Workplace Conflict: 12 Steps to Resolve It Like a Pro

Even the greatest teams experience workplace conflict. And the data shows it’s getting worse: according to The Myers-Briggs Company’s 2022 “Conflict at Work” study, more than a third of workers now deal with conflict frequently, up from about 29% in 2008.¹

Learning the psychology behind workplace conflict is the strongest tool you can have to protect yourself and your team when it inevitably arises. Understanding how to deal with difficult people is a key part of this process.

This is why I’ve put together everything you need to know about conflict, the brain science behind it, and the techniques you can use to manage it within your team. It covers both jobs: the moves to make when you’re IN the conflict, and the scripts to follow when you’re refereeing someone else’s.

A note before the tips: If conflict at work has you struggling to find the help you need, please note that all content found on this website is not to be considered professional medical advice. It is always best to consult a doctor or licensed therapist with any questions or concerns in regards to your physical or mental health. For a good resource for therapists, you can check out Mental Health America’s helpful list.

What Is Workplace Conflict?

Workplace conflict is a disagreement between employees, teams, or departments that arises from differences in goals, values, communication styles, or competing interests. It can be a one-off mix-up about who owns a task, or a deep-rooted clash that drags down an entire team’s productivity.

How Common Is Workplace Conflict?

Having issues on your team? You are NOT alone.

The Myers-Briggs Company’s 2022 study found that 36% of people deal with conflict “often, very often, or all the time,” a jump from 29% in their original 2008 report.¹

And that only captures frequent conflict. Almost everyone runs into some disagreement at work. In fact, only 9% said they never have to deal with it!²

Trying to eliminate conflict entirely won’t get you very far. The solution is learning to handle it properly when it does arise.

Avoiding a toxic worker saves a company about $12,500, roughly twice the value of hiring a superstar.

Sometimes conflict clusters around one particular team member. Research from Harvard Business School found that avoiding a toxic worker saves a company about $12,500, roughly twice the value of hiring a superstar.³ The person quietly pushing good people out the door costs MORE than your best hire earns you!

Did a face just pop into your head? If you have somebody like this on your team, here are research-backed strategies:

• Set firm boundaries. Keep interactions professional and task-focused.
• Document everything. Record dates, times, and specifics of problematic incidents.
• Give direct, specific feedback. “When you interrupt me in meetings, it makes it harder for me to contribute.”
• Involve support systems. If the behavior persists, engage HR or a supervisor.
• Know when to escalate. If the behavior involves harassment or policy violations, formal escalation is necessary.

Our guide to toxic people goes further on the personality side of this.

Workplace Conflict Costs Serious Money

How much of last week went to conflict? Count the email you rewrote three times, the meeting after the meeting, and the hallway vent session…

It adds up. The 2022 Myers-Briggs study found that people now spend over 4 hours per week dealing with conflict (4.34, to be exact), about double the 2.1 hours its predecessor companies found in 2008.² That’s half a workday, EVERY week!

Those hours aren’t free, either. SHRM’s Q3 2025 Civility Index puts the cost of incivility at work, in lost productivity and absenteeism, at roughly $2.1 billion a day for U.S. organizations.⁴

Thankfully, this massive loss of productivity is not inevitable. All that needs to happen is for leaders to identify conflict as it occurs, work out the root cause, and address it before it escalates.

Easy, right? (Okay, not completely easy, but certainly possible—and I’ll teach you how as you read this article.)

What Causes Workplace Conflict?

2024 survey data from the Workplace Peace Institute ranks the top causes⁵

1. Lack of trust: 73%
2. Personality clashes: 72%
3. Lack of role clarity: 70%
4. Workplace stress: 60%
5. Heavy workloads and destructive communication: 55% each

Notice what’s at number one? It isn’t stress or personality. It’s trust.

When people don’t trust their colleagues or leaders, every minor disagreement gets read with suspicion. A missed email becomes “they’re undermining me.” A scheduling change becomes “they don’t respect my time.”

