Disagreements are part of everyday life. They cannot be avoided and are sometimes necessary to bring about healthy change. Disagreements are the manifestation of tensions and of diverging needs, interests and values between people who are sometimes interdependent; this is especially true for disagreements between colleagues at work.

If, as a manager, you intervene early without trying to establish who is “right” and who is “wrong”, you might be able to stop a simple disagreement escalating into a conflict. For this, you need to understand the factors underlying situations of tension at work.

Show the members of your team that you're available and that they should feel free to talk about the difficulties they're facing at work; if you set aside time for team discussions around working methods and conditions, the quality of work and the distribution of labour, you might stay ahead of the game and prevent disagreements from turning into full-blown conflicts.

Once a conflict has developed, don’t imagine that there’s a quick and easy fix. You should rather try to understand the root causes - how did it start and why? What were the points of disagreement that brought the parties into conflict and, conversely, what are the points of agreement?

Try to transform the conflict into something positive. If we hurl insults at one another, the conflict will have destructive consequences. But if we take the time to sit down in a peaceful atmosphere and look for a solution, we create the space needed to resolve the situation in a constructive way. Changing the nature of a conflict means looking for the most reasonable way to resolve it.

Conflicts can sometimes be hidden from view and hard to identify, and those involved may prefer to say nothing and wait for the storm to blow over. On several occasions when people have come to me as the Ombud, they have admitted that they said nothing so as not to cause trouble, to keep the peace or out of fear of reactions. The risk is that the pent-up emotions, be they sadness or anger, will eventually come to the surface and cause hurt and damage.

It's in everyone's interest to settle differences without losing our temper. Calling on a trusted third party, either someone in our immediate work environment or through the support channels in place at CERN (of which the Ombud is one), can help avoid problems spiralling out of control.

Disagreements and conflicts are part of our everyday lives – the key is not to avoid them but to avoid escalation by acting early and by looking for help from a third party if the situation risks damaging working relations.

Marie-Luce Falipou

I would like to hear your reactions and suggestions – join the CERN Ombud Mattermost team at https://mattermost.web.cern.ch/cern-ombud/.

The Ombud is available from Monday to Friday in office B500/1-004 on the Meyrin site. To make an appointment, in person or online, contact the Ombud at ombuds@cern.ch.

More information can be found on the Ombud’s website: https://ombuds.web.cern.ch/