Latest / New Manager Conversations with Fexingo: First 90 Days, Managing Former Peers, and Leadership Basics / How New Managers Can Handle Team Conflict Between Direct Reports
Transcript
- Lucas: So you've been a manager for about four months. Your team is hitting its stride on deliverables, people are talking to each other in stand-ups. And then one morning you get two Slack messages within ten minutes — from two different direct reports — each telling you the other person is impossible to work with. Luna: That stomach-drop feeling. You know you have to deal with it, but nobody gave you the 'how to mediate a conflict between two people who report to you' training. Lucas: Right. And the instinct is often to pull everyone into a room and say, 'Let's talk this out.' But that can actually make things worse if you haven't done the prep work. Today I want to walk through a specific case — a new manager at a mid-size tech company — who had to handle a simmering conflict between her senior engineer and her product designer. Luna: Okay, I love a concrete example. What was the fight about? Lucas: It came down to ownership over a feature spec. The engineer felt the designer was making UI decisions without considering technical constraints. The designer felt the engineer was blocking progress by asking for endless 'feasibility reviews' before they'd commit to a timeline. Both of them were talented, both were frustrated, and the manager — let's call her Priya — was caught in the middle. Luna: And Priya's first instinct — I'm guessing — was to want to fix it fast. Maybe even take a side? Lucas: Exactly. But she did something smarter. She stepped back and asked herself three questions before she scheduled a single meeting. First: Is this a personality conflict or a process conflict? Second: Do both people see the problem the same way? And third: What outcome am I aiming for — resolution or alignment? Luna: I love the distinction between resolution and alignment. Because sometimes you can't get two people to agree, but you can get them to move forward. Lucas: That's the key insight from a 2023 study on workplace disputes published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. The researchers found that managers who tried to force a compromise — splitting the difference — actually saw recurrence of conflict within three months almost sixty percent of the time. But managers who instead reframed the problem — getting both parties to agree on a shared definition of success — cut that recurrence rate in half. Luna: So the goal isn't 'everyone gives a little.' It's 'everyone agrees on what winning looks like.' Lucas: Bingo. So Priya started with individual one-on-ones. She met with the engineer first. She didn't say, 'Tell me what's wrong with the designer.' She said, 'I want to understand what a great outcome looks like for you on this feature — and what's getting in the way.' Luna: That phrasing is important. It depersonalises the obstacle. It's not 'the designer is the problem,' it's 'something is getting in the way.' Lucas: Exactly. The engineer said he wanted the feature to be technically sound — no surprises six months later. And the obstacle was that the designer was making UI decisions without consulting engineering early enough. Then Priya met with the designer. Same framing: 'What does a great outcome look like for you? What's getting in the way?' Luna: I bet the designer said something like, 'We're moving too slow, and the engineer keeps asking for more analysis.' Lucas: Exactly. The designer said she wanted to ship quickly and iterate based on user feedback. And the obstacle was that every design decision had to go through a multi-day feasibility check that killed momentum. So now Priya had two different definitions of success — technical robustness versus speed to ship. And both were valid. Luna: So at this point, does she bring them together? Or does she try to broker a deal separately? Lucas: She brought them together, but she set the agenda carefully. She didn't start with the points of disagreement. She started with a blank whiteboard and wrote: 'What would a successful launch look like for this feature in three months?' And she made them both contribute to the answer. So the engineer said, 'No critical bugs in the first month after launch.' The designer said, 'We ship a version users can test within six weeks.' Luna: So she's getting them to build a shared definition before they even talk about who was right or wrong. That's smart. Lucas: And it worked because the process itself changed the conversation. Once they agreed that a successful launch meant both 'low bug count' and 'fast user testing,' they could start asking, 'What process would let us achieve both?' And they came up with a solution: the designer would share wireframes with the engineer before any high-fidelity mockups, and the engineer would commit to a forty-eight-hour feasibility review turnaround instead of open-ended back and forth. Luna: That's a concrete process change. And it came from them, not from Priya. That's the ideal outcome. Lucas: It is. And research from the Harvard Negotiation Project backs this up: when people co-create the solution, they're far more likely to stick with it. Priya's role wasn't to adjudicate — it was to design the conversation so that both people could see the other's constraints. Luna: One thing that strikes me: this whole approach requires the manager to stay calm and not take sides. That can be really hard if one person is more vocal or if the manager personally agrees with one side. Lucas: