Workplace Conflict: 10 Steps to Resolve It Like a Pro

Learn how to manage workplace conflict with 10 research-backed steps, the 5 conflict resolution strategies, and brain science behind why we fight at work.

Even the greatest teams experience workplace conflict. Tension can surface during deadline crunches, big organizational decisions, mergers, acquisitions, the loss of a team member, or the arrival of a new hire. And the data shows it’s getting worse: according to The Myers-Briggs Company’s 2022 “Conflict at Work” study, more than a third of workers now deal with conflict frequently, up from about 29% in 2008.

Learning the psychology behind workplace conflict is the strongest tool you can have to protect yourself and your team when it inevitably arises. Understanding how to deal with difficult people is a key part of this process. Research suggests that conflict resolution training can improve productivity, teamwork, and employee satisfaction.

Here’s everything you need to know about workplace conflict, the brain science behind it, and ten research-backed steps to resolve it.

What Is Workplace Conflict?

Workplace conflict is a disagreement between employees, teams, or departments that arises from differences in goals, values, communication styles, or competing interests. These disagreements can range from minor misunderstandings about task assignments to deep-rooted personality clashes that disrupt an entire team’s productivity.

How Common Is Workplace Conflict?

Having issues on your team? You are not alone.

The Myers-Briggs Company’s 2022 study found that 36% of people deal with conflict “often, very often, or all the time,” a significant jump from 29% in their original 2008 report.¹ And that figure only captures frequent conflict. The vast majority of employees encounter some level of disagreement at work.

Trying to eliminate conflict entirely won’t get you very far. The solution is learning to handle it properly when it does arise.

Avoiding a toxic worker saves a company about $12,500 per year—roughly twice the value of hiring a top performer.

Sometimes conflict clusters around one particular team member. Research from Harvard Business School found that avoiding a toxic worker saves a company about $12,500 per year, roughly twice the value of hiring a top performer.² The American Psychological Association’s 2023 survey found that roughly 1 in 5 workers described their workplace as toxic.³

If you have somebody like this on your team, here are research-backed strategies:

• Set firm boundaries. Keep interactions professional and task-focused.
• Document everything. Record dates, times, and specifics of problematic incidents.
• Give direct, specific feedback. “When you interrupt me in meetings, it makes it harder for me to contribute.”
• Involve support systems. If the behavior persists, engage HR or a supervisor. Research shows that peer and organizational support significantly reduces the negative effects of toxic environments.
• Know when to escalate. If the behavior involves harassment or policy violations, formal escalation is necessary.

Workplace Conflict Costs Serious Money

The 2022 Myers-Briggs study found that managers now spend over 4 hours per week dealing with conflict, nearly double the 2.8 hours reported in 2008.¹ At an average U.S. salary, that equates to roughly $3,200 per employee per year in lost productivity.⁴

SHRM’s 2024 Civility Index found that U.S. workers experience over 81 million acts of incivility per day, costing organizations an estimated $2.7 billion daily.⁵ Workers in uncivil environments are three times more likely to be dissatisfied and twice as likely to leave.

Thankfully, this massive loss of productivity is not inevitable. All that needs to happen is for leaders to identify conflict as it occurs, work out the root cause, and address it before it escalates.

What Causes Workplace Conflict?

Updated 2024 data from the Workplace Peace Institute ranks the top causes:⁴

1. Lack of trust — 73%
2. Personality clashes — 72%
3. Lack of role clarity — 70%
4. Workplace stress — 60%
5. Heavy workloads and poor communication — 55%

Notice that the number-one cause isn’t stress or personality. It’s trust. When people don’t trust their colleagues or leaders, every minor disagreement gets interpreted through a lens of suspicion. A missed email becomes “they’re undermining me.” A scheduling change becomes “they don’t respect my time.”

Return-to-office mandates have also emerged as a significant new conflict driver, with 74% of HR leaders reporting increased conflict due to RTO tensions.⁴

Pro Tip: If your otherwise peaceful team has suddenly broken out in conflict, investigate whether there have been changes in their workload, schedule, or expectations. You might find a common complaint that’s an easy fix.

The 4 Types of Workplace Conflict

Not all conflict looks the same. Research identifies four distinct types, each requiring a different approach:⁶

Task Conflict

Disagreements about what needs to be done: goals, priorities, deliverables. This type can actually be constructive if managed well, because it prevents groupthink.

