Chances are your business has dealt with employee conflict at some time. Realistically – employees who work together are bound to engage in conflict during the course of work.

Detecting early signs of a conflict is important because negative emotions can spread quickly and can become deeply toxic. Negative emotions and thoughts lead to stress, or even physical and mental illness for those involved. It can also affect employees watching from the sidelines.

Successful business owners and managers know how to manage workplace conflict in constructive ways. Do your managers know the difference between healthy and unhealthy conflict resolution?

Unhealthy Conflict Resolution

Unhealthy ways to treat conflict include denial of the problem, giving up rather than working towards solution, getting emotional, blaming and manipulating others to get a certain outcome. Keep an eye out for these behaviors because they will only lead to increased problems and tensions among your employees.

Healthy Conflict Resolution

Healthy conflict resolution makes use of creative ways to involve all those affected to reach a fair solution. It might be a compromise, or a win-win solution where both parties get what they want. The win-win solution requires open-mindedness and creative thinking. The last healthy conflict method, win-lose, involves one party "winning" the conflict and the other "losing," but agreeing that the next time problems arise between them, the other will give up his position and lose, allowing a win for his counterpart.

Prevention and Solution

At the end of the day, no employee relationships exist without some form of conflict present. If this is happening in your business on a regular basis, you may want to get your managers some formal training so they have conflict resolution techniques.

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