WorkMatters was asked to assist with a situation between two employees in a medium sized business which resulted in one of the staff members taking extended sick leave.  On meeting with the parties including the manager it was established that wilst they initially got on reasonably well, there were some unexplained ‘blow ups’ between the two which their supervisor had managed to smooth over.  The manager on monitoring the situation, noted that the ‘blow ups' were becoming more regular over petty issues and resulted in the staff avoiding each other impacting on the overall function of the team.

Following the initial assessment the following actions were taken by WorkMatters to address the situation:

• One on one conflict coaching with the parties and their supervisor to help them get to a point where they would be able to speak with each other constructively and listen to the other person’s perspective
• TMS profile for all three team members and follow up team debriefing
• One on one coaching with the two staff members in preparation for mediation
• Mediation between staff which resulted in an interim agreement to be discussed with their supervisor
• A facilitated meeting between the two staff members and their supervisor to discuss the terms of the interim agreement. All parties agreed to expansion on the interim agreement to incorporate terms which included agreed values, protocols and issue resolution procedures in the event that further problems arose.

The team members worked through some key issues which included:

• A committment to do a good job
• Acknowledging they each had very different work and communication styles which tended to be a point of conflict when they disagreed on how a particular task should be completed
• Identifying the triggers that led to conflict
• Recognising that they did not deal with conflict situations constructively and tended to escalate task related conflict into interpersonal conflict
• The supervisor realising and accepting that he was a conflict avoider and was reticent in addressing or resolving the conflict situation
• Identifcation of systemic issues that had impacted their abilty to work constructively together

Once the team members were able to recognise their own contribution to the conflict and dysfunction, they were able to set new values, protocols and systems to correct and address the previous dysfunction.