Cracking the Code of Conflict

[00:00:13] Manal Ali: Good morning, everyone, and… And thank you for joining us. I'm Manal Ali from Canadian HR Reporter, and we're honoured to host today's session, Cracking the Code of Conflict, which focuses on how HR leaders can better understand what's driving workplace conflict, and equip managers to respond with more clarity and confidence. So today's session is hosted by Citation Canada, an HR health and safety and workforce management solution built by Canadians for Canadians. They help Canadian businesses stay compliant, manage their people with confidence. Through their Atlas platform and team of certified HR and safety experts, they give businesses everything they need to handle the day-to-day people challenges, including consulting services and training programs, all in one place. I have the distinct honor of being joined today by Carly Bell, Director of Consulting at Citation Canada, who brings a wealth of experience, over 20 years in leadership development, organizational change, and HR strategy across numerous industries. Safe to say, she's probably dealt with her fair share of conflict. Before we get into it, I have a few housekeeping items to review. If you have any questions for today's presenter, please feel free to type them in the Q&A box. You can submit them at any time in today's suggestion, today's session, and we'll be collecting them, and Carly has so generously allowed me to interrupt her to address your queries in real time. And we will also be launching some poll questions during today's webinar, so pay close attention to your screen so you can participate. Carly, I'll turn it over to you.

[00:01:57] Carlie Bell: Fantastic. Thank you so much, Manal, really appreciate it, and thank you, everybody, for joining us today. I'm really excited. Obviously, conflict is one of those things that is incredibly pervasive, not just at work, but in our daily lives as well. Interestingly, from my perspective, it's also one of the most misunderstood forces in any organization. So today, what we're actually going to do is delve a little bit into looking beneath the surface in order to decode where conflict really comes from. How trust either fuels or diffuses it, and what you can actually do in order to turn workplace tension into team strength. You're gonna walk away today with a few simple, practical tools that you can actually use tomorrow morning. And I'm gonna start by just making sure we're, know where we're going with our session today. So we're gonna start by emphasizing the notion that we're trying to decode conflict, we're not trying to fix it. And in order to decode it, we need to unpack and understand the roots, where it comes from. We're going to discuss the four different drivers of conflict. We're going to talk about the actual trust connection, and how trust actually changes the impact of tensions. And we'll leave you today with some tools to diagnose before things escalate. So you'll actually have a handout that we'll distribute to you, which you can use in real time, as well as some other resources that you can look up and apply as well.

[00:03:21] Carlie Bell:  Finally, we'll actually wrap up with key takeaways that you can all walk away from, and we will have an open Q&A session as well at the end, so feel free to hang on, ask questions, and get involved along the way. We're gonna start things off, then, with something really, really simple. We're gonna start with a poll. And what I'd like you to do here is to think about a recent conflict at work. And what word best describes how this felt or played out? We've put some words on here, and feel free to type in the chat if none of these seem appropriate for you, but frustrated, energizing, avoidant. Misunderstood. Motivating. Demotivating. If any of those land, please feel free to vote and share your thinking here. And we'll give everyone a minute to think through. I know we have a lot of people here today, so… Alright! And look at that, frustrated, misunderstood, demotivating, avoidant. Those would be the top four. Notice how these words actually all describe emotions or stress. Right? These are not positive words. We're not hearing things like productive, or energizing, or insightful, or allowed us to grow. That's what we're going to explore today. We're gonna explore exactly how to change that particular dynamic. Okay. So, when we think about conflict, it's important to recognize that what we see as conflict is actually the end result.

[00:05:38] Carlie Bell:  The visible conflict is the lava. Below the surface, however, is the trust, the clarity, and the alignment. Why is conflict such a challenge? It is a massive challenge for just about everybody, because it's very human. And now I'm gonna jump into a little bit of brain science. Our brains have not adapted as quickly as industrialization or technology has. As a result, as human beings, in lots of ways, our brains are still functioning at a very, very simplistic level. And our brains are first and foremost designed to protect us. What happens when conflict starts to emerge is it actually creates emotional tension, and it triggers in people fear. And the fear nowadays is we're no longer afraid of being eaten by lions, tigers, and bears. Today's fears stem around the social ostracization, humiliation, and resulting isolation.

[00:06:43] Carlie Bell:  So, what is happening is that when somebody sort of threatens us, our brain quite literally disconnects from using our frontal cortex, which is where logic and rationality and thinking really takes place. And sends us instead into our amygdala area, and that's our emotional center. It cuts off the thinking and sends us, quite literally, into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode. We're now in self-protection mode. That amygdala is also the emotional center, and because it sort of takes over, our body is quite literally scanning the environment, trying to figure out what do we need to do to protect ourselves. And, as a result of that disconnect, we're in a place where we're actually not able to use that thinking and rational part of our brain very well. This is why conflict is so problematic, is in the height of conflict, emotions are high, and when emotions are high, it is really difficult to regain control of the thinking and the rationality part of our brain. The important thing to note here is that conflict itself isn't actually the enemy. It's sharing information with us. It's telling us something really important about how people are actually experiencing their work. The priorities, the processes, relationships, the systems that might be out of sync.

