Capstone: Conflict Resolution Plan

Putting It All Together

🔄 Quick Recall: In the previous lesson, we applied conflict resolution techniques to five common workplace scenarios—credit disputes, cross-functional friction, remote tensions, workload imbalances, and turf wars.

You’ve built a comprehensive conflict resolution toolkit over seven lessons. Now it’s time to use all of it at once.

This capstone presents a complex workplace scenario. Your task: create a complete resolution plan using every technique you’ve learned.

The Scenario

You’re a project lead at a mid-sized software company. Here’s what’s happening:

The players:

• Alex (Backend Developer) — Technically excellent. Feels their ideas are dismissed in planning meetings. Has started working independently without team input.
• Jordan (Frontend Developer) — Collaborative by nature. Frustrated that Alex builds features without consulting the frontend implications. Has been venting to other team members.
• Sam (Designer) — Caught in the middle. Works closely with both. Has started avoiding meetings to escape the tension.

The situation: Alex rewrote a major API endpoint without consulting Jordan, breaking three frontend features. Jordan discovered this during a client demo—in front of the client. Jordan confronted Alex in Slack publicly. Alex responded with “maybe if the frontend wasn’t so brittle, a backend change wouldn’t break everything.”

The team atmosphere is toxic. Sam is considering a transfer. Two junior developers have stopped contributing in meetings. Sprint velocity has dropped 30%.

Your Resolution Plan

Part 1: Assessment

Before doing anything, assess the situation:

Conflict type: Is this task conflict, relationship conflict, or both?

Both. It started as task conflict (different approaches to development coordination) and has become relationship conflict (personal attacks, broken trust, avoidance).

Root causes:

• Lack of coordination process between frontend and backend
• Alex feeling dismissed (unmet need for respect and autonomy)
• Jordan’s public confrontation (unmet need for reliability and consideration)
• No conflict resolution mechanism on the team

Stakeholders affected: Alex, Jordan, Sam, two junior developers, the client

Part 2: Individual Conversations

Meeting with Alex (Pre-mediation):

Start with active listening. Let them express frustration fully.

Listen for three layers:

• Content: What happened with the API change?
• Emotion: How do they feel about the Slack confrontation? The meeting dynamic?
• Need: What do they need to feel valued on this team?

Key questions:

• “What led you to make the API change independently?”
• “How did Jordan’s Slack message affect you?”
• “What would a good working dynamic with Jordan look like?”

✅ Quick Check: During your individual meeting with Alex, they say: “I don’t need anyone’s permission to do my job.” What underlying need might be driving this statement?

Meeting with Jordan (Pre-mediation):

Same approach. Full listening before any suggestions.

Key questions:

• “Walk me through what happened at the client demo.”
• “What was going through your mind when you posted in Slack?”
• “What do you need from Alex to rebuild trust?”

Meeting with Sam (Support):

Sam isn’t a party to the conflict but is affected. Check in:

• “How is this situation affecting your work?”
• “What do you need from me?”
• “Would you be comfortable sharing how the tension is impacting the team?”

Part 3: Mediation Session

Ground rules:

1. One person speaks at a time
2. I-statements only
3. No relitigating the Slack exchange
4. Focus on moving forward, not winning the past

Opening: “You’re both talented developers who want this product to succeed. Right now there’s friction that’s hurting the team and the work. My goal isn’t to decide who’s right—it’s to help you find a way to work together effectively.”

Sharing perspectives: Each person gets 5 uninterrupted minutes. After each, paraphrase and ask the other: “What stood out to you?”

Common ground to surface:

• Both want the product to be technically excellent
• Both were affected by the client demo failure
• Both want a process that prevents this from happening again
• Neither wants the team dynamic to continue as-is

Solution generation: Guide toward specific, actionable agreements:

• Process for cross-team coordination on shared components
• Communication norms for technical changes
• Agreement on how to handle disagreements going forward

Part 4: Structural Fixes

The interpersonal mediation addresses the relationship. But the structural gaps caused this conflict and will cause the next one without changes.

Implement:

• Change review process — Backend changes affecting frontend require a review tag
• Weekly frontend-backend sync — 15 minutes to coordinate upcoming changes
• Team retrospective — Monthly, focused on process improvement
• Conflict escalation path — How to raise issues before they become public confrontations
• Working agreements — Document team norms for communication, coordination, and disagreement

Part 5: Follow-Up Plan

Course Review

Key Takeaways

• Complex conflicts require both interpersonal resolution and structural changes
• Assessment before action prevents making things worse
• Individual conversations before joint sessions build understanding and readiness
• Active listening and de-escalation are the foundation for everything else
• Specific, measurable agreements with follow-up dates drive real change
• The best conflict resolution prevents the next conflict, not just resolves the current one

Congratulations!

You’ve completed the Conflict Management course. You now have skills that most professionals never formally learn:

• How to read conflict situations accurately
• How to manage your own emotional responses
• How to listen so people feel genuinely heard
• How to de-escalate heated moments
• How to have conversations you used to avoid
• How to help others resolve their disputes
• How to address the most common workplace conflict patterns

These skills compound over time. Every conflict you handle well builds trust, strengthens relationships, and makes the next conflict easier. Start using them today—not by seeking conflict, but by addressing the small frictions that are already there.

The conversations you’ve been avoiding? You’re ready for them now.