Preventative Conflict Management for Leaders

My last post focused on specific strategies to resolve workplace conflict. But let's be honest. Most of us don’t relish the idea of managing conflict, whether that occurs at work or in our personal lives. We already have enough stress, don’t we?

That’s why I want to follow up with some quick tips for being proactive about preventing conflict among your team members. If you can avoid conflicts before they even start, you’ll be saving yourself and your employees from a lot of anxiety and potential disruptions.

Here are a few steps you might consider:

From the beginning, let your team know that you value diversity of thought. However, clarify that while personal and political topics can naturally come up in private conversations, they should be kept out of team meetings and shouldn’t interfere with achieving team objectives or serving clients.

That said, disagreements over work-related topics are bound to arise in meetings and........

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