Absolutely. And that's where the three-question framework helps. If you ask yourself, 'Is this a process conflict or a personality conflict?' — if it's process, you can fix it with a new workflow. If it's personality, you might need to coach one person on communication style or even consider team restructuring. But most conflicts that feel personal are actually about misaligned incentives or unclear roles. Luna: What about the manager who feels like they don't have the authority to intervene? Especially if they're new and the conflict is between two senior people. Lucas: That's a real fear. But here's the thing: as the manager, you are accountable for the team's output. If two people are gridlocked, that's your problem whether you like it or not. The worst thing you can do is hope they'll sort it out themselves — because they usually don't, and the resentment just builds. Priya told me later that the hardest part was scheduling the joint meeting. She was nervous. But once she did it, both people told her they felt heard. Luna: So the act of mediating — even imperfectly — can actually build trust with the team. Lucas: Exactly. And here's a counterintuitive point: you don't have to solve it in one meeting. Priya's first joint session was about an hour, and they only got to the shared success definition. They scheduled a follow-up to design the process. That's fine. Rushing to a solution can make people feel railroaded. Luna: I think a lot of new managers worry that if they don't resolve it instantly, they're failing. But slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Lucas: That's a great mantra for this. Let me share one more specific tactic Priya used. In the joint meeting, she gave each person a notecard and asked them to write down one thing they appreciated about the other person's work. Then they read the cards out loud. It sounds cheesy, but it broke the tension because it forced them to acknowledge the other's strengths before diving into the disagreement. Luna: That's a nice human moment. It reminds both people that they're on the same team, even when they disagree. Lucas: And it works because it's not about being nice — it's about creating a psychological safety net so that when you do discuss the hard stuff, people are less defensive. Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety shows that teams where people feel safe to speak up have better performance, not just happier employees. Luna: So the notecard exercise is a tool for safety, not for sentimentality. Lucas: Right. And after that, Priya said the conversation was noticeably more collaborative. The engineer even said, 'I didn't realize you were under that much pressure to ship.' And the designer said, 'I didn't realize the codebase had so many dependencies.' That's the reframing in action. Luna: That's the win. They walked away with a better understanding of each other's world. And Priya earned credibility as a leader who can handle hard conversations. Lucas: And if today was actually useful to you — if you're a new manager thinking about how you'd handle a conflict like this, or if you've been through one and this gave you a new framework — the way these conversations stay ad-free is through listener support. Luna: Yeah, we don't run ads. We keep this show focused on real talk for people in the thick of it. If you've gotten value from any of our episodes, you can help keep it going. Lucas: It's buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's B-U-Y-M-E-A-C-O-F-F-E dot com slash F-E-X-I-N-G-O. No pressure, but it genuinely makes a difference. Luna: And we appreciate every single person who's contributed. It allows us to spend time on episodes like this one. Lucas: Okay, back to Priya's story. After that joint meeting, she didn't just walk away. She followed up with both people individually two weeks later to check in. The engineer said the new process was working — he was seeing wireframes earlier, so he could flag issues before the designer invested too much time. The designer said the forty-eight-hour turnaround was giving her confidence to plan sprints. Luna: So she closed the loop. That's a step a lot of managers skip. They mediate, they think it's solved, and then three months later the same conflict resurfaces. Lucas: Exactly. And she also brought the topic up in their next one-on-ones as a recurring agenda item. She'd ask, 'How's the collaboration going on the feature? Any new friction?' That normalised the conversation — it wasn't a crisis anymore, it was just part of how they worked. Luna: That's a great habit for any new manager: make conflict resolution an ongoing dialogue, not a one-time event. Lucas: Exactly. And here's the final insight from Priya's experience: she told me that handling this conflict actually made her a better manager overall. Because it forced her to be more deliberate about setting expectations around collaboration, and it gave her a framework she could use with other team members who had minor disagreements. Luna: So the conflict itself became a growth opportunity for her, not just for the people involved. Lucas: That's the takeaway I want to leave you with. If you're a new manager and you're dreading the first big conflict on your team, remember: it's not a sign you're failing. It's a sign you have a real team with real stakes. And if you approach it with curiosity rather than judgment, you can turn a mess into a process improvement. Luna: And you might even earn your team's trust in the process. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll see you next week. Lucas: Take care.