[00:08:15] Carlie Bell:  Our job as leaders is not to suppress conflict, it's to decode it. It's to see what it is actually telling us about stress, about alignment, about fairness, about psychological safety and clarity, and fundamentally about levels of trust. What we're trying to do is change the way we understand the dynamic so that we can build the capacity for teams to actually process conflict intelligently. We want to get them out of that emotional response mechanism and back into the rational, thinking, logical part of their brain, where they can actually discuss things In a way that is useful and helpful and productive for the organization. Note, this absolutely also applies to personal lives and other contexts outside of organizational life. So, if conflict isn't the enemy and we're trying to decode and understand it, the first place that we have to look is where does it really come from? And really, we're going to talk about 4 different conflict of drivers here, or types of conflict. Most of us respond very, very quickly to conflict, thinking it's sort of relational. It's the interaction between two people. But the why is the conflict or the disagreement emerging becomes really important, and it does, in fact, vary.

[00:09:45] Carlie Bell:  Every conflict you encounter can usually be traced back to at least one of these four drivers. The first one, task conflict. If we're not all actually understanding what it is we're trying to achieve, we can end up actually trying to achieve different things as individuals in a team, or in a group, or in an organization. And that itself will create conflict. Process is how we're actually going about doing things. Now, this is a really interesting one, because there's lots of research that shows individuals actually have very different ways of both processing information, and communicating, and actually in how they prefer to work, and how they work best. Here's a perfect example you can all relate with, I'm sure. In your organization, there are people who actually seem to be able to multitask. Now, I use that word a little bit loosely, it's a bit of a misnomer. We actually can't do complicated tasks simultaneously. What we do is we do task switching, our brain goes back and forth. Some people can multitask or task switch very quickly, and can handle a whole bunch of different things at the same kind of time.

[00:11:03] Carlie Bell:  Others, like me, - I am a terrible multitasker. I am really, really great when I can do one thing at a time. If there's an interruption, I can handle that, but I have to now focus on the interruption, and then I come back to the task at hand and work on that, sort of, single-handedly, if you'd like. Note, if I'm working on a team with a multitasker, I often interpret their behavior as being rude. Because when we're having conversations, they're engaging with their technology and continuing on with other things. That's not something that I understand, and that I actually believe is doable. Because in my experience, it doesn't work. So what I'm feeling, seeing, and interpreting is that they're perhaps not actually listening to me, and now I feel as though I'm of less value on what I'm saying is less important. That now starts to get my back up a little bit, and that, by very definition, is sort of the beginning stages of conflict, perhaps, emerging. So, understanding how we're actually doing things, both on an individual level, and what's the actual process or procedure we plan to follow to accomplish said task if we're working on it as a team in an organization, those disconnects are real, and making sure everybody is aligned and in agreement with how we're going to do things, as well as recognizing the individual differences that matter. Becomes critical to understanding the kinds of conflict that can emerge as a result of process conflict.

[00:12:37] Carlie Bell:  Third, we have relational conflict. When we look at relational conflict, this is what most of us sort of lean to and appreciate and recognize. instantly. This is the surface one, this is the easy one. This is the one where it's sort of between two people. Note, however, very often the conflict between two or more people is being misdiagnosed because it's not purely relational. It's not that you have people with different values and completely, different points of view and completely conflicting pieces of information going at it and having issues. It's because of the other stuff underlying it that's surfacing and emerging. And the fourth one isn't spoken of very often, but I think it's really important that we all be aware. There is this thing called technological conflict, and it's sort of the what tools are we relying on, and how are we relying upon them to do the work that we're trying to achieve?

[00:13:34] Carlie Bell:  Now, note, in today's world, when we talk about technology, we're very often talking about information technology, and of course, the most current hot-button topic is AI. We do know that AI is unpredictable at this point in time. It absolutely can be very helpful, but the human interaction with the AI is still critically important. And so, when people are using AI as a tool and are coming up with different kind of results and different kinds of processes and suggestions from it, that in itself becomes a bit of a task and or process, as well as technological issue. Technology, though, also speaks to just everything man-made, man created around us. And so, tables are technically technology. And the bottom line is that there are lots and lots of tools that are used on a daily basis in order for people to accomplish their goals and objectives. And sometimes we're actually relying on the wrong tools to try to accomplish things. And we may not have really recognized that in time. We may also disagree as members of a team on which tools we should be using. And so recognizing that those tools and that, sort of, those elements that are supposed to help us can, in fact, become part of the problem themselves, are really, really important as well.

[00:14:52] Carlie Bell:  Note, when we start trying to understand conflict, what we're seeing is that all four of these things can sometimes come into play. There are layers potentially available here, but when we start really delving and trying to understand the root cause of conflict, then we can actually name it. And by naming it, we can actually respond more intelligently. That helps keep us in that prefrontal cortex, part of our brain, that logical, rational center, and helps to actually avoid the emotional escalation. Well, now we're going to turn to a second poll for you. We've got a little scenario. So, imagine you've got a project team that's missed another deadline. Ops is blaming IT, and IT is blaming leadership. What type of conflict do you think is likely at play here? Are you thinking it's task? process. Relational, or technological. I'll give you a minute to think and submit your answer.