Relationship Conflict

Personal friction rooted in personality clashes, values, or communication styles. This type is almost always destructive and drains energy from the entire team.

Process Conflict

Disputes about how work gets done: workflows, resource allocation, deadlines. This carries moderate risk and can stall progress if unresolved.

Status Conflict

Power struggles over authority, credit, and hierarchy. This is high risk because it undermines team cohesion and trust.

Action Step: The next time conflict surfaces, pause and identify which type you’re dealing with before jumping to a solution. The type determines the approach.

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Your Brain During Conflict

When you detect a threat, two small structures called the amygdalae trigger a cascade of stress chemicals, including adrenaline and cortisol. This is your “fight-or-flight” response. The critical detail: your amygdala processes threats milliseconds faster than your prefrontal cortex (your rational brain). You react before you think. Psychologist Daniel Goleman calls this an “amygdala hijack.”

This activation effectively shuts down the pathway to the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for rational decisions. When you’ve just spotted a wolf outside your cave, this makes sense. But it’s far less helpful when you need your brain working logically during a workplace disagreement.

You think of the perfect comeback 20 minutes later because once cortisol drops, your hippocampus comes back online.

Here’s why you “blank” during heated arguments: the hippocampus, responsible for memory retrieval, contains the brain’s highest concentration of cortisol receptors. When cortisol floods in, it blocks the hippocampus from retrieving stored memories. Meanwhile, the amygdala simultaneously enhances emotional memory encoding. This is why after a conflict, people have vivid emotional memories (“I felt attacked”) but fuzzy factual recall.

These ancient brain mechanisms were helpful in our past, but in the modern world we need techniques to manage conflict and stop us from making hasty decisions.

What Is Conflict Management?

Conflict management is a set of methods and techniques anyone can use to handle problems within a team. Three things to keep in mind:

These skills can be learned. A 2024 survey found that 97% of participants agreed emotional intelligence is critical for conflict management.⁴

You must be motivated to address conflict. The happiness and safety of your team relies on smooth collaboration.

Facing the problem is always better than ignoring it. Organizational psychologist Liane Davey calls the accumulation of unaddressed issues “conflict debt”, and like financial debt, it accrues interest: diluted priorities, inefficient workarounds, and eventually, people quitting.

Workplace Conflict Resolution Step by Step

When you notice conflict on the team, here are ten research-backed steps to resolve it.

Step 1: Decide If It Really Needs Addressing

Does the risk of dealing with the conflict offer more reward than if you left it alone? If not, it might be worth seeing if it resolves itself.

Compare two office complaints about a stack of sticky notes taken without permission:

• Scenario A: An email asking if anyone has taken them and to please return them.
• Scenario B: An email naming a suspect, using insulting and belittling language.

Scenario B has already become problematic and should be dealt with immediately.

Step 2: Collect Background Information

You need to know everything about the situation. Try to avoid “he said, she said” and instead find the evidence at the root of the problem. Check emails, Slack messages, and project management tools for a paper trail. Documented evidence is far more useful than recollections, which are often distorted by stress.

Step 3: Determine the Nature of the Conflict

If the issue is a one-off, only the content of that specific incident needs to be discussed. If the conflict is recurring, the pattern of behavior should be talked about with all parties. Use the four types of conflict (task, relationship, process, status) to categorize what you’re dealing with.

Step 4: Consider the Best Course of Action

Is one party clearly in the wrong? Do both sides need to compromise? Has everything been a big misunderstanding? Consider everyone’s interests, keep your own bias away from your decisions, and be aware of any legal responsibilities you may have.

Step 5: Find Somewhere Neutral for the Meetings

Avoid your own office for conflict resolution, as this will immediately put people on edge. Choose a neutral meeting room with privacy and enough time to discuss everything without feeling rushed.

Step 6: Use the 6-Second Reset Before You Mediate

When the amygdala sounds the alarm during conflict, it takes roughly 6 seconds for the initial surge of stress chemicals to begin dissipating.⁷ Use this technique yourself, and teach it to the people involved:

1. Pause. Don’t speak. Don’t type. Just stop.
2. Breathe. Take one slow breath, making the exhale longer than the inhale (inhale for 2 counts, exhale for 4).
3. Name it. Silently label what you’re feeling: “I’m feeling defensive right now.”

