Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / From Case-by-Case to Conflict-Smart: High Conflict at Work, Part 4 of 4
Transcript
- *This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.* Megan Hunter In episodes one through three of this series on workplace conflict, if those episodes have shown anything, it's this: workplace conflict is not just a people problem, and it's not just a communication problem. Very often, it's an organizational readiness problem. If HR is stepping in late sometimes, if managers are improvising, if the same patterns keep happening across teams, or if conflict is quietly driving turnover, burnout, and lost productivity, then the real question is no longer just how do we handle this case? The real question is, how ready is this organization to prevent, assess, and respond to conflict as an organization? That's what we're talking about today. Welcome to It's All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you with the most challenging human interactions, those involving high conflict situations. I'm Megan Hunter and I'm here with my co-host, Bill Eddy. Bill Eddy Hi, everybody. Megan Hunter And we're joined again in this wonderful series by Michael Lomax from British Columbia, Canada. We learned in the last episode that Michael is one of our highly esteemed speakers and trainers here at the High Conflict Institute, and is also a mediator and lawyer in Canada with a lot of years of experience. Michael Lomax Yeah, great to be with you, Megan and Bill. Megan Hunter You've had your fair share of managing high conflict in the workplace and teaching others about it, both within a workplace you might be in and through training around the world. So we're really happy you've joined us for this fourth and final episode in this series. Welcome, listeners. Thank you for joining us on your South Pole Exploration today. In this series, we've built a clear progression. Episode one: why workplace conflict is increasing. Episode two: how to assess workplace conflict. Episode three: what tools can leaders use to respond more effectively to high conflict — and to any conflict, really. We didn't even talk about that, but maybe we'll address it in this episode: that this isn't just for high conflict, this is for all conflict. In this episode, we're going to take a bigger-picture view. How do organizations move from handling conflict one case at a time to becoming truly conflict-ready, or even conflict-proof, if that's possible? We'll talk about why a case-by-case response is often not enough, how to uncover the real cost of conflict, and what it takes to build a more conflict-ready, conflict-smart, or conflict-proof organization over time. We think it's critical. We think it's possible. This is especially for HR leaders, executives, and organizations that are ready to stop treating conflict as a series of isolated incidents and start addressing it as a strategic business issue. So, Bill and Michael, we've spent a lot of time at the High Conflict Institute, on this podcast, and in all the work we do in this area, talking about these more specific case-by-case situations: how do you handle it when someone is constantly blaming or complaining? How do you handle accusations of harassment? How do you tell who's telling the truth and who's making false allegations? And what we're trying to do now is expand into the whole organization, which we've already taken steps toward with the coaching program — New Ways for Work® coaching, New Ways for Work® for Leaders. Now we're going even bigger picture. Let's really see if we can help organizations become conflict smart, conflict-proof. Is it possible? So first, I want to start with this: at what point does workplace conflict stop being a series of individual cases and start becoming an organizational problem, Michael? Sometimes leaders finally realize the issue might be systemic rather than isolated. What have you seen? Michael Lomax Well, what I can say is, when you have a high conflict individual at the center of a conflict, what's different about it? Because conflict is normal in human relationships — at work, it happens all the time, and even good things can come from conflict; it's often how we work through it. But when we look at the way an individual is showing up — they're complaining about an issue, we resolve that one, then there's another: they're complaining about how their supervisor deals with them, or complaining about a colleague, or they didn't get the right workspace, whatever it may be — there seems to be a genesis to this. The persistence of high conflict behavior shows up as patterns. It repeats across situations. It may seem like, okay, they're really upset about this one thing — if we resolve that for them, this will resolve. And yet then it pops up again, looking completely different. There's this pattern that goes across situations; it's persistent over time, over years. Lots of people will say, "This person's always been like this — ten years, that kind of thing." And the other problem is, it pulls others in. It spreads. It isn't that everybody in the workplace recognizes, "Okay, this person has a high conflict personality, you've got to be careful around them, you've got to avoid them." There will be some who formed that view. There will be others who feel, "We've got to support this person, we've got to protect them, I feel sorry for them." Or they're charismatic — they recruit others into the idea that this is an injustice, that the organization is the problem, that "we need to take on the organization," or "our leader's terrible, look at all the things they do wrong, they don't care about the team, they don't care about people." And sometimes it can be soothing — I don't know that you can stop gossip, it's just a thing that people do — but it's when it gets destructive that it's a problem. At the end of that conversation, the person we're talking about — let's say it's the leader this individual is bashing — everybody's kind of worse off. The leader becomes more of a one-dimensional evil character. There was something, in a negative way, enjoyable about that conversation, but