If you're working with a team of other developers you want to constantly be pulling in their commits from the server so that you're working with the latest code you want to make this part of your routine, so running "git pull" just becomes a habit. Any time you sit down to work on your project before you actually edit any files, run a "git pull".
Simply communicating with your team can go a long way. Talk with each other about who is responsible for which changes and which parts of the project. Be aware of what each team member is working on for that day or week and you don't need to go overboard and waste a ton of time chatting about what you're working on. But you'd be surprised. Even just having a general idea of what each person is working on will put you in a position where you are far less likely to edit the same lines of code within the same file at the same time and that means less conflicts.
Make a plan with your team about what to use in text editor.
-"git merge" won't help you avoid conflicts outright but if you're working on a feature branch it will help you deal with any potential conflicts before it's time to actually merge feature branch back into master.