Parties in conflict not only fail to work together, but use paid work time to plot how to get even for perceived wrongs. Instead of buying output, the company buys damage to its interests. Unresolved conflicts can create serious damage. Managers must step in.

Issuing a cease-and-desist order may improve the situation but often tend to drive the conflict underground. Truces or enforcement of unpalatable solutions is not an answer either. Companies have two alternatives: 1) resolve the conflict and re-establish teamwork or 2) terminate the principals engaged in the conflict. Unfortunately, termination does not assure conflicts will not rise again. There are recruitment and training costs for replacing terminated personnel. Replacements may not have equal expertise and lack knowledge of company history.

Usually conflicts start with misunderstandings from which the parties conclude the other is operating from sinister motives. Trust breaks down and is hard to rebuild.

A skilled mental health professional who has frequently worked with conflict, Macek knows how to connect with disputing parties, analyze core causes, and help those in conflict embrace the common good over individual differences. Using a skilled external consultant has the advantage of maintaining focus on the conflict without insinuation or suspicion that an intervening manager is favoring one disputant over another. The external consultant conveys and supports a supervisory mandate that hostilities cease while working with the disputants from a third-party perspective. Macek has the training and experience to analyze conflict situations and determine vehicles for resolution. Sometimes a situation cannot be salvaged. In that event, the manager has demonstrated best effort and receives recommendation from an external consultant supporting a termination decision.