I feel worse, and the team is worse off. And high conflict behavior uses up systems very heavily, with multiple complaints. I've seen HR situations where they eventually realize what they're dealing with, but it feels more like a crisis than "here's how we handle this, we have our approach." And I've even seen — and you'll be able to tell me more about why this happens, Bill — the leader and the HR person end up in conflict with each other. The HR person feels blamed by the leader: "Why aren't you helping me?" And the leader gets hooked. Then the HR person feels attacked and blamed, and the whole thing starts to break down. And then, in terms of bigger problems for organizations when they aren't able to handle this well — there's the impact on the individuals: emotional and psychological strain, burnout, sick leave, withdrawal, and disengagement. Lots of people just avoid that person, or decide, "I'm not going to speak up at team meetings, it's not safe to do that." And it affects the whole team — people get pulled into gossip, because something is still very fascinating or attractive about it. Triangulation — there's always someone who's on the outs, and very often it isn't the high conflict person, it's someone else. And people end up working around the individual rather than with them. Walking on eggshells is another flag — when I hear people use that term about work, I know there's probably a high conflict individual somewhere. Leaders, too. When I started as a junior leader — I was in the Army Reserve for over thirty-five years — they said to me, as a junior leader, twenty percent of the people will take up eighty percent of your time. They knew that back then. They just didn't necessarily know why, or what to do about it. So you're getting a disproportionate amount of time spent on this one individual, and the leader doesn't have time to focus on other things. They start to doubt themselves. They become — I've heard the word "exhausted" so many times when I ask a leader what it's like — or "chaos," or even, "I'm afraid." Megan Hunter Because— Michael Lomax I'm afraid. So then I don't know what to do. Megan Hunter And I dread it. I dread seeing this person. Michael Lomax Yeah, and I feel unsettled. Your threat detectors, on some level, are saying — it's not that this person is necessarily a physical threat, though sometimes they can be — there's a social threat. They are trying to undermine me. They are trying to get me to lose my job. And I've seen cases where the person is documenting everything the leader does, from a distorted standpoint, and trying to convince people higher up in the organization that this leader is committing financial improprieties, breaking the rules, bending the rules — that kind of thing. So the leader is afraid to engage with this person, afraid to tell them anything. And then, for the organization itself — I guess the last thing I'll say is, these patterns increase formal complaints and investigations. I remember someone telling me a story about an organization that finally brought in a respectful workplace policy — they hadn't had one — that let employees file complaints on the basis of harassment. There was one individual that everybody walked on eggshells around; they made unreasonable requests of the organization, but nobody had ever given them feedback or tried to correct it. The day they brought in the policy, they got three complaints — and I asked, "About the individual, from others?" No — from that individual, about other people. I've seen it where a person pulls on every lever they can think of. If there's a system-wide respectful workplace policy, they'll file under that. If the organization isn't following its own policies, they'll file a whistleblower complaint. If their boss is a member of a professional organization — say, an engineer — they'll file something outside the workplace too. They'll pull in every lever they can find, inside and out. And the difficulty is, we don't understand these patterns. Sometimes you have to just step back and ask, what might actually be going on here? I remember talking to an investigator once — they called to ask me what I thought. This person had filed five different types of complaints, all the kinds I just mentioned. The investigator said, "Well, where there's smoke, there's fire — there must be something going on for a person to complain that much." And I said, well, or it could be the other thing — that it's actually quite distorted, and the person filing all the complaints could be the one who's in the wrong. Based on what they told me, I believed that this person was the one breaking the rules, committing the actual wrongdoing at work. And yet the investigator was being pulled in the wrong direction, because they didn't understand what they were dealing with — they hadn't stepped back to ask, like you talk about, Bill, "Is it possible this is what's going on?" And then, how do I engage with that? Not that I've already decided the answer, but if I'm doing an investigation, how do I do it in a way that stays open to that possibility? Because it's the same with HR — this isn't a crisis to think through, it's "we pull out the checklist we're all trained on, the leader's trained on it, we're trained on it — off we go." Megan Hunter Bill, I've seen you busy writing there, so I think you have a lot to say. Bill Eddy Yeah, a lot of notes here. Let me start at the highest level. I think organizations need policies — they have them around sexual harassment, but generally not around bullying, and that's often what we see with high conflict people. The solution really is developing policies with participation from as many different groups as possible — leadership, HR, a union if there is one, different parts of the organization — really engaging everybody so that people buy into the standards. So policies are one thing. A second is training, and part of the training always has to address what Michael was just talking about: learning the three theories of a high conflict case. It may be that person A says person B is acting very badly, and that's true. Or person B may be doing just fine, and