Marc Haine says many supervisors ignore interpersonal conflicts on their teams. He outlines three steps: recognize a problem exists, gather concrete information by asking employees directly if everything is okay, and take action to prevent the conflict from hurting business performance.
The supervisor walked into a situation and was so blinded by whatever she had going on that she didn't address, she didn't even recognize that there was a problem existed. And if she did, she really gave a good act of ignoring it. It's important that as supervisors that we take it all in. Now, let's face it, as leaders, we are there to be the eyes in case of conflict. So it's really important that you recognize that a problem exists. The second thing that we have to do is we actually have to acknowledge that there is a problem. It means that we have to get some information. We have to find out what the heck is going on. And sometimes that means talking to the individual employees themselves. At the very least, going up to them and saying, you know, is everything okay? And then the next thing we have to do is we have to make absolutely sure that we take steps to keep the issues from affecting our business.