Then there’s the commute… Return-to-office mandates have also become a conflict trigger, with 74% of HR leaders naming RTO mandates as a source of conflict.⁶

Pro Tip If your otherwise peaceful team has suddenly broken out in conflict, investigate whether there have been changes in their workload, schedule, or expectations. You might find a common complaint that’s an easy fix!

The 4 Types of Workplace Conflict

Most workplace fights fall into one of four types: task, relationship, process, and status (a fight over who gets respect in the group).

Sorting them is quicker than it sounds. Say a teammate keeps redoing your slides (so annoying!). That one complaint could be any of three fights:

Which one is yours? It’s usually obvious once the question is on the table.

Task Conflict

Disagreements about what needs to be done: goals, priorities, deliverables. This type can actually be constructive if managed well, because it prevents groupthink. In a big review of team research, task conflict showed no strong negative link to how a team performed.⁷

Surprised? We were too!

Relationship Conflict

Personal friction rooted in personality clashes, values, or communication styles. This type is almost always destructive and drains energy from the entire team. In the same meta-analysis, it went with worse group outcomes, again and again.⁷

Process Conflict

Disputes about how work gets done: workflows, resource allocation, deadlines. Who goes first? Who gets the final word?

This type is moderate risk and can stall progress if unresolved.

Status Conflict

Power struggles over authority, credit, and hierarchy. This is high risk because it can damage team sentiment and trust.

Status fights also drag down team performance by cutting how much people share what they know.⁸ It’s also the easiest one to mistake for an ordinary argument about the work.

Action Step: The next time conflict starts, pause and identify which type you’re dealing with before jumping to a solution. Write the conflict down as one sentence, then ask what would have to change for it to stop being a problem:

• A different decision? That’s process.
• A different opinion? That’s task.
• A different person? That’s relationship.
• A different pecking order? That’s status.

Your Brain During Conflict

When you detect a threat, two small structures called the amygdalae trigger a cascade of stress chemicals, including adrenaline and cortisol. This is your “fight-or-flight” response.

That alarm can go off before your prefrontal cortex (your rational brain) has weighed in, so you react BEFORE you think. Ever fired off a reply and regretted it a second later? That’s the alarm talking!

The book Emotional Intelligence popularized a name for this: an “amygdala hijack.”

Even mild stress you can’t control can quickly take the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for rational decisions, partly offline.⁹ When you’ve just spotted a wolf outside your cave, this makes sense. It’s a lot less useful when what you needed was a calm sentence about the Q3 numbers.

You think of the perfect comeback after the argument is over, once the stress has worn off.

Ever “blanked” mid-argument? Stress right before or during recall makes memory worse.¹⁰ Meanwhile the amygdala helps lock in emotionally charged memories.¹¹ That’s why the feeling from a fight (“I felt attacked!”) can stay vivid long after the argument ends… while what was actually said goes blurry.

I once came up with a GREAT reply to a jab from a meeting… two days later, in the shower. (You can’t send a comeback two days late, by the way. Believe me, I considered it.)

These ancient brain mechanisms were helpful in our past, but in the modern world we need techniques to manage conflict and stop us from making hasty decisions. So what do those techniques look like?

What Is Conflict Management?

Conflict management is a set of methods and techniques anyone can use to handle problems within a team.

These skills can be learned. Sorting a conflict by type, pausing before you reply, running a meeting with ground rules… that’s all procedure, and procedure can be taught! So is the emotional intelligence that keeps you calm while you do it.

You must be motivated to address conflict. The happiness and safety of your team relies on smooth collaboration.

It’s also a skill people rate highly in a manager. In the 2022 Myers-Briggs study, 98% of respondents rated conflict handling as an extremely or very important leadership skill.² (Step 7 has the other half of that story: how many would-be managers fall short.)