[00:16:06] Manal Ali: Excited to see the results on this one. I'm always prone to wanting to blame IT for all of the things.

[00:16:16] Carlie Bell: It's always interesting when we're, and notice. Each scenario, so there's not a lot of context, which would give you more detail. But still. Alright, let's see what people said. Oh, lots of process and lots of relational. Interesting, right? This is, apparently, ops blaming IT and IT blaming someone else. I mean, it looks as though IT's pretty involved in that, and yet very little technological conflict coming into play here. Again, this is a really great demonstration of the fact that conflict is, in fact, layered. And so, it isn't necessarily just one. It can sometimes be multiple types of conflict that come into play, and knowing which ones are coming into play can be really helpful in moving forward and actually discussing it. Understanding all of those routes is really key. Alright, we're gonna switch… Yeah, go ahead.

[00:17:13] Manal Ali: Sorry, can I just.

[00:17:14] Carlie Bell: I do.

[00:17:15] Manal Ali: So I thought I'd interrupt real quick. So, our attendee is asking, I'm curious about your view on values as a driver of conflict. Where does it fit?

[00:17:28] Carlie Bell: Values is a really interesting one, because values are inherently, layered. Right? We have individual values, we have team-level values, potentially, we have, a duo, so by two people. They're not actually qualified as a team. Team means groups of 3 or more. The interaction between two people is subtly different. So, you've got individual values, you've got potential dual values, you've got potential team values, you've got potential organizational values. The bottom line is that at any point, if there are disconnects between those, you can see conflict emerging. Sometimes it's hard to diagnose the real root cause of the value, though, because what we speak of and understand as values is not something that we speak of often at an individual, a dyad, or a small… or a team level. When we speak in organizations about values, really what we try to do is drive home sort of those common values that underlie the principles and the foundation within which we work. If you see individual values potentially coming into conflict with organizational values, I strongly recommend revisiting the organizational values and making sure that everybody understands that at work. Our organization is really valuing these elements, and let's make sure that we're behaving in ways that align with these at the workplace. That basically allows you to really lean on the organizational value system in the work context. Outside of work, that becomes a little bit more difficult, and it can be hard to recognize when it's fundamentally those individual value differences that are driving conflict. If you've got a close enough relationship that's fraught with a lot of conflict, hopefully those people would be able to discuss those values. Note, that's very often the role of a therapist, so…

[00:19:26] Carlie Bell: Don't say…

[00:19:27] Manal Ali: Thank you, yeah.

[00:19:28] Carlie Bell: That was a little bit out of my league, but yeah, therapy often helps get at those underlying value systems and conflicts that are emerging, so… Thank you so much.

[00:19:38] Manal Ali: Yeah, I'm sure it helped. Thank you so much for that, and we'll let you, get on to the next slide.

[00:19:44] Carlie Bell: Absolutely, no worries, and feel free, if you have more questions, folks, drop them in, I'm happy to chat as we go. Alright, let's talk a little bit about trust, then. Trust fundamentally acts like a lens through which people actually experience conflict. And so it changes how individuals perceive it, and it also changes how individuals, therefore, are able to handle it. So, trust is the underlying thing here that we really need to build as the foundation in order to make sure that conflict is being addressed, handled. Usefully and appropriately. Low-trust teams, by definition, have people that are constantly on edge. That means they're constantly in that slightly triggered state, and they're constantly scanning the environment, trying to look out for the next threat, and trying to really protect themselves. That means that every single disagreement actually feels like danger, and it becomes more threatening. Those are situations where you end up with much higher rates of conflict emerging.

[00:20:49] Carlie Bell:  In higher trust teams, however, what we now see is that people are just less on guard. And they're less on guard, less on edge the whole time, because they actually feel safe. And in those kinds of teams, what we see is that this tension can actually turn into innovation. It turns into creative dialogue and discussion, where we can talk about why are we seeing things differently, how are you seeing, what are you thinking, why do I differ, and actually come to some kind of Agreement or some kind of understanding that is common that we're all willing to work towards and accept as our, sort of, state. That makes places really innovative, it makes them much more adaptable, it makes them much more able to handle today's stress. We do know that the amount of change happening in the world And the uncertainty out there is causing individuals to just have heightened senses of stress to begin with. So when you can come to work and you know you're in a really safe spot where you're valued and your contributions matter, and nobody's going to humiliate you or ostracize you or chastise you, and mistakes are really treated as learning opportunities.

[00:22:06] Carlie Bell:  That's where you're really going to get that innovation. You're also going to get all kinds of extra benefits out of the individuals that are working in your organization. They're going to be committed, they're going to be engaged, they're not going to call in sick, they're going to actually want to be there to be a part of everything, they're going to give a little more every day, etc, etc. So, think for a minute here about your team, your workplace. And what I'm gonna do is give you a really easy way to get a sense of where are the people that matter to you actually laying with regards to this level of trust. We have a continuum here, and this continuum stretches from low trust to high trust. If you think about the way your people behave. You'll be able to put them on this continuum somewhere and get a sense of where is that level of trust in your organization right now. In low-trust teams, what you're going to see is people are very guarded. They're very careful about what they say, they're careful about what information they share, in part because information is power. And so they're trying to hold onto some power and control in the only way they can, by keeping things close to themselves.

