Leading Teams: Conflict, Feedback and Team Meetings

Conflict is normal in any team, and support teams face extra pressures such as shift work, lone working, emotionally demanding situations and different views about how participants should be supported. This lesson helps you recognise common sources of conflict, including unfair rosters, unclear roles, poor handovers, workload, differences in practice and personal clashes. It explains the difference between healthy disagreement and harmful conflict, and why unresolved conflict affects participants as well as workers. Key points: notice conflict early, look for the underlying cause and remember the participant is affected too.

Most workplace conflict can be resolved early through a calm, structured conversation led by the team leader. This lesson explains how to prepare, how to meet with each person separately first, how to bring people together when appropriate, and how to keep the conversation focused on behaviour, impact and practical solutions. It covers listening without taking sides, agreeing clear actions and following up. Key points: act early, stay neutral, focus on the future and the participant, record what was agreed and check in again soon.

Some conflicts go beyond what an early conversation can resolve, or involve behaviour that must be handled through formal processes. This lesson explains when to escalate to human resources, including bullying, harassment including sexual harassment, discrimination, threats or violence, conflict that continues despite early action, and situations where you are personally involved. It also explains how to escalate well, what information to provide, how to support the people involved while a formal process runs, and why confidentiality and fairness matter throughout.

In a strong feedback culture, people give and receive feedback regularly, respectfully and in every direction, including from workers to leaders and from participants to the team. This lesson explains why feedback culture matters for safe, quality support, how leaders build it by asking for feedback, recognising good work and responding well to bad news, and how to make feedback a normal part of shifts, supervision and meetings. Key points: model it yourself, make it regular and specific, recognise good work often and never punish honest feedback.

How leaders respond when they receive feedback decides whether people will ever give it again. This lesson explains how to receive feedback from workers, participants and families without becoming defensive, how to ask questions to understand it, how to separate the message from the way it was delivered, and how to decide what to do with it. It also covers closing the loop by telling people what you did. Key points: listen fully, thank the person, reflect before responding, act where you can and explain honestly where you cannot.

Team meetings are one of the few times a support team comes together, so they need to be worth everyone's time. This lesson explains how to plan a short agenda, start and finish on time, involve workers across shifts, keep discussion respectful and focused, and end with clear actions, owners and dates. It covers practical tips for teams who rarely work together, including remote options and sharing notes with people who could not attend. Key points: plan the agenda, focus on what matters, involve everyone and follow up on actions.

Team meetings can easily drift into rosters, complaints and administration. This lesson shows how to keep the participant at the centre by spending most of the time on how people are going, their goals and what is working in their support. It covers inviting participants to contribute where they wish, sharing good practice stories, discussing changes to plans and learning from incidents. It also explains how to protect privacy when discussing participants. Key points: participants first on the agenda, celebrate what works, respect privacy and link discussion to plans.

Under work health and safety laws, a person conducting a business or undertaking must manage risks to psychological health as well as physical health. Psychosocial hazards include high job demands, low job control, poor support, lack of role clarity, poor workplace relationships and conflict, bullying, harassment, violence and aggression, traumatic events and remote or isolated work. This lesson explains how conflict, feedback and meetings connect to these duties, what leaders can do to reduce psychosocial risks, and where to find the model Code of Practice.

This case study follows Kemal, a team leader, as he responds to growing tension between two workers, Fatima and Joel, in a supported home. Their handovers have become short and cold, and a resident, Ruby, has started asking if they are angry with her. The lesson shows Kemal preparing, meeting each worker separately, running a joint conversation when one worker starts blaming the other, and agreeing practical actions. Key points: act early, stay neutral, keep the participant in view, agree the future, and follow up.

This case study follows Andres, who has taken over a community support team whose meetings are dominated by one long serving worker, Bev, while everyone else stays silent. The lesson shows how Andres redesigns the meeting to bring in quieter voices and focus on participants. It then explores what he does when a newer worker privately tells him that Bev regularly belittles her at handovers. Key points: structure meetings so everyone contributes, notice who is silent, recognise possible bullying, and escalate to HR while supporting the worker who spoke up.