?

Key takeaway: if you feel that you’re not in the position to give your co-worker the feedback needed, it’s best to ask a supervisor for support.

Key principle: minimize who’s involved

In your personal life, it’s normal and often healthy to share your frustrations about people with your friends—friends can give you space to rant, which can help you feel better and gain clarity.

In your professional life, however, openly airing your frustrations about co-workers with other co-workers is likely to cause hostility and exacerbate problems.

When you rant to a co-worker, you bring them into the conflict with you, paving the way for more conflict and resentment which can outlive the original issue.

If you do this and then later get your supervisor involved, the situation will be much more difficult for them to understand and resolve.

It can also make the co-worker you have an issue with feel isolated or singled out, in a way that breaks the trust you need to have in order to function well as a team.

Generally, it’s best to stick to the rule of three: keep the matter between yourself, the person you have an issue with, and your supervisor.

If your supervisor feels like it’s best to get another perspective, they’re in a better position to reach out to other co-workers and see if they’re also affected by the issue (because they’re not emotionally tied to the situation in the same way you are).

If you do decide to share a frustration about a co-worker directly with another co-worker, think very carefully about how you can get their perspective and validate your concern without spreading hostility.

Key takeaway: minimize how many people are involved in a conflict. Gossip and ranting may be fun in friendships, but it causes major problems in a professional environment.

Tip: sometimes it’s human to want to rant about something when you’re frustrated! If you’re feeling like you just need to talk a situation out, try reaching out to a friend who’s not associated with the organization.

Listening to feedback

Receiving feedback can be difficult. Our brains want to protect us from any potential dangers, and receiving feedback can be perceived as a physical threat.

Gitlab⁠

outlined some guidelines and tips to help with this, here:

Assume positive intent. This situation is likely uncomfortable for the feedback giver as well.

Be an active listener. This is hard because our brains want us to run away. Slow down and really take the time to listen to what the other person is saying so you can reflect on it.

Be respectful. Give them your full attention.

Ask questions. It’s also okay to take time to reflect on it and then come back with questions at a later time!

Show appreciation. Say thank you and mean it.

Reflect on the feedback. Take time to reflect on what you have heard and how you may want to respond.

Make a decision. What are the most impactful actions you can take to address the feedback? Once you have an idea, talk to the person who gave you the feedback to confirm whether your next steps sufficiently address their concern.

Key takeaway: as much as you’re brain wants to run away, remind yourself that feedback is a gift! It’s valuable to learn about how our actions are perceived and felt by others, so that we can grow and have better relationships.

Note: credit to

Gitlab⁠

for most of the tips and language in this section.

The hardest part of collaboration: “disagree and commit”

Unfortunately, as you make decisions with your team, you’ll find yourself in situations where a decision feels deadlocked—there’s no decision that would make everyone happy.

No matter how much you talk about the decision, there’s no convincing the other side.

In this situation, it’s important to ask yourselves: who is the decision “owner,” who is responsible for the outcome of this decision?

If there is a designated lead, supervisor, or manager of the group, typically they are the decision owner.

If you’re working on a team without a designated lead, then your team is the collective “decision owner,” and it’s usually best to use a majority vote as the “decision maker.”

Once you’re clear on the decision owner, they should hear everyone out and then make the best decision they can.

Once the decision owner has come to a decision, it’s critical that no matter how passionately you disagree, you commit to supporting the decision as if you had made it yourself.

This can take a lot of self control, especially when the decision results in negative outcomes.

However, by supporting the team’s decision, you’ll help make sure that your team maintains its integrity and mutual trust.

These two things are invaluable, as they’ll help your team pivot together and bounce back even when a decision isn’t perfect.

Key takeaway: when you find yourself in disagreement with your team, take a step back and discern who the decision owner should be for this specific decision. If they end up making a decision you disagree with, commit yourself to aligning with the team on that decision.

Healing professional relationships after a conflict

Sometimes, despite following all of these guidelines, you may still find yourself in a messy conflict with a co-worker—that’s okay! It happens.

In this situation, it’s important to take a step back and do some work to let go of any personal feelings that came up, so that you can move forward in a professional way.

If the feelings are hard to let go of, try taking some time to reflect on how your co-worker may have perceived and experienced the situation. No matter how “wrong” they are, what are they feeling about the situation? What fears and insecurities might this situation have brought up for them?

Once you feel you can approach the relationship with a calm mind, consider what actions you can take to rebuild your trust with this co-worker.

Consider whether it would be appropriate to apologize for the role you played in the conflict.

If you do this, be sure to apologize in a way that validates their emotions, and addresses the heart of the concern that they’ve felt throughout the conflict.

Consider how you can rebuild your working relationship with the person by putting extra effort into having clear, friendly communication with them as you continue to work together.

Key takeaway: we’re all human, we all have egos, and we all make mistakes—empathy is a powerful tool for moving forward in the face of these failures, and for giving one another the space to learn from our mistakes.

Summary

We covered a lot of ground in this handbook! Here are a few of the most key takeaways, tied to Schoolhouse’s four core values:

👟 Step in: be proactive to address behaviors that are negatively affecting your team, through feedback or escalation

⛰️ Think big, start small: make sacrifices in the short term (such as disagreeing and committing) to help your team thrive in the long term

🏆 Uplift each-other: maintain a base level of respect and kindness with co-workers, and avoid gossiping about them

📚 Always be a learner: keep an open mind and leverage empathy to improve your relationships with co-workers

Exercise: What are your reflections from this handbook? What do you think will be immediately helpful to implement, vs. what do you think will take some practice to implement?

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