Friction goes hand in hand with teamwork. Every day, people striving to work hand in hand have to contend with diverging interests, the risk of misunderstandings and all manner of factual constraints. These sources of tension are not to be taken lightly, or the situation could get worse. People could then feel that they are being held hostage68. To iron out difficulties, leaders need to master emotional intelligence, the art of negotiation and feedback management. It's important to
remember that disagreements, when well managed, are engines of growth: teams emerge strengthened, with proven capacities for resilience and introspection. In fact, conflict management specialists tell us that you shouldn't hesitate to get to grips with problems, in order to gain in efficiency...

• Base your conflict management on common rules. Your team needs to have a sense of common ground. So your approach needs to reflect their way of thinking. Help them establish standards, mechanisms and a unified language for tackling problems.
• Create a feedback culture and rituals, which you can then embed in routines. Plan special meetings to allow your team to put the fish on the table, as George Kohlrieser, professor at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, puts it. The principle is simple: during these sessions, which can also take place face-to-face, everyone is allowed to talk about irritating subjects.
• Train your team in non-violent communication (NVC)69. Give them opportunities to practice feedback using NVC principles or another method applicable to your situation (e.g. Situation-Behavior-Impact, or SBI).
• Adopt an adult-to-adult approach to conflict management. You can draw inspiration from the transactional analysis model70 by American psychiatrist Eric Berne. Berne distinguishes three ego states: Parent, Adult and Child. Typically, in the event of conflict, there is a risk of slipping from an adult-adult relationship to a parent-child relationship (with the child either rebelling or submitting). Talk to your team about this, highlighting the value of this model for conflict management.
• Get help. Seek help from a neutral third party (e.g. mediation specialist, ombudsman, work psychologist, coach) before the situation escalates. The pictogram below schematizes the unhealthy psychological games (involving three interchangeable roles: victim, persecutor and savior) that are frequently observed in conflicts. This model is known as Karpman's dramatic triangle71.

• Deny or ignore the conflict, or let the team sink. Dysfunctional teams are often too permissive. But they can also suffer from a kind of allergy to conflict: they strive to maintain what I call artificial harmony at all costs. The group is in danger of becoming stuck in its development.
• The spiral of conflict. Excessive passivity risks opening the door to escalating violence. Try to preserve opportunities for dialogue, so that people can see a win-win outcome.
• An exaggerated expression of power and authority. In a context of conflict, an overly strict attitude could lead to incivilities within teams: bullying, sarcasm, ranting and so on. People have been known to throw objects across offices...
• The under-expression of power and authority. Leaders who use the power of their status wisely provide their teams with the clear-sightedness they need to resolve conflicts. In this way, they help to reduce errors and inefficiencies.
• Turning to manipulation and inauthenticity. Unfortunately, there are leaders who show preferences, divide and conquer, badmouth people behind their backs and/or criticize them in the presence of the hierarchy. Or they wallow in a passive-aggressive attitude, snubbing colleagues and not bothering to answer their questions.