Fixing Personality Conflicts

Problem

"A problem a lot of managers face, especially new managers, is working out how to solve conflicts between your team members. One of the most common scenarios that can cause conflict is when team members have different personalities that just don't go well together."

Actions taken

"There are a couple of approaches you can use to fix conflicts between people. Firstly, try to work out the root cause. If it's clear that one individual is very rude or is refusing to work well with other team members, then you'll need to talk to that person and discuss the negative impact their behavior is having on the team."

"However, sometimes it's just two personalities clashing because of the approach they take to work. A dilemma every engineering team will face is quality versus velocity. Some people are very product-driven and just want to release new features, while others are strictly focussed on ensuring that anything they release is of excellent engineering quality. These two types of engineers will often clash, because one will think the other doesn't care about new features, while the other will think the first person doesn't care about the quality of their code."

"When you are faced with this type of situation I talk with the conflicting parties and try to get them to see things from another point of view. For example, for the perfectionists, I explain that their code is perfect but we don't need it to be absolutely perfect. For new products we may not use long-term, it just needs to last for the next three months."

"For people who love developing loads of new features, I explain that at the end of the day they needed to ensure the product feature is working well so the customer is happy and there aren't a whole load of product incidents. Customers won't be happy about a product being launched early if it's full of bugs."

Lessons learned

"Step back and think about the bigger picture. The biggest goal for your engineering team is helping the company. Explain to the two conflicting parties that both of them are helping the business, but in different ways."