[00:23:22] Carlie Bell:  This means they tend not to be very open when things aren't going very well. They're not alerting you to the fact that they're really stressed, or that they're feeling like there's things happening that are causing problems and need to be, discussed. They look, perhaps, disengaged. They may be labeled as resistant individuals or people that are not adapting to change properly. What you might, in fact, be seeing is an environment where the trust is so low that you've triggered them to actually be very, very careful. On the other end of the spectrum, the high-trust teams, what you see now are people that are sharing information galore. Even when they don't have the answers yet, or it feels too early. They're sharing information and saying, we're looking at this, we're considering this, we're, looking into this, we don't have an answer yet, but we'll get back to you, we're trying to, and they're seeking input. They're seeking, sort of, the opinion of other people, and have we missed anything? What you see is just lots of collaboration, lots of interactive support. And lots and lots of discussions.

[00:24:31] Carlie Bell:  Now, note, those discussions often take some time. And so, in organizations where time and everything is on the clock, if you're shutting down that dialogue, you're pushing them towards lower trust levels on this spectrum as well. It is also fair to recognize, though, that some of that dialogue can be unproductive. So if you're seeing gossip happening, and you're seeing lots and lots of people clustering and having tight-knit, closed conversations that they're not then openly sharing, that's suggesting you may, in fact, not be in a high-trust environment. You've got some other stuff going on there, and people are using each other as support systems. To retain a sense of control and a sense of belongingness to withstand the pressures that they're facing. Medium trust teams are where the majority of teams will fall.

[00:25:22] Carlie Bell:  On medium trust teams, what you'll see is information is cautiously shared. That's the best way to frame that. Information will be shared with some people that are appropriate at the right times, but not with, perhaps, the people who need to know. And so here's where you start to see that, yeah, you've got sort of groups emerging, and sometimes you've got teams that are really high trust, but in the overall organization, they actually are functioning at a lower trust level, and here's where you can start to see those disconnects between the layers or the levels in the organization. So if you really look at the people and identify where's the team at, and start looking at the organization as a whole in comparison, you can get a good sense of what kind of things need to be paid attention to in order to build the trust levers that are needed in the areas where they're actually needed. Having said that. How do we do that, right? Alright, what I'm gonna do now is give you some hands-on information. These are some tools that you can use that will help you actually diagnose conflict at different stages of conflict and provide different levels of information for you to use, so that you can then go back and try to deal with things differently the next time and make forward progress.

[00:26:40] Carlie Bell:  To rebuild that trust level and help move the whole organization forward, so that conflict does end up being something that every time, hopefully, is actually informing and innovative and useful and productive. The first tool we're going to start talking about is the Conflict Style Inventory. This is an individual-level tool, this is a self-assessment. This tool becomes incredibly helpful for leaders. as well as for individual members of teams, but it's not the kind of thing you want people to hold onto and only retain the individual information for. You want these people to share it amongst their team. And so what the conflict style inventory does is it allows us to recognize different people have naturally different automatic responses to the way they deal with conflict. You will all recognize this immediately. We have some people who completely avoid conflict. Right? They completely avoid it. And those people, their natural response is going to be to just be quiet, back up, walk away, not engage.

[00:27:51] Carlie Bell:  We have other people who are actually competitors, if you'd like, and they have to win every single disagreement. So those yes fighters are right fighters, like, they're right into conflict, and they're in it to win it every single time. We then have other people that are more accommodating, we have other people, yet again, that are compromising, and finally, we have people that actually engage with conflict in a collaborative kind of way. Collaboration is ultimately where we want to get to, but having the individuals within the team and within the organization understand that individuals approach conflict differently by default. And recognizing that, being able to see it, name it, and therefore allow people the time and space they need to adapt, adjust, and engage in conflict in a different way is really, really useful and really beneficial. It's not going to happen overnight. For a lot of people, changing their way of dealing with and interacting with conflict. requires time and patience and practice, so you need to set up safe environments. This is a fantastic learning opportunity, but it also helps recreate and support all of those really beneficial team dynamics that are useful within organizations. So it's a great exercise to undertake.

[00:29:16] Carlie Bell:  The next tool we're going to talk about is pulse mapping. Pulse mapping, quite literally, is just creating some kind of working document where you're trying to Track the emerging patterns that you're seeing come forth. And so, when I talk about patterns, we may be talking about things like reoccurring complaints. We'll often hear complaints use different language, but fundamentally, they're pointing at the same thing. You may see certain individuals start to miss a lot of meetings. You may see certain individuals' behavior really shift. So you see somebody who's usually really outgoing, all of a sudden they… or not all of a sudden, but you recognize it over time, they've become more withdrawn, they're a little bit less engaged, they appear to be more heads down and solitary in their work. When you interact with them, you're hearing shifts in their tone and the way that they express themselves.