Facing the problem is always better than ignoring it. The book The Good Fight calls the accumulation of unaddressed issues “conflict debt”, and like financial debt, it accrues interest: diluted priorities, inefficient workarounds, and eventually… people quitting.

Workplace Conflict Resolution Step by Step

When you notice conflict on the team, I’ve compiled this step-by-step guide to make the process go as smoothly as it can.

Step 1: Decide If It Really Needs Addressing

Does the risk of dealing with the conflict offer more reward than if you left it alone? If not, it might be worth seeing if it resolves itself.

Compare two office complaints about a stack of sticky notes taken without permission:

• Scenario A: An email asking if anyone has taken them and to please return them.
• Scenario B: An email naming a suspect, using insulting and belittling language.

Scenario A can sort itself out. Scenario B already stopped being about stationery… deal with it today.

Step 2: Collect Background Information

You need to know everything about the situation. Try to avoid “he said, she said” and instead find the evidence at the root of the problem. Check emails, Slack messages, project management tools… anything with a timestamp.

Why? Memories get fuzzy under stress. Timestamps don’t!

Step 3: Determine the Nature of the Conflict

If the issue is a one-off, only the content of that specific incident needs to be discussed. If the conflict is recurring, the pattern of behavior should be talked about with all parties. A one-off and a six-month pattern are NOT the same meeting.

Use the four types of conflict (task, relationship, process, status) to categorize what you’re dealing with.

Step 4: Consider the Best Course of Action

Is one party clearly in the wrong? Do both sides need to compromise? Has everything been a big misunderstanding?

Consider everyone’s interests, keep your own bias away from your decisions, and be aware of any legal responsibilities you may have.

The best way to find out? Talk to each person alone first. Separate conversations get you the version people won’t say in front of each other, and they let someone cool down without an audience.

Who goes first? Usually whoever came to you. Hearing them out early stops them recruiting the rest of the team while they wait.

And keep an open mind. Your first read is only a hunch until both of them have talked!

Step 5: Find Somewhere Neutral for the Meetings

Not your office! Your own office will put people on edge before anyone says a word. Choose a neutral meeting room with a door and enough time on the calendar that nobody’s checking a watch.

Step 6: Pause and Name It Before You Mediate

A short deliberate pause before you respond is the cheapest de-escalation tool there is, and what you do inside it matters more than its exact length. Use this technique yourself, and teach it to the people involved:

1. Pause. Stop talking and typing for a moment.
2. Breathe. Take one slow breath, making the exhale longer than the inhale (inhale for 2 counts, exhale for 4).
3. Name it. Silently label what you’re feeling: “I’m feeling defensive right now.”

That third step is grounded in brain-imaging research at UCLA. When people put a word to the emotion in an upsetting image, activity in the amygdala dropped while a region of the prefrontal cortex lit up.¹² So think of naming it as a quick way to quiet the alarm while you decide what to say.

Action Step: Set this as a ground rule at the start of every conflict meeting: “If anyone needs a moment to collect their thoughts, take it.”

Step 7: Know How to Mediate a Conflict

Keep these principles in mind:

• Lay down the rules. Ask everyone to practice active listening without interruption. Say it out loud at the top: “Two rules. One person talks at a time, and nobody gets interrupted. And if either of you needs a minute, take it.”
• Encourage curiosity over certainty. Ask all parties to set aside preconceived ideas.
• Use open-ended questions that don’t impose answers, and discourage blaming. “What would need to change for this to work?” beats “Don’t you think you could have handled that better?”
• Find common ground. Before you get into the disagreements, ask both parties what they do agree on. It’s almost never nothing! The deadline matters, the client is difficult, the handoff is unclear.

This is harder than it looks!

DDI’s 2024 assessments of more than 70,000 manager candidates found that 49% fail to demonstrate effective conflict management skills, and only 12% show high proficiency.¹³

Before mediating, write down the specific problem in one sentence. If you can’t do that, you’re not ready to mediate.

