The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

by Camille Fournier

The Dos and Don’ts of Managing Conflict Don’t rely exclusively on consensus or voting. Consensus can appear morally authoritative, but that assumes that everyone involved in the voting process is impartial, has an equal stake in the various outcomes, and has equal knowledge of the context. These conditions are rarely met on teams where each person has different levels of expertise and different roles. As when the team voted down Charles’s work, consensus can be downright cruel. Don’t set people up for votes that you know will fail instead of taking the responsibility as a manager of delivering that bad news yourself. Do set up clear processes to depersonalize decisions. When you want to allow for group decision making, the group needs to have a clear set of standards that they use to evaluate decisions. Start with a shared understanding of the goals, risks, and the questions to answer before making a decision. When you assign the ownership for making a decision to someone on the team, make it clear which members of the team should be consulted for feedback and who needs to be informed of the decision or plan. Don’t turn a blind eye to simmering issues. Another way that conflict avoidance manifests is an inability to address problems until they’ve gone on for way too long. As a manager, if you’re giving negative feedback in the course of a performance review, it shouldn’t be a major surprise to your employee. There may be nuances that you didn’t think through until writing ...