Rebuilding Connections: How to Navigate Conflict and Repair Relationships at Work

Conflict in the workplace—as in all of life—is inevitable. In fact, if you never disagree with someone at work, said Sarah Noll Wilson, you’re doing something wrong.

Noll Wilson—founder and president of Sarah Noll Wilson Inc., a consulting firm that helps organizational leaders build and repair their teams—led a session on navigating conflict in the workplace at the recent SHRM Annual Conference & Expo 2024 (SHRM24) in Chicago. She opened her session by telling attendees that she wasn’t there to teach them that conflict is something to be avoided.

“Conflict doesn’t have to be destructive,” Noll Wilson declared. “Sometimes the teams with the highest amount of meaningful and respectful conflict are the most productive.”

Far from avoiding conflict, she said, organizational teams should embrace conflicting ideas and use those differences to come at problems from a diversity of angles, which can often lead to better products and processes.

But while conflict can be healthy, there are also unhealthy ways of dealing with it, and when things break down to the point that organizational leaders cannot heal their internal rifts, they bring in Noll Wilson.

“At their core, organizations are centers of human relationships,” she explained. “Regardless of industry, research has shown that 85% of the work companies do is collaborative in nature.”

Noll Wilson likened that work to a brick-and-mortar wall. While the bricks are the products and services an organization produces, the mortar is the work of the people who create and provide those products and services. Though the bricks may be sturdy, they are only as stable as the mortar that holds them together. “If there is erosion or a break in the wall,” she said, “it is nearly always the mortar that is at fault.”

Noll Wilson focuses her work on repairing the conversations people in conflict have with one another. Not knowing how to handle those conversations in a productive way, and repeating them over and over with both sides digging in their heels and not giving an inch, leads to resentment and impasses, which can build up over time and prevent productive work from being done.

The key to moving beyond angry conversations to areas of mutual agreement and respect, Noll Wilson said, is recognizing what she calls “the five truths of conflict”:

1. Regrettable events will happen.
2. Distrust can be contagious.
3. Conflict is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be destructive.
4. 69% of all conflict is perpetual.
5. Not all relationships need to be repaired.

“Research has shown that when two people who work together distrust one another, it has a rippling effect across the organization,” Noll Wilson explained. “If there is behavior that is unproductive, unhealthy, even toxic, and we tolerate it as a company, we are telling people that we are OK with that behavior.”

An organization’s culture is not the words that it puts on the walls, she noted. “It’s the action in the halls. Our company culture is created by what its leaders celebrate and tolerate. If a company tolerates a person doing harm, it will not be trusted by its employees.”

To prevent that from happening, Noll Wilson said, it’s important to recognize the six common characteristics of the conversations people in conflict should have:

• Inform: Explain your point of view to your co-worker.
• Advocate: Influence your colleague by speaking directly.
• Clarify: Bring clarity to the issue by asking questions and confirming answers.
• Create: Explore and come up with possible resolutions by better understanding your co-worker’s point of view.
• Support: Acknowledge your co-worker’s point of view by listening to them and validating their feelings.
• Repair: Restore your relationship by owning and apologizing for your part in the conflict.

Of course, Noll Wilson added, for a damaging conflict to be repaired, there must first be a willingness on both sides to do the work to repair it. “I’ve had to ask people, ‘Do you want to be “right” or be productive? What will the cost be to your company if you don’t repair this relationship?’ ” she said.

Ultimately, Noll Wilson reminded her audience, when we are navigating a conflict with another person, we can only control how we show up. “Ask yourself: ‘What is my role in this conflict? What is the other person thinking about me? What need of theirs is not being met, and what can I do to meet that need?’ ”