Situation: A company has two key managers who battle constantly. Recently these battles have escalated. Both people are valuable, but this has become a significant distraction. What’s the best way to handle this situation? How do you deal with management infighting?

Advice from the CEOs:

• Talk to the two people individually. Acknowledge company awareness of the situation and ask what’s going on.
  • Listen – make sure you understand what’s going on.
  • After you listen, coach. The message: I need you to step up. The company counts on you.
• Both parties must feel empowered by the conversation.
  • Focus on behavior only, not the person.
  • Make sure that each feels validated but with clear direction to change behavior.
    • Acknowledge each individual’s value. Point out the problem, but make it clear that nobody is indispensable.
    • At the same time, be firm as to what is expected of individual behavior as well as individual performance. Set the expectation: either you act in a way which does not harm the company environment, or I will take your notice in 30 days.
    • If either individual can’t agree to this, then that individual is the problem.
  • Revert to guiding principles and values of the company. Raise the conversation to a higher level.
  • Establish what the individual wants from the company. Are their needs currently being met? What can be changed to better meet their needs?
  • An important end point of the conversation – because both are key players – is for each of them to value the other.
  • If, after providing time for the two to resolve their difference, they still can’t make peace with each other, you may have to make a hard decision.
• Be careful – it may be necessary to take a different approach with each individual.
• It may turn out that one individual is the instigator and the other is simply reacting to the first’s provocation. In this case, get a 3^rd party to coach each of them.
• Another company recently had this same problem.
  • The CEO sat each person down – talked about impact, big picture and what this does to their image in company.
  • This worked!

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