Welcome to the Manager Tools podcast for Monday, February 5th, 2007.

How to Handle Pure Conflict when your directs are involved, part one of two.

Thank you. Hi, this is Mike, and welcome back to Manager Tools.

Well, here's a question for you.

What do you do when you're in conflict with a peer and your directs become involved?

What's interesting here is that we all ought to know that if we are in conflict with a peer, our directs are involved.

It's clear that our directs know who among our peers are our allies and who aren't, and our directs make choices every day, sometimes subtle, but choices nonetheless that can add to our tensions, even if we tell them not to.

So what can we do as managers to help our directs deal with the peer of ours that we are in conflict with?

What do you do when our peers behave unprofessionally towards them?

What do you do?

Well, as you might expect, it happens all the time. But, you know, I think the part of the problem is I think managers really, they only think of themselves when it comes right down to it.

What do you mean? Well, most managers' first calculation is whether they're to a point where they can confront the peer who's behaving badly. And if they personally are not... From their perspective.

Yeah, from their perspective.

From their perspective.

Yeah, okay.

And for a whole bunch of reasons.

And they basically ask their direct to keep their heads down and just suck it up.

And then the manager does nothing.

It's corrosive to the team.

Right, right.

Of course.

Yeah.

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