First of all, whether or not employees like one another is not what interests us here. The positive, accommodating work environment that we never tire of mentioning is not predicated on individuals liking one another. This isn’t Love at AOL. Sure, it helps if your team can give a group hug at the end of the day’s work. But it’s not a professional requirement – and rather implausible, too. Respecting one another in their jobs is another story. Again, we come back to compartmentalization. It’s the job functions that have to get done and done well. If employees can do their jobs, working alongside coworkers whom they dislike personally, then that’s peachy keen, and there’s nothing you can or should do about it. If, however, the animus felt between employees filters down into less-than-adequate job performance, you’ve got to act.

But how do you deal with performance problems that very often stem from something outside the business realm? The first thing that you do is own the fact that it is now a business problem, i.e., your problem. You also recognize that the problem has to do with performance breakdown, between your employees, which may very well be outside your scope.

In the corporate world, when people from all over the country and even the world, from different backgrounds and upbringings, with different values and habits, come together, there are inevitably conflicts, very often stemming from the fact that people just plain don’t like one another. Your job as a coach is not to lecture employees on loving one another or celebrating differences, or spouting some other trite bromides. These kinds of lectures invariably do more harm than good. Employees don’t like feeling that they’re being talked down to. Always talk up to your employees. It’s more uplifting.

Let’s return to two employees disliking one another. Let’s take their mutual disdain one step further with their job performances suffering as a result of it. What do you do? Call one in on the carpet and talk to him. Tell him precisely what’s expected of him as an employee with a specific job to do and performance goals to be met. Ask him what he thinks the solutions to his performance problems are, and what ideas he has to improve his working relationship with the other. Then follow the same course with the other person.

Once you’ve spoken your piece, and carefully listened to your two quarrelling staff members on an individual basis, your next move is to call one into your office for round two, and tell him some of the other person’s ideas for forging a better working relationship. You need to gauge his reaction to her suggestions. Then, bring in the other person, and tell her some of his ideas at rectifying their mutually destructive performances.

Round two is indispensable, because round three involves you refereeing both parties in the same room, and tying together all that you’ve learned in your one-on-one discussions with them. You’ve heard their sides of the story; you’ve gotten their reactions to what each had to say about the others’ suggestions about righting things; and now you, and the other two involved are all coming together to agree upon solutions to a positive outcome to the problem.

Traditional managers are apt to skip rounds one and two of this process and call in their batting employees right from the start, telling them point-blank, "Work it out between yourselves…… or else!" This is not the kind of employee self-sufficiency that you want in your organization. Sure, in the end, the battling employees themselves will have to resolve to work out their differences, or nothing positive will happen. That much is certain. But you have a much better chance of securing positive outcomes if you talk to each employee individually, gather the information you can as to the causes of the personal or work-related problems leading to the dismished performances, and then proceed from there.

When you simultaneously bring the fighting parties into your office (round three), it is only after you’ve heard from both sides (round one), and then gotten their reactions to the suggestions and ideas from the other (round two). Round three, then, is a productive as is possible because you did your homework. This fully informed approach stands in start contrast to what would be a free-for-all, highly emotional one, if you chose to immediately call your combative employees into your office and read them the riot act.

To emphasize an important point: It’s not your job to transform that they become best of buddies (although that would be nice). It’s your job and your responsibility to secure positive results in their performances. And if two employees’ personal dislike for one another is getting in the way of achieving this, you’ve got to put a stop to it – or at the very least the outward manifestations of it that are negatively impacting their performances.