Step 8: Be Tactful

Be sympathetic in such meetings. Sympathy costs nothing and changes the temperature.

Phrases such as “I understand that has been difficult” help set a positive tone. Pay attention to body language cues and listen to what people are saying without approaching the issue with preconceived ideas.

Frame the conflict as a shared problem. It’s the first principle of the negotiation classic Getting to Yes: separate the people from the problem.

Picture three things at the table: you, the other person, and the problem you’re both trying to solve. Suddenly… it’s two people against one problem!

Step 9: Address Gossip Before It Spreads

In a LiveCareer survey of U.S. workers, about half said gossip hurts morale, and 47% said it fuels tension and distrust.¹⁴ When mediating, ask directly whether rumors have been circulating. (Spoiler: they usually have.)

Action Step: After resolving a conflict, set a team norm: “We talk to people, not about them.” Then model it, because the team will copy what you do with the next complaint.

Step 10: Choose the Right Conflict Resolution Strategy

The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) identifies five strategies.¹⁵ This step is about knowing which to use in each scenario.

Which one do you reach for without thinking? That’s usually the one worth watching.

Competing works in an emergency. Collaborating works when the relationship has to survive the outcome.

Competing (Win-Lose)

One side wins, the other loses. Use for: emergencies, non-negotiable safety issues, or when quick decisive action is essential. Use sparingly.

Collaborating (Win-Win)

Both parties work together to find a solution that fully satisfies everyone’s core needs. Collaborating produces a new solution that neither side walked in with. Use for: complex, high-stakes problems where the relationship matters long-term. It’s the most expensive mode in hours… and usually worth every one of them.

Compromising (Partial Win-Partial Win)

Both sides sacrifice some of their desires for the sake of resolution. Use for: time-sensitive disputes or when both sides have valid but incompatible preferences.

Avoiding (Lose-Lose)

Withdrawing from the situation entirely. Use for: trivial issues or cooling-off periods. Avoiding serious conflict will cause more problems long-term. This is where “conflict debt” accumulates.

Accommodating (Lose-Win)

One party gives in to the other’s wants. Use for: situations where the issue matters more to the other person, or when preserving the relationship is more important than winning the point.

Caution: Some individuals accommodate due to lack of confidence. If you think this has happened, encourage a more collaborative resolution instead.

Our advice? Use the modes to notice what you default to under pressure, then pick one on purpose.

And tell people which one you picked! “I’m going to overrule this one because we ship Friday” beats leaving them to guess.

Step 11: Write the Agreement Down Before Anyone Leaves

A good meeting fades fast.

I once walked out of one of these meetings sure we’d agreed on Thursday. My teammate was just as sure we’d said Friday!

The fix? Write the agreement down BEFORE anyone stands up. Keep it short enough to fit in one Slack message:

1. Who owns what. Names and tasks, so nobody has to guess who “we” meant.
2. By when. A day and a time.
3. What happens next time it gets heated. The one move both people agreed to try.
4. When you’ll check in. A date on the calendar.

Here’s what that looks like for two teammates who kept clashing over a client deck:

Priya owns the client deck and sends it by Thursday at noon. Marcus reviews only the numbers slide and sends his edits in one message. If we disagree on a slide, we take it to a 10-minute call instead of arguing in the doc comments. We check in on the 14th.

Read it out loud and ask each person, “Is this what you agreed to?” A “yes” in the room is much easier to point back to than two competing memories!

Action Step: Send the note to both people at once, in the same message, within an hour of the meeting. Ask each of them to reply “agreed.”

Step 12: Book the Check-In Before the Meeting Ends

Three weeks after a tidy resolution, the same two people are back to sending each other “per my last email” notes. Nobody called a meeting, so nobody noticed.

Sound familiar?

A check-in catches that relapse while it’s still small.

Our advice? Open your calendar before the meeting breaks up and book 15 minutes with both people, about two weeks out. (Booking it “later” is how it never gets booked.)

