When should you as a manager intervene?

To know if you are going to intervene in a conflict, you can ask yourself three questions:
1. Does the conflict affect the quality and efficiency of our work?
If the answer is no, maybe you should not intervene and let the involved persons manage the conflict on their own.
If the answer is yes, you have an obvious mandate to intervene because you are responsible for reaching the goals.

2. Does the conflict affect the psychosocial work environment in a tangible way?
It may well be that business is fine, but at the same time there are people who suffer from a bad climate and are likely to get sick. Being an employer representative you have a working environment responsibility (On 31 March 2016, new provisions about organisational and social work environment came into effect in Sweden. The provisions apply to all operations where employees carry out work on the employers’ account.)

3. Is there a risk that the business and the psychosocial working environment will be affected in the long run if you do not take care of the problem right away?
If the problem can escalate, it is wiser to intervene before the conflict has deepened and becomes more challenging.
If the answer is no to all three questions, then there might still be people who are frustrated or might not like each other, but there is no cause for conflict intervention.

Source: Thomas Jordan