'We have all this communication to help us be more efficient, but it doesn't mean we're more effective': organizational psychology expert explains why conflict mitigation should be an everyday skill
The workplace has never been more complex, and according to LinkedIn’s new Skills on the Rise 2025 list, conflict mitigation is the second fastest growing skill behind AI Literacy.
Pointing to intergenerational teams and return-to-office polices as contributing factors to rising tensions in workplaces, the report calls conflict mitigation “critical to fostering collaboration and leading agile teams.”
According to Jason Walker, program director and professor of industrial organizational psychology at Adler University, the increasing demand for conflict mitigation skills is likely a response to rising litigation costs.
“I suspect organizations are spending more and more time in human resource investigations, on bad behavior that's impacting the workplace,” says Walker.
“And they realize that the graduates that they're receiving haven't really been trained in it, that we just expect it. But people need to be trained in how we communicate with other people, how we manage conflict. I think it's because it's costing them money.”
The absence of conflict resolution skills isn’t just a matter of workplace harmony – it directly impacts business outcomes, Walker explains – and unfortunately, many post-graduate programs don’t teach such soft skills.
“Data shows us that the number one thing employers say [is that] graduate students entering the workforce, one of the biggest issues is they don't know how to get along with people,” Walker says.
“They don't know how to work in groups.”
When employees lack conflict mitigation skills, basic team functioning becomes a challenge.
“I think employers are starting to recognize that when people can get along, and people like who they work with and enjoy coming to work and aren't afraid and there's this psychological safety, they do better,” Walker says.
“Their team does better, productivity increases. There's less problems, quite frankly, because people are focusing on the work, not on some relational attack against each other.”
According to Walker, employers can take meaningful action through training and leadership development. Conversations about the importance of conflict mitigation should begin “at the front end,” he says, with every employee at the point of onboarding.
“Part of that onboarding would be some sort of module or training related to how we communicate in the workplace, respectful communication,” he says, but it can’t stop there; “At the staff level, at the team level, I think it needs to be a conversation that's ongoing.”
Leaders also play a critical role in setting the tone, Walker stresses, as employees tend to “mirror” their superiors, whether they exhibit good or bad communication skills.
A leader who doesn’t communicate effectively can shut down communication at every level:
“If you're working in an organizational culture that is not a questioning culture, that is not a curious culture, the ability to have meaningful conversations that don't result in conflict is very, very low, because anything you say or do will be challenged, and it will become a point of conflict,” says Walker.
“If you're working in an organization that’s, ‘Let's be curious, let's be innovative, let's be questioning’ – knowing that it's safe to do that, and leadership demonstrating that it's safe to do that – people do better, and the conflict is often less relational.”
One trend Walker is increasingly seeing is conflict escalation over email. Rather than diffusing misunderstandings while they are still at the misunderstanding level with direct conversation, employees instead are engaging in long email exchanges that can end in HR involvement.
“I think what people are lacking is the basic way to resolve either misunderstandings, and-or how to preserve a relationship when you disagree,” Walker says, suggesting that COVID might have had a part to play in this development.
“People tend to drop the nuclear bomb and burn the bridge way faster than they used to.”
Without face-to-face communication, conflicts are harder to de-escalate, Walker says.
“We have all this communication to help us be more efficient, but it doesn't mean we're more effective, especially when it comes to communication and resolving conflict, because we're not going to do it through an email.”
While some managers are skilled at fostering open communication, others instinctively avoid conflict altogether – often with serious consequences for their teams and organizations.
Avoidant managers can be even more damaging to team moral than aggressive ones, Walker explains, because the impacts of a conflict-avoidant leader can go unnoticed until it’s too late to salvage: “Things just keep escalating and escalating and escalating until there is a crisis, and then there's legal and HR, because that person wouldn't act because it was safer for them, or maybe they're uncomfortable with conflict, or whatever the reason is – that always leads to disaster, every time, every single time.”
There are signs that HR can watch out for, he says, as one of the clearest warning signs of this avoidant pattern is silence.
“That they're never bringing issues of conflict forward … it's working in a group where there's the fear to say no or the fear to bring bad news.”
In such environments, minor disagreements fester, and employees lose confidence that their concerns will be addressed at all.
Walker cautions against over-reliance on workplace policies to handle interpersonal challenges, such as banning certain topics of conversation, which he points out is already covered by human rights laws in this country.
“We tend to go like, ‘Let's make a policy, right? Let's ban something.’ Well, how well does zero tolerance of bullying in the workplace work? It doesn't work. It doesn't work at all. People still do it.”
Instead, employers should prioritize prevention and dialogue, and embedding conflict mitigation skills training right into the fabric of the organization through its hiring and culture practices.
“There are no quick fixes. So it needs to become part of the company fabric,” Walker says.
“A fabric of their culture in terms of, ‘Here's how we treat each other here, and when things come up, here's how we deal with it,’ versus, ‘Okay, everyone. Good luck and get along.”
Walker also recommends integrating conflict questions into job interviews as a useful tool for finding candidates who have conflict mitigation skills, such as asking about conflict they have handled personally, and how they handle stress in their lives, to see if they have their own coping strategies.
“We're looking for active listening skills. Are they able to listen to other people? Do they see the other person's point of view? Did they actually bring that up?”
In tough economic times, organizations often slash training budgets. But Walker points out that “skimping on training” can be a fatal mistake.
“That's one of the biggest red flags I see in organizations, especially when they're having money problems,” says Walker.
“They cancel travel and then they cancel training, when really we should be reinvesting in training. That's where the money should be going.”