[00:30:16] Carlie Bell:  Those are all cues that suggest there's stuff going on. Now note, it absolutely could be stuff other than underlying trust issues and or conflict that emerges, but Paying attention to those triggers will allow you to start seeing the patterns that are emerging, which will help you be able to diagnose a little bit more clearly whether there are underlying trust issues in the organization, which are likely to lead to more conflicts emerging. And, or, if you're seeing lots of conflict, you can start seeing, perhaps, the individuals that are being more directly affected by this. And start looking at how can you, get at the underlying root causes in order to bring people along a little bit more. The third tool I'm going to suggest is what we call a conflict ladder. A conflict ladder is a really useful tool when you're trying to understand where conflict currently is at. So, if you're an HR individual in particular, and you've been brought in to help manage a conflict scenario, the conflict ladder can be a really, really important tool for you to use before you engage in trying to mitigate this conversation.

[00:31:24] Carlie Bell:  What the conflict ladder does is it recognizes that conflict actually emerges at different stages and different levels. Right? And what you want to try to do is catch it early as opposed to late. We can start off at the wrong level here of misunderstanding. So when there's misunderstanding, people are not necessarily in that fully emotional state yet. It's a little bit easier to get in and talk through what's going on. For misunderstanding, we step it up a notch, if you'd like, and we actually get into disagreement. When you have two people that are disagreeing about something, they could fundamentally see it very differently. You may not actually get to agreement. What you may need to try to get to instead is a co-alignment, and so recognizing that we may just have to accept that we're seeing it differently, we still have to find a way to move forward, how are we going to do that? The next step up is tension.

[00:32:18] Carlie Bell:  Note, when you've got people that are in that tense space, they're already emotionally triggered, and the first thing you have to think about is how do you de-escalate the emotion? So you have to give them time and space in order to try to get out of the emotional element of their brain, so that they can get back into the connection with that frontal cortex. There are all kinds of things we can do to assist people in reducing that emotional tension that exists. Note, the last strong of the ladder is hostility. That is full-out emotional engagement. You are really fed up, and you're just in your head now, you're in that space. Both tension and hostility really do require the reconnection, if you'd like, of that prefrontal cortex and the logic and the rational thinking ability. So, to decrease people's emotional level, there's lots of different things you can try, and sometimes it's gonna depend on the individual and what works best for them. Mindfulness is a really interesting technique, and we see lots of mindfulness coming into organizations as a practice that is really helpful for managing stress.

[00:33:29] Carlie Bell:  Note, mindfulness has loads of benefits, but the brain science has identified that mindfulness is a critical factor in helping de-escalate the emotion and bringing people back into the logic and rational thinking ability. So, engaging in some of those mindfulness practices in your organization and having those tools at hand is a really, really useful thing to do, for sure. Some of the really simple things there include things like just breathing exercises. Just give people space and help them actually breathe slowly. Count 1 in 2, 3, 4, draw a box. It helps people disconnect, from the emotion. And so, quite literally, help people by doing this, right? And you're gonna breathe in through your nose, 1, 2, 3, 4, you gotta go slowly. And then you're gonna come out through your mouth, 1, 2, 3, 4.

[00:34:25] Carlie Bell:  The act of drawing with your finger and paying attention to your breathing quite literally disconnects that emotional hijacking. And that… it's a very simple tool. It feels a little weird until it becomes common practice, but it literally can help in the exact moments. Sometimes you need to just give people time and space. You need to say, look, we need to take 15 minutes, or we need to take 24 hours, let's come back at this tomorrow when everybody's had time to cool down. Sometimes you can say, you know what, I really need a bathroom break, can you just give me 5 minutes? It creates separation automatically. If one person walks away, though, the chance is you leave the other person stewing and simmering in their head.

[00:35:08] Carlie Bell:  So you have to be a little bit careful about how you use which tool when, and again, there's lots you can do out there to explore how to bring that notion of mindfulness and that disconnection of the emotional hijacking back into your organization. But understanding where they are on the conflict ladder tells you how important that mechanism's going to be, first and foremost, when you're getting involved in a conflict. Next up, we have the Team Trust Radar. The Team Trust Radar, quite simply, is a really quick check. Again, think a little bit about drawing yourself a bullseye. There's nothing precise about this, there's nothing really measurement-related. And you're kind of scanning the environment. You're looking at how open do you think conversations actually are at the moment. Are they towards the bullseye in that, yeah, we're seeing lots of openness, things are good, or are you seeing them make their way out towards the outer circles? How reliable are you seeing commitments from individual people, from teams, from leaders, from organization overall? How consistent is the follow-through? If you color code dots for different people on your team and start thinking through where are they on this sort of bullseye, you can start getting a sense of where you've got the outliers and where you've got people where their trust is sitting at a lower level, versus where have you got people that are really your champions, and how can you work with all of those to bring the outer ring members closer into the middle, so that we're all sitting in this really nice high trust Area, where there's levels of comfort.

