The Conflict Expert

Here’s a pattern a lot of managers will recognise. Two colleagues keep clashing over urgent requests that land close to a deadline. One accuses the other of being unhelpful; the other says they’re being unreasonable. Their manager sits them down, they agree to communicate more respectfully, and everyone goes back to work relieved. The following week, the same argument happens again, on a different task, with the same two people.

This is an illustrative scenario rather than a real case, but the shape of it is common, and it points to something worth naming directly: the conversation got better, but nothing about the situation that produced it actually changed. Neither person has the authority to decide whose work takes priority when both their jobs are, technically, urgent. Until that’s true, something close to this argument will keep finding its way back.

That’s the real subject of this piece: the root causes of workplace conflict, and how to tell when a disagreement is complete in itself versus when it’s a symptom of something underneath it. The goal isn’t to replace “who’s being difficult?” with a more sophisticated way of asking the same question. It’s to move leaders from assigning blame to investigating conditions, without excusing harmful behaviour along the way.

What Does It Mean When Conflict Is a Symptom?

Go back to the scenario above and separate out what’s actually happening:

• Visible conflict: the two colleagues accusing each other of being unhelpful or unreasonable.
• Immediate trigger: an urgent request landing close to a deadline.
• Possible underlying conditions: conflicting priorities, unclear decision-making authority, and not enough capacity to do everything that’s being asked.
• A more complete response: address the disrespectful exchange on its own terms, but also clarify priorities and agree who actually gets to approve urgent work.

That’s the lens worth applying generally, not a diagnostic test to run on every disagreement. Not every argument signals a dysfunctional team or a structural failure; sometimes two people have simply had a bad week. The question worth asking is whether the same tension, or something close to it, keeps resurfacing once the immediate exchange has been smoothed over. Improving how that one conversation goes still matters, and is worth doing well in its own right, so it’s worth reading our tips for resolving workplace conflict if that’s the part you need right now. This article is about what to do when that’s not enough on its own.

What Are the Root Causes of Workplace Conflict?

Five categories tend to sit underneath recurring tension, each with its own investigative question:

1. Unclear roles and decision-making. Two managers both believe they have final sign-off on the same decision. Where do responsibilities overlap, and who actually has the final say?
2. Workload, resources and competing priorities. People argue over deadlines because there genuinely isn’t enough capacity to meet all of them. Are people being asked to deliver incompatible priorities?
3. Limited control or inadequate support. Someone is accountable for a result but has little influence over how the work gets done, or no access to the support they’d need. Do responsibility, authority and available support actually match?
4. Relationships, trust and inconsistent treatment. The same behaviour gets a different response depending on who’s involved. Are expectations and standards being applied consistently?
5. Poorly managed change. A restructure shifts who’s responsible for what, without explaining how decisions will now be made. What changed, and what’s still unclear as a result?

This maps loosely onto the Health and Safety Executive’s Management Standards, which identify demands, control, support, relationships, role and change as six areas of work design linked to work-related stress (HSE). It’s worth being precise about what that framework is: a tool for thinking about stress, not a validated model of conflict. The overlap is useful, not proof of anything. A related, practical example that fits the same pattern without being drawn from HSE’s own material: one team rewarded for speed and another held accountable for accuracy, each doing exactly what they’re incentivised to do, and clashing because of it.

Signs the Problem May Extend Beyond Two People

None of the following proves there’s a structural issue. They’re prompts worth investigating rather than evidence in themselves:

• The same disagreement returns after what looked like a resolution
• Similar tension shows up in more than one team
• Conflict keeps centring on handovers, approvals or shifting priorities
• Someone new inherits a role and runs into the same difficulties their predecessor had
• People describe their responsibilities or what’s expected of them differently from each other
• Complaints drop off, but the practical problems behind them are still there

That last one matters more than it might seem. Fewer people raising concerns is often read as improvement. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it means people have worked out that raising concerns doesn’t change anything, so they’ve stopped. The patterns above are useful precisely because they help you test whether you’re looking at a relationship problem, a work-organisation problem, or both, rather than assuming either one by default.

How to Investigate the Root Causes Without Turning It Into a Blame Exercise

1. Address immediate harm and assess urgency. Set behavioural boundaries regardless of what caused them. If there’s a safety concern, a misconduct allegation, or grounds for a formal complaint, that needs its own process before any informal problem-solving starts.

2. Hear different accounts. Ask what happened and what the impact was; when it tends to happen; what makes the job harder; which expectations or decisions feel unclear; what’s already been tried. Keep observations, interpretations and assumptions separate in your own notes. Don’t promise absolute confidentiality if what you hear might need acting on.

3. Map the pattern. Look at timing, decisions, workflows and what changed before the tension started. Put role descriptions, work allocation, approval processes and any previous agreements alongside what people have told you, rather than taking either on its own.

4. Test your explanations. Ask what evidence actually supports the theory you’re forming, what you might be missing, whether more than one factor could be involved, and whether your own decisions or management style could be contributing. Asking “why” five times is a useful prompt, not a complete investigation method on its own.

5. Agree changes and review them. Every action needs an owner, a deadline and a way of checking whether it worked. Be realistic about authority here: the people in the dispute can often explain the problem clearly without having any power to fix staffing levels, targets, reporting lines or who gets to decide what.

Match the Response to the Cause

These are illustrative responses, not guarantees. A new approval process doesn’t automatically undo months of strained trust, and a rebuilt relationship doesn’t automatically fix a structural overlap in who approves what. Recurring conflict often needs both the structural fix and the relationship repair, not a choice between them.

Understanding the Cause Doesn’t Excuse Harmful Behaviour

None of this is an argument for treating pressure as a justification. Unclear priorities and an unmanageable workload can explain why someone snapped at a colleague. They don’t make it acceptable, and they don’t mean both people share equal responsibility for how the exchange went.

This distinction matters most with the complaints it’s tempting to reframe. A discrimination or harassment complaint isn’t a communication problem wearing a different name, and treating it as one can do real damage, both to the person affected and to the organisation’s own position if the complaint later needs investigating formally. Acas is clear that mediation is well suited to some situations and poorly suited to others, including where someone raising a discrimination or harassment complaint wants it properly investigated, or where a determination of right and wrong is actually needed. Avoid treating mediation as either always appropriate or always off the table; the specifics of the complaint decide that, not a general policy.

When Outside Support Can Help

A few distinct kinds of support tend to apply once you’re looking past the immediate argument:

• Conflict consulting examines the wider organisational patterns, structures and practices producing recurring tension, which is usually the right starting point once the same disagreement has shown up more than once.
• Mediation supports the specific people in a dispute to work towards an agreement about how they’ll work together.
• Conflict coaching helps one individual prepare for and navigate a difficult working relationship or conversation.

Where the signs above point to something structural rather than a single strained relationship, conflict consulting is generally the more useful place to start, because it looks at what’s producing the pattern rather than resolving one instance of it. If you’re not sure which applies, our free resources are a lower-commitment way to start working out what you’re actually dealing with.

Where This Leaves You

Go back to the two colleagues from the start of this piece. Helping them have a better conversation about the last urgent request was worth doing, and worth doing properly. But the conditions that produced that argument, unclear priorities and no agreed way to decide what’s urgent, were still there on Monday morning, waiting for the next deadline to bring them back out.

Addressing the behaviour in front of you and investigating the working conditions behind it aren’t competing priorities. They’re both part of the same job, and knowing when you need outside support to do the second one properly is part of that too. If the same tensions keep returning in your team, it may be time to look beyond the latest disagreement: explore how conflict consulting can help you understand the patterns and identify what needs to change.