When the day comes, three questions are enough:

• “What’s working from what we agreed?”
• “What’s slipped?”
• “Is there anything you haven’t said yet that you’d want me to know?”

It’s common for the real issue to come out only after people have watched you follow through once.

Slipped? Go back to Step 11 and rewrite the agreement.

Holding? Say so out loud! People rarely get told that a problem they fixed stayed fixed.

Raise It With a Coworker (or Your Boss) in Three Sentences

Jordan types a message to the coworker who keeps presenting Jordan’s analysis in meetings as their own. Jordan reads it back, deletes it, and then deletes the softer version too.

If you’ve ever sat on a conflict like that, you are not alone. (I’ve drafted that exact message more than once, so no judgment here.) In interviews about speaking up at work, most employees could name a time they’d stayed quiet about an issue with someone above them. The most common reason was fear of being seen negatively and damaging the relationship.¹⁶

So what do you actually say? An opener short enough to say in one breath. Three sentences:

1. Name the moment. One specific thing that happened, with no adjectives attached. “In Tuesday’s client meeting, you walked through the churn analysis I built.”
2. Name the cost. What it did to you or the work. “When my name doesn’t come up, the client assumes I’m not on the account.”
3. Ask a question. Then STOP talking. “Can we figure out how we present shared work going forward?”

Work Out What They Want First

Some people give advice to put yourself in their shoes and feel what they’re feeling. But does that actually work?

In negotiation experiments, one side got a short instruction first.

Some were told to THINK about what the other party was thinking and wanted. Others were told to feel what the other party was feeling. A third group got no instruction at all.

The thinkers beat that third group! A whopping 76% of their negotiations ended in a workable deal, against 39%. The feelers held their own on the size of the deal… but lost on their own share of it.¹⁷

Ouch.

Try This: Before the conversation, write down two things: what they want, and what they’re worried about losing. Both are guesses! Write them anyway, because a wrong guess you can correct beats walking in with none.

When the Conflict Is With Your Boss

Is pushing back on your boss actually risky? A little, yes.

When employees spoke up in challenging ways, managers rated them as worse performers, and backed their ideas less, than employees who spoke up in support of how things were already done.¹⁸

What explained the drop? How threatened the challenge made the manager feel, and how disloyal it made the employee look.

The same three sentences work upward with one change: the cost gets tied to something your boss ALREADY cares about, like a client, a deadline, or the team’s reputation.

“Last week the Henderson project moved to another team, and I found out from the client. I walked into Thursday’s call unprepared, and I think the client noticed. Could we set up a way for me to hear about changes like that first?”

• Book the time. The same objection raised in a standup in front of six people, and raised in a booked 15 minutes, are two different events for your manager. A neutral subject line like “quick question about project handoffs” helps.
• Bring the alternative. “This timeline won’t work” is a complaint. “This timeline won’t work, and here are the two things I’d cut to hold the date” is a contribution.
• Aim at the thing you both want. A concern about the launch is much easier for a manager to hear than a concern about their judgment.

Pro Tip If your boss gets defensive, skip defending your three sentences. Ask, “What am I missing?” and listen to the whole answer. It usually tells you more than winning the point would.

If the pushback is about how your manager works rather than what they decided, our guide to dealing with a micromanager is the better starting point.

Move a Heated Thread Off Slack After Two Replies

“Sure, great idea.”

Is that agreement or sarcasm? Across a table, you’d hear it instantly. In a Slack thread, the reader has to guess… and a guess made in a bad mood rarely comes out generous.

Quick gut check. How many of your last five disagreements at work actually happened out loud?

A perfectly sincere “Sure, great idea” can turn into a days-long thread. So if a tense thread reaches its THIRD reply, that’s the moment to move it to a call:

“I think we’re reading each other wrong over text. Got 10 minutes to talk it through?”

That message keeps your position intact… and moves the argument somewhere both of you can hear tone. (And if the other person says no, the thread still stops getting longer and meaner.)

