08 Jul TSLH #027: 6 Steps To Manage A Conflict Between 2 Teams
Read time: 5 minutes
Last week, I wrote about how to solve a conflict or disagreement between 2 people on your team or in an organization.
This week, I’ll discuss how to address a conflict or disagreement between 2 teams, using a tool that allows for enhanced awareness of everyone’s needs, challenges and feelings.
This is a process I have used several times and for instance once when the new finance team I had joined as a leader and the sales team would not communicate effectively together. There was a lot of finger pointing between the 2 teams; any subject became a source for conflict that got escalated quickly either to the sales executive or myself. There was very limited trust between the 2 teams, no clear communication, and no appreciation for each other’s pain points and needs.
This was a perfect example of 2 teams working completely one against the other, each team thinking that all problems were caused by the other one.
Needless to say, both teams were not performing very well, and added to that, the lack of collaboration between the 2 teams impacted the rest of the organization and the company clients significantly.
Here is a great tool/methodology you can use to work with teams that are in conflict or disagree. There are few pre-requisites to make this exercise work though:
- You need to have a good level of strong positive relationships with the leaders of both teams. In my case, I was one of the leaders and my relationship with the other was good enough that he trusted me with implementing the methodology. If the leaders don’t trust you to lead that process, my recommendation is to hire a team coach to lead that tool and exercise.
- I suggest you plan for a full-day workshop in order to work on the conflict/disagreement between the 2 teams. A good portion of that workshop will be dedicated to creating a safe space where people will feel secure enough to share, experiment, exchange with others, and do this in a way that is without blame.
- Ideally, the room should be set with chairs in a circular fashion, with enough space in the middle to have people move around. In the middle space, draw a circle with as many slices as there are teams + 1 slice. So if there are 2 teams, you want to divide your circle in 3 equal parts. If you do the exercise virtually, make sure everybody is on camera, and use tools like Jamboard or Miro to represent the room or space people are in.
Once you have the setup ready, this is how to conduct the exercise (I will purposely not address the topics of starting with an ice-breaker activity or something similar, but it can be something you add as a way to welcome people in the workshop).
Setup the rules for a good, fruitful discussion. You want to agree on what needs to be present or happening in the discussion for the workshop to be really valuable to everyone, and to allow for the conflict/disagreement to be addressed successfully.
Let people come up with rules, words, intents that will define how they will interact with each others. Typical words that will pop up here are confidentiality, respect, no judgment, no right or wrong answer, equal voice for everyone, every voice should be heard (aka deep democracy), curiosity, inquiry, awareness.
Make sure you also ask the people to clearly say (by raising their hands for instance) that they are willing to whole-heartedly be curious and aware of the other team’s world and that they are willing to leave their own views “at home”.
State the conflict/disagreement clearly. Ask each team to occupy the slice of the circle in the middle of the room that is their team/department. And then ask each department to state their position on whatever is being the source of conflict or disagreement. Let people debate (within the constraints define in the first step above! Remind people of the rules they agreed to abide to if necessary). Don’t take too much time for this part, 10 minutes max if you have 2 teams should be enough.
Each team explores their own “land” or “territory”. Send each team to a corner of the room (or a breakout room) and give them 15 to 20 minutes to discuss about their current world by reflecting on the following questions:
- “ What do you love about your team/department?”
- “What are you passionate about here?”
- “What is difficult in your team/department?”
- “What do you want members of other teams/departments to know about your team/department?”
Tell the teams to keep their findings for them, they should not be shared with other teams/departments at this stage.
Have team/departments visit each other. Start with having team/dept A move to the slice of circle of team/dept B, while B remains outside of the circle and stays silent. To the visiting team, ask these questions:
- “How does it feel to live here?”
- “What’s important here?”
- “What are the challenges and pressures?”
- “What help or support does this team/dept need from us?”
- “What are priorities in that team/dept that are not priorities for us?”
Once people of team/dept A have answered, ask team/dept B these questions:
- “What did they get right?”
- “What are critical things they missed?” – Leverage what team B discussed alone.
Ask team A to write down the one thing they want to remember about team/dept B.
Then switch and have team B visits the slice of circle of team A while team A stays outside. Do the exercise again. This entire process could take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours.
Have both teams visit the last slice of the circle together. You can think of this slice of the circle as your common world or territory. You could also define that this slice of the circle is the upper management level, for instance the executive cabinet.
When you are in this new world, both teams should be willing to leave their own views at home, behind them and put themselves in these new shoes. Ask these questions to the teams:
- “What is it like to be there?”
- “How are things different here?”
- “What are the priorities and challenges here?”
- “What is the goal in this world?”
- “What does that world need from both of you?”
- “What’s available from here?”
- If you’re imagining that this last world is the combined team, another question might be “What do you want to import from each of your worlds here?”
This process should take 30 to 45 minutes.
Brainstorm solutions. Now, ask the teams to brainstorm solutions together to address their conflict/disagreement with everything they are learned.
Make sure you mix the teams in small groups, so that everybody works on the solutions from the standpoint of the “united” team/dept and not as the siloed team they were initially. If both teams are small in size, you can just sit in circle and launch the discussion. Someone will jot down all ideas that are brought. Make sure that every voice is heard during that phase whatever structure you use.
Then ask people to sort the ideas by themes, easiness to implement (quick wins, large effort, etc.) or whatever makes sense for you. Ask the teams to vote on their top 3 initiatives (you can use sticky dots to give every team member 3 voices) and then identify the initiatives with the most votes.
Then, give the team 1 hour to work on the identified solutions (so break the group in 3 sub groups, each tackling one initiative), and ask them to design a plan to implement these solutions with owners for each step identified, as well as clear deadlines. Each group should then present their findings to the rest of the team.
Team conflicts can derail an entire organization by blocking key processes to happen or by impacting clients. Your task as a leader is to address them as soon as they are identified. Hiring a team coach to help with addressing these conflicts/disagreements, for instance in a workshop, can help provide a very strong and efficient methodology to support the team better collaborate.
I wish you a great read. I’ll see you next Saturday!
TL; DR (Too Long, Did not Read)
6 steps to manage a conflict between 2 teams
- Setup the rules for the discussion.
- State the conflict/disagreement clearly.
- Each team explores their own “land” or “territory”.
- Have team/departments visit each other.
- Have both teams visit the last slice of the circle together.
- Brainstorm solutions.
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