Posted by If you’ve ever raised kids, you already know your advice means little until it’s repeated by someone else. A favorite teacher, coach, or best friend’s parent says the same thing—and suddenly, it sticks. Human Resources often faces the same dilemma. The wisdom is there, but the messenger lacks credibility.
HR professionals are trained to manage people, policies, and performance. Yet when it comes to trust, they start at a disadvantage. Employees know HR can’t always be their ally. The same department that preaches inclusion and well-being may also be responsible for layoffs, terminations, and investigations. No one confides in the referee holding the whistle.
It’s not that HR doesn’t care. It’s that employees don’t believe they can. That credibility gap explains why HR departments often succeed at training for skills—but fall short at building trust. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. And in this case, it matters who’s holding the reins.
“The secret to building relationships is to get away from the corporate microscope,” says Mason Lengyel, Venture Up program director. “When employees feel like they’re being watched by HR, a wall goes up. Nobody wants to open up in a forced, awkward exercise that feels like a test.”
That’s why many HR leaders bring in third-party facilitators when team conflict escalates. It’s not an abdication of responsibility—it’s a strategic move. “If conflict is intense, we’re often invited in-house first to connect with employees privately,” Lengyel says. “We gather feedback before the interactive team event begins. That groundwork makes all the difference.”
When handled well, conflict becomes a reset point rather than a rupture. Here are practical steps for leaders and HR professionals to help their teams move forward.
Meet face-to-face
Start with individual conversations. Let team members do most of the talking while you listen for recurring themes. Ask how they perceive the problem. What would they do differently if they were in charge? Hold your reactions. Judgment stops honesty faster than any policy memo.
State the problem clearly
After listening, summarize what the team told you—without distortion. Reflect back their own words and show that you’ve heard them. The goal isn’t to solve it for them but to hand the issue back to the group to fix together. That’s how ownership starts.
Encourage personal accountability
Ask each team member to come prepared with two thoughts:
a) How can I improve as a teammate? (For example, listen more, follow through, or show up better prepared.)
b) How can we, as a team, combine efforts to move forward?
When people define their own growth, motivation becomes internal instead of enforced.
Empower emotional honesty
Allow room for people to say what they’ve been holding back. Conflict festers when frustration has no outlet. When the conversation is structured and respectful, those emotions become information instead of ammunition.
Purge the pain
Specificity heals. Ask participants to name concrete behaviors that bother them: “Ronald takes credit for my ideas.” “Betty’s humor turns into distraction.” “Bernie dominates every meeting.” These aren’t attacks—they’re diagnostics. Once identified, the group can begin to replace irritation with understanding.
Find common ground
Restate the shared goals, the collective mission, and the desired end state. When everyone agrees on what “better” looks like, the path forward becomes visible. The team defines the steps, and accountability follows naturally.
Even the best teams face conflict. Ford’s Mustang design team in the 1960s was proof that disagreement isn’t dysfunction — it’s how progress happens. Visionary leader Lee Iacocca knew that innovation required friction, not blind harmony. His engineers and designers clashed, debated, and pushed each other until the breakthrough emerged. In business, as in HR, the goal isn’t to avoid conflict but to channel it productively. (See also: The Mustang Effect →)
Follow up
Revisit the issue two weeks later. Evaluate progress and cooperation. If friction remains, identify the sticking points. Sometimes the right move is to reconfigure the team—or bring in an outside consultant to help interpret what’s really going on.
Conflict is inevitable in every organization. The difference between dysfunction and growth comes down to how leadership responds. HR departments don’t need to be the hero. They just need to create the conditions where honesty, ownership, and trust can take root.
After all, you can’t force trust—but you can make space for it to grow.
Venture Up (est. 1983) is the original team building company, helping organizations build trust and collaboration through real-world experiences.
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