Stress in the team: 8 steps to resolve conflicts without using your power

As a graduate environmental engineer, safety engineer, business mediator, and executive coach, Astrid Herbst has seen many companies from the inside during her career. Time and again, she encountered a central problem: broken communication and a lack of teamwork. In her book "The Stress-Free Company – Ten Tools for Relaxed and Effective Collaboration," Herbst addresses this with a specially developed set of tools.

Published in 2025, Herbst describes on 224 pages practical tips to minimize the potential for conflict in startups and companies , to strengthen the mental health of employees and to increase loyalty to the company - a crucial lever in times of a shortage of skilled workers.

Conflicts are generally perceived as unpleasant. They are agitating, can cause real stress, and make people hate each other. Nevertheless, conflicts are important. They are a beneficial element in group processes and important for organizational development. Therefore, knowledge of conflict resolution is vital in companies. Resolving conflicts through a decision by a superior without clarifying interests rarely leads to a win-win situation for those involved. Worse still, decisions of this kind are a command that those affected must obey, while their actual wishes and interests remain unaddressed. Resentment and dissatisfaction develop because the underlying conflict that causes the bad feelings remains unresolved, even though it has officially been resolved.

Two employees are given the same prestigious project without their knowledge due to their superiors' poor organization. As soon as they find out about each other, they both begin to denigrate and attack each other so they can keep the project. The argument escalates in a meeting. Management takes over and assigns project responsibility to one of them. The other person feels powerless against the decision and loses the opportunity for recognition and advancement. From now on, they keep their expertise to themselves and hope that the project will be a disaster.