It’s bad enough when you have to witness drama among your teammates, but when you get trapped in between them, it can be maddening, messy, and mind-numbing. Suddenly, their problem becomes yours, and somehow it puts your relationships and your sanity in jeopardy. Here are some strategies to navigate drama between your teammates.

Before we get into solutions, let’s talk about why this scenario is so aversive and why it’s important for you to actively manage your way out of it.

The Costs and Risks of Being in the Middle

Some significant costs and risks come with putting yourself between two emotionally warring colleagues.

Dissonance and Doubt

When you’re called on to take sides, it can challenge your loyalties and values, creating dissonance. That discomfort might come from contradictory thoughts and feelings, such as liking your colleague while being disappointed in how they’re handling a situation, or agreeing with what one of your teammates is saying but not with how they’re saying it.

We don’t like feeling dissonance, and can be highly motivated to reduce it. That might mean you compromise your beliefs to make it easier to support one position or the other. The result of feeling pulled in two directions can be self-doubt, indecision, or anxiety—none of which is something you want to deal with.

Emotional Labor

Not only does being sandwiched in drama create a challenging intellectual problem of whose side to take or how to shepherd both parties toward a solution, it’s also a heavy emotional burden if you have to console, commiserate, or counsel both people. Plus, you’re susceptible to emotional contagion, which means you might end up experiencing the same negative emotions as your colleagues without even realizing their drama is transferring to you.

Social Exclusion

Another weighty risk you take when you get in the middle of other people’s drama is that you risk alienating both of them (and maybe even drawing the ire of other neutral parties for getting involved). How you navigate these delicate situations will affect your relationships and your reputation for a long time to come—all the more reason to be deliberate about how you behave when you’re stuck in the middle.

How to Manage from the Middle

If you’ve got the energy for it, you’re in a position to help your teammates move beyond their grievances, through the conflict, and to a sustainable resolution. Try this…

Process the Emotions

process their emotions. And I use the word “process” intentionally because it’s different from trying to suppress, dispel, or change their emotions. You help them process their emotions by making it feel safe for them to acknowledge what they’re experiencing, by asking open-ended questions to allow them to uncover the root of those emotions, by offering alternative frames or storylines that might help them take a more constructive view, and by prompting them toward an action that might make things better.

Each of these steps could be a post in itself, so let me know in the comments if you want more details on how to do any of those things.

Broker Communication

When I work with a struggling team, one of the most beneficial roles I play is communications broker. That includes encouraging people to make their points more clearly or succinctly, stopping people from launching into their own thoughts before acknowledging and validating those of their teammates, and pointing out where they seem misaligned regarding how they’re defining certain words or concepts.

A considerable amount of drama comes from team members who do a poor job of articulating what they’re thinking or feeling and what they want as a potential remedy. The more emotional they become, the harder it is for them to express themselves and to listen to what the other person is saying and meaning.

You can alleviate so many issues by improving the fidelity of the conversation. You can use lines like:

If I heard you right, you’re saying…

It sounds like the most important thing to you is…

Did Bob paraphrase you correctly, or did you mean something different…

Can we back up for a second? What does “being collaborative” mean to you?

It sounds like you’re trying to solve two different problems rather than disagreeing on the right solution to a single problem. Is that fair?

Model Productive Conflict

Another great opportunity to dispel the drama is showing your teammates the high road to resolve their conflict. You can do that in a variety of ways:

Validate what each person says by paraphrasing and making them feel heard and understoodListen to more than just the information they’re sharing; listen more deeply to the emotions, and especially the values and beliefs underlying them.Expose the most fundamental issues so they know what the dispute is about and what would be necessary to remedy it.

One specific technique that might be valuable is “Two Truths.” This is helpful in the common situation where your teammates are upset about very different issues; you can help them articulate their concerns and then consider solutions to both problems.

For example, if there’s drama because one person has failed to deliver work on time three times in a row and the disappointed teammate has now gossiped to everyone on the team about the delinquent teammate, you might say. “Okay, it sounds like there are two issues to resolve. First, we need to figure out how Denise can get the work submitted on time, and second, we need to agree to Stewart talking directly with Denise and not with others on the team when there’s a concern. How could you move forward on these two issues?”

Get Out of the Way

Staying in the middle of drama for too long can lead to all the problems we talked about at the start. You don’t want to risk that. When you’ve done your best to shepherd your teammates through their drama and on to a more constructive conversation, even if they haven’t reconciled, it might be time to extricate yourself from the situation.

Protect Your Boundaries

While brokering peace between two colleagues stuck in drama, know and enforce your boundaries. You might have boundaries for how much time you’re willing to devote to it. In that case, let them know that you have 15 minutes and then you’re going to go back to work. Alternatively, you might have boundaries regarding what you are and aren’t comfortable with them discussing. You might say that you’re fine with either one of them talking privately with you about their own feelings, but that you won’t talk about the other person unless they’re present.

Enforcing your own healthy boundaries is another form of positive role modeling. It’s a constructive way of managing uncomfortable situations at work rather than devolving into drama.

Resync with Others

It’s difficult to marinate in other people’s drama without becoming exhausted and even disillusioned yourself. If you’ve been spending time with Debbie and Donny Drama, prioritize spending time with colleagues who will shift your mood and remind you that people can be kind and reasonable. Don’t make the mistake of using your time with your other colleagues to complain about the drama; that just perpetuates it. Instead, start with questions that evoke fun, positive, and inspiring conversation, like “What’s the most promising thing you’re working on?” “Any trips planned for you this year?” or “What’s the coolest thing you’ve read about an innovation lately?”

Plan for the Future

If you give yourself some space from the drama, you might be able to see some of the things that led up to the problem. In that case, can you recommend changes that will decrease the likelihood that you end up in the same place again? That might mean doing a better job of setting expectations up front so people are clear what they’re responsible for and less likely to point fingers later. In contrast, it might require that two people aren’t staffed on the same team, or that one person doesn’t work on projects with tight timelines. What have you learned, and how can you change the trajectory for the future?

Emotions at work are normal, but when people fail to process their emotions and let them devolve into destructive feelings, nasty narratives, and debilitating drama, you’ve got a problem on your hands. It’s not yours to own, but there’s a lot of good you can do if you’re willing to help them find a way through it.

Additional Resources

Should you mind your own business?

Workplace Empathy

From Amy Gallo, How to Navigate Conflict with a Coworker

 

 

The post Stuck in the Middle: Navigating Drama Between Your Teammates appeared first on Liane Davey.