[00:36:38] Carlie Bell:  The last one is an after-action debrief. Now, note, the after-action brief is really, really useful after a project has occurred. In this particular instance, we're talking very specifically about after a conflict has emerged. You can use it in both scenarios, and I encourage you to do so, and what you're gonna see is we've just pasted into the chat for you a document you can take away and use for exactly this purpose. The after-action debrief that we've sent out can be used under any situation. When we speak about conflict specifically, though, note. What we're trying to do here is we're trying to make every conflict that emerges a learning experience that we can talk about in our organization in a safe way, so that we can look at what did we do well, what did we not do well, and what can we learn from that so that we can do better in the future. This really starts planting the seed in those low-trust organizations that we're not gonna punish you when stuff comes to light. When stuff finally becomes out in the open, and we start seeing it, and understanding what's going on.

[00:37:57] Carlie Bell:  As your team leader, as your colleague, as a member of an organization, we're trying to understand what can we do better to make work better overall, and how can we take every mistake and turn it into a learning opportunity. We want to celebrate mistakes when they provide us with learning opportunities. It's the way to create safety and to allow people to try new things, to be innovative, to grasp a hold of trying to get ahead of the future. That's where we all feel that we kind of need to be. We somehow need to be ready to pivot on a dime. And if you're chastising people or they're getting in trouble because they're trying and it didn't work out as one had hoped, then we're actually instilling lower trust cultures. That right there starts to set up situations where conflict is going to emerge much more frequently. Again, people are on edge all the time, and it's easy for them to be triggered to a point now, quickly, where they're suddenly exploding because they're in that emotional state. So the idea of having really, really safe and really conversational and really learning-oriented organizations has never been more important than it is today.

[00:39:17] Carlie Bell:  This after-action debrief is really a critical tool in each and every one of these kind of instances. You can use it for every project that you complete, you can use it for every, investigation or consideration that you were looking at, that you were making decisions about. You can look at it from every interaction kind of perspective, and you can use the After Action Debrief specifically to look at how did we deal with this conflict today. I'm gonna leave you today with a few key takeaways before we get into the question and answer session. First off. Reframe conflict as data, data, data, however you'd like to say it. My kid insists it's data, not drama. Most of us see conflict and interpret conflict as drama, and we roll our eyes, and we really hate having to deal with it. That fundamentally is sending the wrong message right off the bat. A reminder that you as leaders. Are being watched every day. Every move that you make, every look that crosses your face, someone is seeing it, and they're storing that information. It is really important that you recognize when there is conflict, you want to jump into it as an opportunity to learn. This is giving you really important information. So change the way that you think about conflict.

[00:40:51] Carlie Bell:  Second, diagnose the root cause of conflict before trying to solve the problem. We're very good at jumping in and trying to calm things and calm nerves. And then we start often trying to deal with the relational part. We're worried about the relationship between those two people and the spillover that it has elsewhere. Or we're worried about the relationship that's happening between that individual and their team or the organization as a whole, and we're trying to jump the gun in trying to solve the feeling part without actually understanding the root cause of the problem. And finally, remember, use trust as your lever, not your reward. Trust here is the thing that allows conflict to shift from being something unproductive, unhelpful, highly emotional, and uncomfortable. To something that's incredibly useful, incredibly important for innovation, and absolutely, it becomes then a driver of innovation as opposed to a destruction. I'm going to leave you with a closing reflection. I would like each and every one of you to think of one workplace tension that you could actually approach a little bit differently. Think about one question that you'll ask. Instead of a conclusion that you're just gonna quickly jump to. I'm gonna suggest that you write it down somewhere. Remember, Conflict decoded becomes collaboration unlocked. And that's all I have to share with you today. I am absolutely excited to tackle some of the Q&A. I hope we've got some questions that have come in.

[00:42:44] Manal Ali: Yes, thank you so much, Carly, and, of course, I will… we will address closing remarks shortly, but we have a couple of audience questions. So, how can HR tell whether conflict is about personality, or maybe something deeper? You did touch on this earlier in the slides, like, something deeper, like process, task, or technology.

[00:43:06] Carlie Bell: I think the answer to that is, it depends. Surprise! Right? Okay, I do need to qualify everything here by recognizing that, from my perspective, one of the reasons I'm so particularly interested in this topic is because I deal with human beings every day, as do most of you. And human beings are notoriously unpredictable. So, every single one of us is funky, right? We're just funky, and we do the most unexpected things, so we're incredibly hard to predict, and we're incredibly difficult to understand. One of the things that I see happens an awful lot in HR is that there is really a disconnect between the people in HR, And the people with whom they're actually serving. So, it is often impossible for the people in the HR roles to actually individually know every member of the organization well. That means that HR needs to rely upon the insights and information coming from other team members working with the individual and or the leader of the team.

[00:44:28] Carlie Bell:  Note, one of the things I constantly preach Is the importance of team leaders actually caring about the members of their team as individual human beings. It's not enough to just think of everybody as your worker. It is really important that you understand a little bit about who these people are fundamentally as people. Note, each and every one of us has a… Fundamental need to feel like we belong somewhere, and that we have value somewhere. And that's not just for the skills we can bring so you can make a buck. It's so that we feel like we have worth as human beings. As a result, Leaders need to actually have conversations with their workers about, hey, how are you? What are your interests outside of work? Get to know your people a little bit on an individual level. Now, when you have conflicts emerging, HR can actually lean on those leaders to get a little bit of insight about the people. And that's where you can start getting a sense of, is there stuff going on in the background, or at home, or something about what they believe as individuals and what they're involved in, that provides some insight into what might, in fact, be going on here.

