How do you manage conflicts

When you are preparing for Engineering leadership roles, one of the questions is quite popular "How do you manage conflicts". This concept is not just about engineering leadership, rather this can be applied for any other leadership role. This is also a common situation we face almost daily in engineering management Jobs, however, I'll provide a framework to answer this question in the interview.

On the high level, it looks like a simple question, and you might jump to answer it, but over time and with certain interview experience, it is a tricky question.

The question's intent is not to answer how you manage conflict, but rather how you react to the conflict.

𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀

You can pick an example and explain how you dealt with it, following the STAR model.

1. The response could be - I have almost No conflict, a very good working relationship with people and when conflict arises, we usually talk and resolve it.
2. The response could be - We discuss the reason for the conflict and based on Pros and Cons, we agree and move on.
3. The response could be - I don’t agree with my manager on the conflict, but I commit and move on.

I feel among the above 3, using an example and 2nd response is a little better, however In my experience, you should use this as an opportunity to provide a demo of your structuring thinking process.

Strategic steps for managing the conflict - step-wise answer

1. Ask follow-up questions and narrow down by asking about conflicts with Senior, Junior, Peer - Handling of them could be little different.
2. Definitely pick an example - prepare it in advance
3. Identify the root cause of the conflict
1. Do your homework
2. Open dialogue - Listen to others, respect their PoV and listen
3. Stay neutral and objective - Focus on data, and facts, avoid biases
4. Build consensus - The most critical part of this question is how you build the consensus. Data driven decision, exploring win-win situations, Be creative and open minded, Opportunity to innovate, Out of the box thinking, Only words/jargon will not work, this is where you need to a provide solid example to convince the interviewer.
5. Define the agreement and responsibility - who will do what
6. Reflect and learn after a certain defined time

𝗧𝗶𝗽𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗥𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿

1. Do not think during the interview, think in advance where it was difficult to arrive at the consensus. If you are not able to find the example, trust me you don’t know how to deal with conflict, because usually in leadership roles, it’s very common to find.
2. Examples could be, Delivery timeline conflict, 1 month vs 2 months, Project ownership conflict, Build vs Buy conflict, Story prioritization conflict, A is not willing to work with B, there are literally several examples.
3. The interviewer is desperately trying to catch the red flag, so don’t make up the story, it should be real, and practiced enough that you can articulate it calmly.
4. If a senior is taking an interview, He is gonna check, how easy it is to work with you? Are you opinionated or not, are you adamant, are you open to agree on anything?
5. If a peer is taking the interview, He/She is gonna mostly check, how easy or difficult to work with you, you are aggressive or passive, smarter than him or not, ambitious or not,  basically, he is gonna judge your personality, so remain calm and show your structured thought process, that way less likely that you’ll be judged.

I am sure this is not the ultimate way of managing conflicts, there are definitely more possible ways it can be done, but in my experience this has worked pretty well. If you need the quick summary or want to finally summarise it

1. Identify root cause - Empathetic listening, Open Dialogue, Be objective
2. Build consensus - Explore solution, Be creative, Create win-win situation
3. Reflect and learn - Retrospective view, celebrate or improvise for the next time