It might be helpful to change your style a little to accomplish the same goal with less conflict. Always always give people a way to save face, this applies do

It might be helpful to change your style a little to accomplish the same goal with less conflict. Always always give people a way to save face, this applies doubly in meetings. If people feel like the choices are being right or being responsible for an error they will fight to be right. If you give them a third option (past inexperience, blame someone that left, poor testing, changed requirements) that doesn't hurt their reputation, they no longer have to fight to be right. Try to teach people the principal behind why something is wrong/broken/bad. This applies to things like code health that there are more subjective. Instead of saying "That method should not be 300 lines." Teach that you want small understandable functions that do only one thing. This gives them a metric to use in the future and makes your comment seem more well thought out. Be helpful when you can be. If you are always causing problem people will remember that. People also will remember when you go out of your way to help them. A little bit of oil could help the other interactions run smoothly. I hope these little bits help some.