I keep a two-reply rule on chat for myself, and it has saved me from at least one very regrettable paragraph!

After the call, a one-line summary back in the thread lets everyone who watched the argument see how it ended. Our guide to virtual team communication covers the remote version in more detail.

Action Step: Look through your open threads today. If one is past its second tense reply, send the call message.

How to Repair It Afterward

The argument’s over. But you both still have to work together on Monday morning!

Researchers had people rate written apologies, and the six parts an apology can contain DON’T count equally.

Taking responsibility mattered most, and offering to fix it came second. Asking to be forgiven mattered least… and apologies with more of the parts rated better, with all six rated best of all.¹⁹

Notice what’s missing from the top of that list? Your intentions. “I didn’t mean it like that” explains you, and the person waiting on an apology is thinking about themselves.

Here’s a version with the parts that matter most:

“I cut you off twice in the review yesterday, and then I argued with your numbers in front of the client. That one’s on me. I was worried about running over and I handled it badly. I’d like to go back to the client and tell them the forecast was yours. What else would make this right?”

Responsibility, explanation, repair, and a question that hands them the next move. Our full guide to how to apologize has more versions for harder situations.

Pro Tip Treat the apology as the thing that reopens the door. The next six weeks of acting like you meant it is what rebuilds the trust.

There’s a selfish case for it too! The colleague you repair things with is the one you can still ask for a favor in two years.

When Conflict Makes a Team Better

Can a fight actually make a team BETTER? Some can!

Some conflict is good for your team. For disagreements about the work, the relationship follows an inverted U-shape: teams with a moderate amount came up with more innovative work than teams with very little or a lot.²⁰ Too little leads to groupthink, too much causes gridlock.

Conflict becomes productive when psychological safety, shared goals, and trust are present. Teams do best when their norms welcome arguments about the work and shut down personal attacks.²¹ The book Collective Genius calls this “creative abrasion”: heated but constructive arguments that create a portfolio of alternatives.

Pixar’s “Braintrust” system is a famous example: directors present work-in-progress films to peers who provide candid, clashing feedback.²² One rule makes it work: the Braintrust has no authority, so it can’t tell the director what to do, and the director never has to walk in defensive.²³

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 5 conflict management approaches?

The five approaches come from the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI): Competing (win-lose, best for emergencies), Collaborating (win-win, best for complex problems), Compromising (partial win for both sides, best under time pressure), Avoiding (withdrawing, best for trivial issues), and Accommodating (yielding, best when the issue matters more to the other person).

What are the four types of workplace conflict?

Task conflict is disagreement about the work itself. Relationship conflict is personal friction. Process conflict is disagreement about how work gets divided and sequenced. Status conflict is a fight over who gets respect and credit in the group. Relationship and process conflict reliably go with worse team outcomes, while task conflict shows no strong negative link on average and does best when it stays off the personal.

How do you handle conflict in the workplace as a supervisor?

Start by collecting background information and determining the type of conflict: task, relationship, process, or status. Talk to each person alone first, then find a neutral meeting space, set ground rules for respectful discussion out loud, and use open-ended questions to help both parties articulate the real issue. Choose the appropriate resolution strategy from the Thomas-Kilmann model, write the agreement down, and book a check-in about two weeks out.

Can workplace conflict be positive?

Yes. Task conflict can drive better decisions and prevent groupthink when the team has psychological safety and shared goals. The key is that disagreements stay focused on the work and off personal attacks.

What is the pause-and-name reset for conflict?

You stop before you respond, take one slow breath with a longer exhale than inhale, and silently put a word to what you are feeling. The naming step is the one with research behind it: fMRI work at UCLA found that labeling an emotion in words reduced amygdala activity while recruiting the prefrontal cortex. There’s no fixed number of seconds to wait out. The point is to give the reasoning part of your brain something to do.

How do you bring up a conflict with your boss?

