Resolving Conflict
Farhan and Priya disagree about payment retries. Farhan wants a message queue; Priya wants a scheduled job that retries from the database. The pull request thread has reached forty comments and grown sharp, and the rest of the team has gone silent.
The rule
Look past what each side wants to what each side needs.
Disagreement is normal and often healthy: two strong engineers arguing about a design usually produce a better design. It becomes a problem when it turns personal, drags on, or makes others afraid to speak.
Most work conflicts are about one of three things:
- Goals: what we are trying to achieve.
- Facts: what is true, such as how much load a system will face.
- Roles: who gets to decide.
The key move is to separate a position (what someone says they want) from a need (why they want it):
| Position | Need | |
|---|---|---|
| Farhan | "Use a queue." | Retries must survive the traffic spike on sale days. |
| Priya | "Use a database job." | Don't add infrastructure the team can't run on call at 2 am. |
Positions clash; needs often don't. And both of them need retries that never charge a customer twice. The question becomes "what serves both needs?" instead of "who wins?"
How Meera handles it:
- Take it out of public. A heated forty-comment thread is no place to settle anything.
- Talk to each person separately to hear the need behind the position without an audience. Then bring them together.
- Agree how the decision gets made: who decides, on what criteria, and by when.
- Disagree and commit. Once it is decided, everyone makes the choice work, and the concern that lost is written down and handled.
One exception: when the conflict is about conduct, such as mocking, harassment or exclusion, it is not a disagreement to mediate. Meera addresses it directly, and involves HR where company policy calls for it.
The shortcut
For each side, fill in: "They want ___ because they need ___." Then look for an option that meets both needs.
Separate conversations
Meera meets Farhan, then Priya. Each fills in "I want ___ because I need ___".
Drills
Answer fast — trust the rule.
What is the need behind Priya's position?
Where should Meera start with a heated argument in a pull request thread?
Which of these should Meera not treat as a two-sided disagreement to mediate?
The decision goes against Priya's option. What is the healthy outcome?
Remember
- Look past what each side wants to what each side needs.
- Fill in "they want ___ because they need ___" for both sides, then look for an option that serves both.
- Take heated conflict out of public, agree how the decision gets made, and handle conduct problems as conduct, not debate.