Preparing Students to Engage in Difficult Conversations about Team Conflict and Ethical Concerns

Abstract: Student teams frequently encounter conflict, yet many common teamwork problems persist because students avoid direct conversations. This avoidance undermines student learning, team performance, and individual well-being, while also leaving students unprepared for the more complex conflicts they will face in professional settings. This interactive teaching session introduces a short, research-based intervention designed to equip students with the skills and confidence to initiate and navigate difficult conversations about team conflict and ethical concerns.

Grounded in research on conflict management, honest feedback, and intervention science, the intervention addresses two primary barriers to engagement: inaccurate beliefs about the costs and benefits of difficult conversations and a lack of practical conversational skills. The session presents two classroom-ready lessons. The first focuses on routine team conflicts, such as addressing missed deadlines or low-quality contributions. The second addresses more complex ethical dilemmas, such as responding to a supervisor who appears to prioritize short-term goals over professional values like accuracy, safety, or sustainability.

Across both lessons, students engage with brief vignettes that challenge the assumption that difficult conversations are inherently harmful, analyze examples of effective and ineffective responses, and practice applying structured conversational frameworks. The teamwork framework emphasizes describing observable behaviors, linking concerns to shared goals, acknowledging others’ perspectives, and collaboratively identifying next steps. The ethical intervention adapts this framework for both initial inquiry and sustained advocacy.

Participants in this session will experience the interventions firsthand, engage in applied exercises, and discuss strategies for adapting the lessons to courses ranging from 45 minutes to two hours.

Keywords: Difficult conversations, teamwork, ethical conflict, conflict management