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hardScenarioBehaviouralMidSeniorLead

Two developers on your team are in open conflict and the rest of the team has started working around them. How do you handle it?

4 min readUpdated 2026-08-15

Answer

Short answer

Separate the technical disagreement from the interpersonal one, since only the first belongs in the open. Speak to each privately about specific observed behaviour and its effect, look for a structural cause such as unclear ownership, and escalate when it becomes conduct or performance.

This is conflict resolution in delivery language. Good conflict resolution protects the work and the people at the same time: make the disagreement specific, separate facts from interpretation, and agree what decision is blocked. If the conflict has become an impediment, name the impediment plainly and remove it through facilitation, pairing, an architecture decision, or manager support. Weak conflict resolution asks everyone to be professional while the same impediment keeps leaking into planning. Good conflict resolution makes impediments visible; conflict resolution also prevents hidden impediments from turning into personal blame.

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Likely follow-ups

  • One of the two is your strongest engineer and the other has threatened to leave. Does that change your approach?
  • When would you put a disagreement on the retrospective board, and when would you not?
  • Six weeks in, nothing has improved. What do you do next?
  • How do you tell healthy technical disagreement from conflict that needs intervening in?

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