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Conflicts are an inevitable part of organizational life. As such, they are difficult to avoid, and according to previous research, they should not be avoided in all situations. To navigate conflicts in the workplace, the type of leadership adopted by managers plays a crucial role. In this thesis, the conceptual framework consists of transformational and transactional leadership to understand how managers with different leadership styles lead and handle conflicts. Further, organizational change is used as a contextual example of a potential source of conflict within the workplace. In that, there is a high risk of unsuccessful organizational changes, both in terms of organizational success and employee well-being. Given the risk of endangering public health, this becomes relevant to shed light on.

The aim of this thesis was therefore to investigate how managers handle interpersonal conflicts, as well as to analyse which type of leadership style is perceived to be the most appropriate in that context. To achieve this, a qualitative research method was applied, where semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten managers operating within the public sector. The selection was further based on a purposive sampling but did not exclude a snowball sample as a complementary sampling method. The empirical material was further analysed through thematic analysis to be able to identify recurring themes. The themes identified during the analysis were Leadership qualities, Definition and perception on conflicts, Causes of interpersonal conflicts as well as Employee concerns and managerial strategies during organizational change.

This thesis concluded in the fact that the most commonly used conflict managements styles arethe Integrating, Obliging and Dominating ones. Through managers applying the Integrating and Obliging conflict management styles show an alignment with the transformational leadershipstyle. In order to deal with interpersonal conflicts within the workplace, it can be further concluded that the transformational leadership appears to be the most appropriate approach.This, since a common perception of the participating respondents was that conflicts rarely occurred within the organizations they belong to.