[00:45:54] Carlie Bell:  Additionally, HR can speak very specifically to the team leaders about, is it which one of these four drivers? Right? What's going on in the task? Does everybody actually understand what they're doing? What's going on in terms of the processes? Do they know how they're supposed to do it? Does it appear that there's differences there? What about the individual differences? Do the team members understand that these individual differences can create some of that relational conflict? And finally, what about the technology and the technologies being used? Right? You can actually ask those questions. If the team leader can't answer it, this is a great time to actually bring the team in and talk to other members of the team. And so you can start to get a sense from other individuals also involved as to what's really going on there. If none of those things are appropriate because of the nature of the conflict, honest to goodness, treat these people like human beings, and just ask them.

[00:46:48] Manal Ali: Yeah, no, I think that's so important.

[00:46:50] Carlie Bell: anything, right?

[00:46:52] Manal Ali: Yeah, it's… and I'm glad you brought up that it's on leadership, on management, too, to kind of… because HR can't know everybody, but then if you have managers getting to know, then the root cause of conflicts, I'm sure that helps with that. And so, another question we have is, how much time… how much does time affect conflict?

[00:47:14] Carlie Bell: Does time affect conflict? I'm assuming that the question is referring to the notion of time pressure and lack of time. Yeah, perhaps. That would be my guess on that one. Maybe they could type in if they're referring to something different, and I'll proceed with that as my underlying assumption.

[00:47:32] Manal Ali: Yes, let us know.

[00:47:34] Carlie Bell: Okay, oop. Prime is an interesting thing. Everybody is… Under pressure? And it's getting worse. The pace of change today is unlike any we've ever seen before, and we're still all learning how to actually deal with it. I can tell you that one of the things we do know about individuals and the way that their brains cope is that everybody actually has, sort of, maximum capacity in terms of how their brain can fire its neurons and how we can process information and deal with things. So, there is a real thing called overload. And when you start embarking upon, there's too many things going on, your attention starts to become fragmented because, quite literally, your brain is deciding it has to shut down some connections. You start seeing mistakes happen, you start seeing errors occurring, you start seeing forgetfulness occur. Those kind of things suggest that the actual human brain is at a level of overwhelm that is creating additional problems now, and time often is the sort of foundation underlying all of this stress and pressure, is everything feels like it has to be done today. Two key suggestions I have for you. Number one, as leaders, please note, if you're gonna pile more stuff on the individuals in your team, think really carefully about what you can take away.

[00:49:01] Carlie Bell:  You can't just keep adding on and adding on and adding on without removing something. And that brings me to point number two. Point number two is that all of us have to-do lists. And everything on our to-do list always feels like it's the most important. We really need team leaders taking responsibility to protect their teams. By helping their individual team members understand what actually are the top priorities. Now, the timeframes are gonna differ depending on the teams, the projects, the nature, etc. You may have… these are our top 3 priorities this hour. It may be this morning, it may be this day, it may be this week, it may be this month, etc. But help your team identify what actually are the top priorities. And that, by definition, and you need to communicate this to your team, means if they're focusing on the top priorities, the other stuff Is going to have to, and can, wait. And as the team leader, you need to now communicate up the chain. Those decisions to make sure that your team is protected in focusing on what actually is the most urgent, and that you've got the right most urgent things on their plate, and that you've got the support from the levels above you in understanding this is where you have to prioritize right now. That will help with all kinds of things, not just conflict, but by definition, also conflict.

[00:50:34] Manal Ali: Thank you, yeah, I also appreciate that throughout, you're able to go into the psychology, the root cause, that really helps kind of build the foundation, very… and there's a rave review for you as well, from Corinne, this… This is valuable information. Thank you. Do you and Citation provide training for teams on conflict resolution?

[00:50:56] Carlie Bell: Yes, we do!

[00:50:57] Manal Ali: Yes, they do. I'd be happy to sign up myself. And another question we have is, what best tool do you recommend if an individual is stuck in their conflict or stuck on being right? The competitive person you talked about, perhaps, other than clarifying, kind of, the go-forward expectations?

[00:51:24] Carlie Bell: So again, I'm going to come back to the notion, and this is where I very often land. We're all human. And I love that people are trying to solve human problems with checkbox solutions, but exactly as that question demonstrates, it doesn't work. And it doesn't work because what we're trying to do is we're trying to fix human beings without recognizing that they're human. My honest answer to those kinds of things, again, folks, is remember you're dealing with human beings. When you've got a really nasty, is the language we often use, right? You've got a nasty conflict that's emerging, and what you're seeing is that you've got one person who they've dug their heels in. And now you've identified that, okay, so their sort of approach to conflict is they're a right fighter. It may be that in this instance that they're that, because this is tapping into their values somehow. They're.

[00:52:25] Manal Ali: Could be lost.