That third step is backed by neuroscience from UCLA psychologist Matthew Lieberman. His fMRI studies found that when people put feelings into words, amygdala activity dropped significantly while the prefrontal cortex lit up.⁸

Action Step: Set this as a ground rule at the start of every conflict meeting: “If anyone needs a moment to collect their thoughts, take it.”

Step 7: Know How to Mediate a Conflict

Keep these principles in mind:

• Lay down the rules. Ask everyone to practice active listening without interruption.
• Encourage curiosity over certainty. Ask all parties to set aside preconceived ideas.
• Use open-ended questions that don’t impose answers, and discourage blaming.
• Find common ground. Before diving into disagreements, ask both parties what they do agree on.

DDI’s 2024 research found that 49% of emerging leaders fail to demonstrate effective conflict management skills.⁹ Before mediating, write down the specific problem in one sentence. If you can’t do that, you’re not ready to mediate.

Step 8: Be Tactful

Be sympathetic in such meetings. Phrases such as “I understand that has been difficult” help set a positive tone. Pay attention to body language cues and listen to what people are saying without approaching the issue with preconceived ideas.

As HBR conflict expert Amy Gallo recommends: frame the conflict as a shared problem. “It’s not me versus another person. It’s about the problem we’re trying to solve.”

Step 9: Address Gossip Before It Spreads

Research shows that about 50% of employees say gossip reduces morale, and 47% say it fosters distrust.¹⁰ When mediating, ask directly whether rumors have been circulating.

Interesting nuance: Research from the University of New Mexico found that positive gossip actually reduces social loafing and improves team performance.¹¹ It’s not gossip itself that’s the problem—it’s negative gossip.

Action Step: After resolving a conflict, set a team norm: “We talk to people, not about them.”

Step 10: Choose the Right Conflict Resolution Strategy

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) identifies five strategies.¹² This step is about knowing which to use in each scenario.

The best conflict strategy isn’t always collaboration—it’s choosing the right approach for the specific situation.

Competing (Win-Lose)

One side wins, the other loses. Use for: emergencies, non-negotiable safety issues, or when quick decisive action is essential. Use sparingly.

Collaborating (Win-Win)

Both parties work together to find a solution that fully satisfies everyone’s core needs. Unlike compromising, you find a new solution rather than splitting the difference. Use for: complex, high-stakes problems where the relationship matters long-term.

Compromising (Partial Win-Partial Win)

Both sides sacrifice some of their desires for the sake of resolution. Use for: time-sensitive disputes or when both sides have valid but incompatible preferences.

Avoiding (Lose-Lose)

Withdrawing from the situation entirely. Use for: trivial issues or cooling-off periods. Avoiding serious conflict will cause more problems long-term—this is where Davey’s “conflict debt” accumulates.

Accommodating (Lose-Win)

One party gives in to the other’s wants. Use for: situations where the issue matters more to the other person, or when preserving the relationship is more important than winning the point.

Caution: Some individuals accommodate due to lack of confidence. If you think this has happened, encourage a more collaborative resolution instead.

When Conflict Drives Innovation

Here’s something most articles won’t tell you: some conflict is good for your team. The relationship between conflict and performance follows an inverted U-shape—too little leads to groupthink, too much causes gridlock, and an intermediate level is optimal.

Conflict becomes productive when psychological safety, shared goals, and trust are present. Harvard Business School professor Linda Hill calls this “creative abrasion”: heated but constructive arguments that create a portfolio of alternatives.

Pixar’s “Braintrust” system is a famous example: directors present work-in-progress films to peers who provide candid, clashing feedback. Two rules make it work: the Braintrust has no authority (the director decides what to change), and members focus on diagnosing problems, not prescribing solutions.¹³

Workplace Conflict Takeaway

The fact that you’re reading this article means you’re already doing the right thing. Here are your key action points:

1. Identify the type of conflict (task, relationship, process, or status) before choosing a strategy.
2. Use the 6-Second Reset before responding in any heated moment: pause, breathe, name the emotion.
3. Choose the right Thomas-Kilmann strategy for the situation.
4. Address gossip directly by setting team norms about talking to people, not about them.
5. Remember that some conflict is productive. The goal isn’t zero conflict—it’s conflict that makes the team stronger.
6. Watch for conflict debt. The issues you avoid today become the crises of next month.

You might also find these helpful:

• How to Deal with Difficult People
• Conflict Resolution Skills