The Trap of Trying to Be ''Fair'' by Giving Both Sides Equal Time

You’re twenty minutes into the mediation, and you already know it’s failing. On one side of the table, Sarah is talking, building a case brick by brick about every missed deadline and curt email. On the other, Mark sits with his arms crossed, jaw tight, waiting for his turn. You’re keeping a mental clock, trying to be the impartial referee. You catch yourself thinking, Okay, she’s had about seven minutes. Soon I’ll need to cut her off and give him the floor. You’re about to do just that when you realize the actual problem isn’t the clock. It’s that you’re refereeing a debate, not solving a problem. You’re managing airtime, and in the process, you’re missing the real conflict entirely. You typed “how to mediate a conflict between two employees” into a search engine last night, and none of the advice prepared you for the sheer futility of this moment.

The core of the problem isn’t that people are bad communicators; it’s that in a conflict, their goals are not mutual understanding. Their goal is self-preservation. When someone feels accused or misunderstood, their brain isn’t optimized for empathy or creative problem-solving. It’s primed to defend their position, reputation, and sense of competence. By giving each person a chunk of time to “state their case,” you are unintentionally reinforcing this defensive posture. You’re asking them to perform for a judge, you, rather than engage with each other. Each person uses their allotted time not to build a bridge, but to build a better fortress, stockpiling evidence for why they are right and the other person is wrong. The result is two well-argued, entirely separate monologues, with zero progress.

What’s Actually Going On Here

When a conversation is stuck, it’s usually because it’s happening on the wrong level. People are arguing about positions, not needs. A position is the tangible demand: “You need to include me on every project email.” A need is the underlying driver: “I need to feel informed so I’m not blindsided in meetings with my own team.” The person demanding to be on every email isn’t doing it because they love reading emails. They’re doing it to solve a deeper problem, perhaps a fear of being left out of the loop, or a need to protect their team from unexpected work.

As long as the conversation stays at the level of positions, it’s a zero-sum game. Either you get cc’d or you don’t. But if you can get to the underlying needs, you open up a dozen other possible solutions. Maybe the real solution is a weekly 15-minute sync, a shared project dashboard, or a clearer definition of roles. You can’t find those solutions when you’re just giving equal time to two competing positions. The “fairness” of the clock ensures the conversation stays shallow and adversarial.

This pattern is often stabilized by the wider organization. If bonuses and promotions are based on individual achievement but not team collaboration, or if roles are so ambiguous that people feel they must constantly guard their territory, then conflicts like this are inevitable. The system itself pits employees against each other. When you step in to mediate, you’re not just dealing with two individuals; you’re dealing with the symptoms of a team structure that encourages turf wars. Simply telling them to “get along” is like telling two people to stop shivering in a room where you control the thermostat.

What People Usually Try (and Why It Backfires)

When faced with this stalemate, most managers and HR professionals, with the best of intentions, reach for one of these moves. They seem logical, but they almost always make things worse.

• The Stopwatch. The move is to meticulously divide the time. The line sounds like: “Okay, Mark, you’ve had your ten minutes to explain your side. Sarah, let’s hear from you now.” This turns a problem-solving session into a formal debate. It signals that your role is to judge the better argument, not to help them find a workable solution together.

• The Appeal to Abstraction. The move is to ask them to rise above the conflict. The line sounds like: “Can we agree that we all need to be more professional?” This feels like a criticism, not a solution. The word “professional” means something different to everyone, and it invalidates the real frustration they are feeling. It’s a way of saying, “Your feelings are inconvenient.”

• The Premature Compromise. The move is to find a quick, superficial middle ground. The line sounds like: “What if Sarah agrees to send a weekly summary, and Mark agrees to loop her in on major decisions?” This addresses the symptom, not the cause. Because the underlying need (e.g., for respect, for predictability) hasn’t been addressed, the conflict will simply pop up somewhere else next week in a different form.

• The Fact-Finding Mission. The move is to determine who is “right.” The line sounds like: “Let’s go back through the emails and see who was actually responsible for that handoff.” This puts you in the role of detective and judge, reinforcing the idea that one person must be the winner and one the loser. The actual work is almost never about the facts; it’s about their different interpretations of those facts.

The Move That Actually Works

The effective move is to stop managing time and start managing focus. Your job is not to be a referee ensuring a fair fight, but a facilitator digging for useful information. The goal is to shift the conversation from what each person wants (their position) to what each person needs.

This requires you to abandon the idea of passive impartiality. You have to actively intervene, but not to take sides. You intervene to change the direction of the conversation. Instead of letting someone use their time to build a case against their colleague, you use questions to get underneath their argument. You are no longer listening for evidence; you are listening for the unmet need that is fueling the complaint.

This feels risky at first. It can feel like you’re interrupting, or that you’re not letting someone “have their say.” But what you’re actually doing is preventing them from wasting their time on a monologue that won’t get them what they need. You are guiding them toward a more productive conversation than the one they know how to have. The shift is from asking, “Whose turn is it to talk?” to asking, “What is the most important thing we need to understand right now?”

What This Sounds Like

These are not scripts, but illustrations of how to redirect the conversation from positions to needs.

• To get past an accusation: Instead of letting the other person rebut, you dig deeper. When Sarah says, “He’s constantly undermining me,” you don’t turn to Mark for his defense. You stay with Sarah and ask: “When you say ‘undermining,’ what’s an example of what that looks like? What’s the impact on your work when that happens?” This translates a vague, personal attack into a concrete, work-related problem that can actually be solved.

• To interrupt a defensive monologue: When Mark starts a long explanation of why he was justified in sending that email, you gently interrupt. You say: “I can see why you felt that was the right call. Can we pause on the ‘why’ for a moment? Help me understand what was at stake for you in that moment. What were you trying to protect?” This validates his intention while shifting the focus from justifying the past to revealing the underlying need (e.g., protecting a deadline, maintaining a standard).

• To reframe a demand: When someone presents a non-negotiable solution, you reframe it as a means to an end. Mark says, “I just need her to stop second-guessing my decisions.” You respond: “It sounds like you need confidence that once a decision is made, the team can move forward without it being re-litigated. Is that right?” This takes his personal frustration and turns it into a legitimate, shared business need for clarity and momentum. Now you can ask both of them, “What would a process that gives you both that confidence look like?”

• To move from blame to contribution: When the conversation devolves into a list of past grievances, you shift the timeline. You say: “I hear that the history here is really painful. It’s clear this pattern isn’t working for either of you. What’s one thing you could each do differently next week to prevent this from happening again?” This acknowledges the past without getting stuck in it and moves the focus to future-oriented, shared responsibility.