Earn Trust: Managing Conflict

Situation

During a product planning cycle, I strongly disagreed with a fellow engineer over the scope of a new feature. I believed we were over-engineering based on assumptions, while he felt my proposal lacked robustness. Our disagreement spilled into meetings, and stakeholders began sensing tension.

I realized that the issue wasn’t just technical — it was eroding trust and collaboration on the team.

Task

My responsibility was to de-escalate the conflict, find common ground, and restore mutual trust — not just between the two of us, but for the sake of the broader team dynamic.

Action

I reached out privately to the engineer and suggested we grab coffee away from the screen. I opened the conversation by owning my part — that I had been too focused on speed and may not have fully listened to his perspective.

We sketched out both of our approaches on a whiteboard, and I proposed a hybrid: launch with a lean version, and include hooks to make it extensible later. I also documented the shared reasoning in our tech design doc and presented it in the next team sync with both of us aligned.

// Hybrid proposal summary
  if (featureToggle.isEnabled("multi-region")) {
    return handleMultiRegion(payload);
  } else {
    return handleSingleRegion(payload);
  }
      

Result

The compromise worked. The feature shipped on time, and the engineer later complimented me privately on how I handled the conversation. More importantly, the team commented that our next planning session felt smoother and more collaborative.

Six months later, that same engineer nominated me for a trust-based leadership award. That meant more than any project delivery metric ever could.

Reflection

• 🧠 Trust isn’t built in good times — it’s earned in difficult moments.
• 💬 Listening without defensiveness often unblocks more than “winning” the argument.
• 🤝 Acknowledging your role in conflict models humility and maturity.
• 📈 Trust leads to speed — because you spend less time fighting, more time building.

FAQ