Ask for 15 private minutes and keep the opener to three sentences: one specific moment, what it cost you or the work, and a question about how to handle it next time. Tie the cost to something your boss already cares about, like a client or a deadline, and bring an alternative along with the objection. Then stop talking and listen to the answer.

How do you handle conflict on a remote team?

Get it off text quickly. A short written reply has no face or tone behind it, so the reader fills in the mood, and a channel gives the disagreement an audience. A workable rule: if untangling something takes more than two replies, move it to a video call.

Workplace Conflict Takeaway

The fact that you’re reading this article means you’re already getting what you need: help. Here are your key action points:

1. Identify the type of conflict (task, relationship, process, or status) before choosing a strategy.
2. Pause and name it before responding in any heated moment: stop, breathe, label the emotion.
3. Write down what they want before the conversation, and what they’re worried about losing.
4. Choose the right Thomas-Kilmann strategy for the situation.
5. Address gossip directly by setting a team norm that people take problems straight to the person involved.
6. Let task disagreements play out while they stay on the work, and step in once they turn personal.
7. Watch for conflict debt. The issues you avoid today become the crises of next month.
8. End every conflict meeting with the agreement in writing and a check-in already on the calendar for about two weeks out.
9. Open your own hard conversation in three sentences: the moment, what it cost, and a question.
10. Move any thread to a call once it’s past its second tense reply.
11. Repair it the same day with what you did, why it happened, and how you’ll fix it, then ask, “What else would make this right?”

Sometimes it takes different strategies and tactics to solve sticky professional situations. If you need more help, go to a leader you trust and get an ally.

You might also find these helpful:

• How to Deal with Difficult People
• Conflict Resolution Skills
• How to Handle Criticism at Work

1. The Myers-Briggs Company — Conflict at Work 2022
2. The Myers-Briggs Company — Conflict at Work research report (August 2022)
3. Harvard Business School — Toxic Workers by Dylan Minor
4. SHRM — Civility Index, Q3 2025 Results
5. Workplace Peace Institute — State of Workplace Conflict 2024
6. Gartner — The Data Is In: Return-to-Office Mandates Aren't Worth the Talent Risks (May 2024)
7. de Wit, Greer & Jehn (2012) — The Paradox of Intragroup Conflict: A Meta-Analysis, Journal of Applied Psychology
8. Bendersky & Hays (2012) — Status Conflict in Groups, Organization Science
9. Arnsten (2009) — Stress Signalling Pathways That Impair Prefrontal Cortex Structure and Function, Nature Reviews Neuroscience
10. Shields et al. (2017) — The Effects of Acute Stress on Episodic Memory: A Meta-Analysis and Integrative Review, Psychological Bulletin
11. McGaugh (2004) — The Amygdala Modulates the Consolidation of Memories of Emotionally Arousing Experiences, Annual Review of Neuroscience
12. Lieberman et al. (2007) — Putting Feelings Into Words, Psychological Science
13. DDI — Managing Conflict Research 2024
14. US Chamber of Commerce — Stop Workplace Gossip
15. Kilmann Diagnostics — TKI Overview
16. Milliken, Morrison & Hewlin (2003) — An Exploratory Study of Employee Silence, Journal of Management Studies
17. Galinsky, Maddux, Gilin & White (2008) — Why It Pays to Get Inside the Head of Your Opponent, Psychological Science
18. Burris (2012) — The Risks and Rewards of Speaking Up: Managerial Responses to Employee Voice, Academy of Management Journal
19. Lewicki, Polin & Lount (2016) — An Exploration of the Structure of Effective Apologies, Negotiation and Conflict Management Research
20. De Dreu (2006) — When Too Little or Too Much Hurts, Journal of Management
21. Jehn (1997) — A Qualitative Analysis of Conflict Types and Dimensions in Organizational Groups, Administrative Science Quarterly
22. HBR — How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity
23. First Round Review — Spark Creativity with These Tips from Pixar's President (2015)