The first time I came across a team that had several high-performing staff, my immediate inclination was that this project was going to be a resounding success.

I was wrong.

Almost immediately the high performers started getting into conflicts.

Although I was not intricately involved in the project, I was asked to mediate.

I will candidly tell you, I did not know what to do.

There were legitimate issues, concerns and ideas on all sides. Everyone knew the end goal; they just could not agree to the path to get there.

This stalled the project even before it began, and the tension was high to the extent that the other team members were ready to quit the project, and they did.

I was not able to mitigate the conflicts, and the project never moved forward.

It took me many years to diagnose what happened and fast forward to now, I have better insight as to what happened.

Aside from the obvious, egos, ambition, different styles, I learned more about conflicts in general from first-hand experience.

In particular, how conflicts can arise.

First, if quality is not defined in the scope of a project, different people will have different definitions as to the standard of work required.

Next, high performing staff may be great individual performers yet not wired to work in teams. So, perhaps the team composition does not necessarily need so many people wired to work alone. In other words, conflicts can arise when everyone wants to lead.

Next is something I call conflict of expectation. This is something I have come across and written about in the past.

Tensions can rise when someone feels one team member isn’t pulling their weight or one person expects something from the other person, and they don’t even know about it.

Linked to this is what I call conflict of task. Meaning someone wants a certain task done a certain way and another person either does not understand this or does not want to do it the way the other wants.

All of this I like to summarize with a simple phrase, who does what?

For these reasons, I now always suggest teams to have a framework to address conflicts before starting on a project.

I also suggest what I call getting ahead of questions with answers.

Everything should be documented and available for the entire project team to see at any time.

The who does what and the questions and answers should also be listed and transparently available.

The beauty of this approach is that once the team has this in place, when conflicts arise, and they will, the team has a tool to address to conflict and move on towards the end goal.

The framework should also provide opportunity for everyone to contribute and in this way, everyone might feel valued for their unique contributions and hopefully conflicts are less likely to arise.

Going back in time, what I would have done is work with the team to create a framework to address conflict and discuss the different types of conflict I mention above.

I would have also looked at the strength of the individuals and perhaps not everyone on the team needed to be a high performer in the same realm.

Team conflicts happen, yet teams can get past it by addressing it with a framework and then playing nice.