Skip to content

Conflict is an unavoidable part of life. Where people, opinions and decision-making are involved, conflict can sometimes arise. This isn’t always a negative thing: in fact sometimes it helps people to understand each other better and consider different viewpoints. 

Sometimes avoiding or addressing conflict means having difficult conversations – these can be essential to reach a resolution. This page explores types of conflict, highlights some examples of difficult conversations an organisation might encounter, and offers some tips on how you might handle them. 

Remember that often when people are working towards the same goals, conflict and challenging conversations can be a result of them demonstrating their passion. It’s always good to take a step back, reducing the risk of acting irrationally. 

Benefits of being prepared

Being prepared to have challenging conversations and face conflict has several benefits. It can:

  • Reinforce a positive organisational culture.
  • Help you challenge and adapt your ways of doing things and stay relevant. 
  • Help you stand up to discrimination or other negative viewpoints. 
  • Improve your interpersonal skills, communication, and empathy.  
  • Help you encourage greater engagement and interest from members and the community. 
Delegates at a tackling racism conference talk around a table

Potential types of conflict and scenarios

There are lots of different types of conflict. The main ones are: 

Interpersonal
Conflict within yourself, such as your morals disagreeing with your organisation’s ethos.
Intrapersonal
Conflict with someone else, like a general disagreement.
Intergroup
Conflict between several group members and others.
Intragroup
Conflict between one person and the rest of their group, like a Board member wanting to do things differently.

Conflict can present itself in different ways, including:

  • General disagreements – working in different ways or having competing priorities. 
  • Verbal abuse – shouting, calling names or speaking badly of someone else. 
  • Ignoring or disregarding – refusing to cooperate or treating someone else as less important. 
  • Bribery – asking for or offering additional benefits in exchange for something. 
  • Sexual or racial harassment – inappropriate comments or actions.
  • Discrimination – mistreating a person based on their characteristics.
  • Physical assault – an escalated disagreement where someone intends to physically harm someone else.

Conflict can occur in isolated incidents or can be part of an ongoing dispute that causes tension, upset or a lack of progress across a longer period of time. Some examples of conflict that you might experience in a sport and physical activity setting include:

Example 1

Several activities operate from the same sports hall. The basketball club coach gets angry when the badminton nets are left up before their session and sometimes shouts at the badminton coaches or duty manager to remove them. 

Example 2

A coach has been offered money by a parent to ensure their child is selected for the first team. The coach could really use the money but selects his team on merit and lives by the morals of the organisation.

How can you limit or avoid conflict?

Conflict can often be avoided or dealt with best by taking a step back to understand where it’s come from. Disagreements can often stem from:

  • Differences in personalities.
  • Miscommunication or misunderstanding.
  • Different priorities or goals. 
  • Varying levels of support or resources available. 
  • Levels of honesty or openness.
  • Leadership styles.
  • People’s life experiences and ways of dealing with things.
  • A desire to tackle inequalities.

Once you’ve got a better understanding of where the problems may stem from, you can focus on a resolution or put in place preventative measures to reduce the risk of them happening again and deal with any challenging conversations that may come from them. 

Group of people in discussion

Challenging conversations

When faced with a difficult conversation, think about the changes you can make to your behaviour, such as taking time to understand, avoiding assumptions and gossip, avoiding singling people out and choosing your words and tone of voice carefully. 

Key considerations for challenging conversations are:

Identify if the person involved is in fight (aggressive), flight (defensive) or freeze (uncertain) mode.
Take a deep breath to remain in control of your thoughts and reactions.
Attack the problem, not the person.
Avoid arguing back; instead aim to be empathetic and reasonable.
Avoid entering their personal space.
Keep your voice calm, slow and not too loud.

It’s useful to give yourself some space after a difficult conversation, collect your thoughts and think of a few possible solutions. Discussing things with someone you trust can be useful and help you to arrive at a solution with a second opinion.  

Sometimes practical changes are needed to resolve difficult conversations or support conflict resolution. These might include training for your volunteers or workforce, altering job roles and responsibilities, improving access in your venue, encouraging feedback, or seeking professional help.

Try and make solution-finding a collaborative process so everyone involved feels supported and listened to. 

Need some additional support?

Dealing with conflict and having difficult conversations can be challenging for everyone involved. Sometimes support may be needed afterwards. Have a conversation with those involved about the type of support they might need and see how you may be able to facilitate this. 

In extreme circumstances you may need to involve external support. Keep in mind that people may be feeling embarrassed, nervous, or guilty for being involved in or talking about conflict situations. Try your best to reassure them; document issues while ensuring anonymity and looking after your own wellbeing in the process. 

For more information, you can explore the Sports Governance Academy’s resources. You can also read our guidance on wellbeing and specific insight on dealing with difficult meetings.