[00:52:26] Carlie Bell: of reasons around it. Honestly, have a conversation with the individual and say, look, we know that there are disagreements, we also know that there are all kinds of different ways that people deal with conflict. So, and do exactly what I did today, say, and just converse with them. Note you're teaching them as you go. When you're teaching them and engaging them in that conversation, they're gonna start nodding their head. Now, brain science shows us that people start mirroring behaviors, and the mirroring of behaviors changes the brain wiring and response. So when you start talking with them about, we know that when there's conflict, some people completely withdraw. We know that other people just jump in and they want to win every time, and then we also know there's these other ways of sort of dealing with conflict, and what we're seeing here is that you seem to have really dug in on this one, and you're gonna see, as you're talking, they're recognizing, oh yeah, some people withdraw, oh yeah, some people… no, you got their head nodding, you've now actually created a disconnect in their brain from their emotional response to their prefrontal. You're softening their dig in as you're actually having that conversation, and you can then literally quite talk to them about, so why is it that you're so passionate about this? That's the language to use.

[00:53:46] Carlie Bell:  Right? You don't want to say, why are you being so difficult? Again, you're sending them back into that threatening state. You're calling them out, right? And so instead, you know, why is it you're so passionate about this? What is it about this that really matters to you? Is it the whole thing, or is there a piece of it? And now you can start actually getting at the meat of what's going on with that individual. But it has to be done at an individual level. This is a nice. time when HR can step in, because HR is a little more disconnected from the individual, they're not as close, and without the relationship to compromise, you can speak a little bit more freely.

[00:55:25] Manal Ali: And another question we have is, how can we draw back a colleague who is at the disengagement stage post-conflict into the team? We are already addressing the root causes on an ongoing basis at the organizational level.

[00:55:42] Carlie Bell: Again, when we're talking about individuals, the key thing here is to remember that every single individual, fundamentally has a need to feel like they belong, and that they have value, and that they have worth. Fundamentally, that is what human beings needs. They need that… Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they need that before they need food, right? It is the fundamental foundation of human being existence. When you've got somebody who's disengaged. What you need to do is tap into that. You need to make them feel like, legitimately they have value, they have worth, and you really want to pull them in. You really value what they bring to the team. Talk about specific things that they do, the information that they share, their willingness to bring to light when we are perhaps doing things In a way that could be considered differently, etc. And you can't do it once. When you've got people that are feeling unsafe. We all know you can't go give them a hug and suddenly everything's better. It's a pattern of time, right? This is just a pattern of time where you have to earn back that trust. And the way to do it is to genuinely show caring, and genuinely show them you want to bring them into that feeling of belonging, because you do, in fact, value them.

[00:56:02] Manal Ali: Got it. And just in the interest of time, so this will be the last question, and again, you have, Melissa saying, thank you, Carly. It's a very powerful presentation. In a workplace, do you believe that the management has more responsibility in terms of building trust among their organization? In my view, the organizational culture plays an essential role, and senior management are the drivers of organizational culture. expecting HR to change culture or build trust is almost impossible.

[00:56:34] Carlie Bell: Yes.

[00:56:38] Manal Ali: Yeah, I agree.

[00:56:41] Carlie Bell: Yes, yes, yes, Okay, so unfortunately, I'm gonna answer this fairly quickly.

[00:56:47] Manal Ali: Yes.

[00:56:48] Carlie Bell: If it's the same.

[00:56:49] Manal Ali: Yeah.

[00:56:50] Carlie Bell: Unfortunately, the reality is that middle management has the toughest job. Middle management has to manage down and up. But middle management are absolutely critical, again, in protecting and buffering the team from some of those organizational disconnect kind of pieces. And so it is all about how you as a leader present the information. We do know that there are very often disconnects, and we do know that senior leadership is sometimes making decisions and doing things that we know are not going to land well. as it trickles its way back down through the organization. You can control the culture of your team. You as a leader, have the responsibility to do that to the best of your ability, and HR is there, supposed to support you in doing that. HR is also supposed to assist helping the senior leadership team when they are disconnected from some of the reality. Note, sometimes senior leadership is doing stuff that other levels don't understand, because they have more information in different contexts. And so it's your job as a leader to do everything you can to try to buffer it, and just be there to support your team to the best of your ability. So you may not like a decision that's come down, but as the middle manager, you need to present it in a way that tries to highlight the potential benefits. That's just what you have to do, alright? And then you can try to engage in conversations up the chain to flesh it out a little more. But yeah, middle management's a tricky spot to be. There's absolutely no doubt, and you're the front line of an awful lot of stuff, both up and down. So, thank you for all you do.

[00:58:34] Manal Ali: Yeah, and thank you, Carly. This was absolutely incredible, and yeah, as you said that, you know, it would even be helpful, in dealing with personal conflict. I'm thinking about even my 4-year-old, and fascinating how you got into the psychology, and I didn't even realize that when threatened, the frontal cortex, you were saying it stops functioning. That's… yeah, I'll stop telling him I'm gonna take away his fire truck now, but… but yeah. And yes, thank you so much to our audience members. The discussion was great today. Thank you for joining us, and we hope to see you again.

[00:59:10] Carlie Bell: What's up, everybody?

[00:59:11] Manal Ali: Thank you, bye-bye.