it's person A — the one making the complaint — who's acting very badly. Or they're both acting badly. There's no easy formula, but if you recognize patterns of behavior, especially high conflict patterns — especially a preoccupation with blaming others, which is kind of the hallmark feature of high conflict personalities — it confuses organizations, because they're trying to be sensitive to complaints, and yet the people who complain the most tend to be high conflict people, because that's kind of part of their life. So you have to figure out: is it this person, or is it this person? I've talked to people in organizations — for example, in Australia, where they have more formal anti-bullying involvement and more investigations. I remember one woman telling me that in her husband's workplace, he was accused by a high conflict person, and for six months people looked at him askance until it finally got figured out: wait a minute, it's not him. The sleepless nights, the stomach aches — all of that can happen when you're the target of a high conflict person and the whole organization treats you that way. You're picking on the wrong person — and those are the good people who leave, while the high conflict people stay, because they're good at complaining. So you have to be trained to recognize that distinction. Now, since I mentioned Australia — and I know some of our listeners are in Australia — let me tell a quick story. I presented at a workplace bullying program maybe fifteen years ago by now. They had just started some new laws and more accountability, and they were doing workplace investigations. We were talking to a group of people who conduct workplace investigations, and I asked, "What percent of complaints do you think are actually coming from the high conflict person, rather than the person they're accusing — meaning the complainant is really the problem?" They put their heads together and said maybe forty percent right now. You've got to know that a lot of your complaints are coming from the people who are the problem. So you can't make assumptions — but you also can't assume a complainant is the high conflict person either. You've got to be careful. So this is a big part of the training. I also think training leaders in skills like the CARS Method helps them manage cases more routinely, and teaching employees New Ways for Work® coaching helps them not get bothered by a co-worker's comment and things like that. So I think policies, training, and really learning about high conflict and the skills for managing it — that's at the organizational level, and it needs to trickle down from there. Megan Hunter What about role modeling, Michael — by leadership, the top tiers? Michael Lomax A lot of things have to come down from the top — not just handed to HR with, "Okay, you run this for us, we're busy: run the respectful workplace program, deliver the training, issue the policies, tell people why it's important." People are always watching for that. If something is really critical to the success of the organization, you need senior leadership saying, "This is important, this is what I want to see happen." When I was in a senior leadership role and came into a new organization, I wanted to be really clear about how I wanted conflict dealt with in the unit I was responsible for. So I told the senior leaders who reported to me: when we have problems, conflict on our teams, complaints, whatever's going on, I want you to intervene early. I want you to use an informal approach wherever possible, unless it's clearly not appropriate. And when you bring me a problem, I'm going to ask: did you engage as early as possible, using a conflict resolution approach, before going down another path? Even with high conflict behavior, we want to get in there early, address it, and redirect it. Ideally, we don't want to get to the point where there's a big investigation that takes six months and the consequences are completely removed from what actually happened. So I said that, and then I had to follow through — that was the other important part. When people came to me with a problem, I'd ask, "Did you use this approach?" And I also stood in front of everyone in the organization and told them the same thing, so it was really clear. So, how do you reinforce that through policy, and through other means? That's what I'd say: the things that are really important to the organization, you want to empower and engage leaders at every level to carry out — and you want to focus on your leaders — but senior leadership needs to say this is a top priority and make it happen. Megan Hunter And to continue doing it well — it's not a one-off, right? Michael Lomax No — I'm totally with you. It's like taking a course: great, now I've got it, I know how to do it. And yet, statistically, within even a couple of weeks, if I don't use it, I've probably forgotten ninety percent of it. I think this stuff, for leaders, is muscle memory — you've got to practice it, get comfortable with it. It doesn't mean you can do it all at once, even though these are really simple, concrete skills we can all do. It's still sometimes the opposite of what we feel like doing. So I agree — you need the organization to support and reinforce it, rather than it being a one-off course that people pick up and use to varying degrees. Megan Hunter Right. And to be organization-wide, it has to go across every department — everyone has to be on the same page, speaking the same language, as we talked about in earlier episodes. There's not going to be a perfect solution, and there's always going to be some cost. But just imagine if an organization skilled up every new employee, at whatever level they come in, to understand the four big skills: how to manage your emotions, how to have flexible thinking, how to have moderate behaviors, and how to check yourself — the four opposites of high conflict behavior. So it isn't a matter of saying this is a bad person — we're never going to say that. We're just going to say this may be a person who's lacking some skills. So why not help skill them up, particularly in an era where there's probably a lot of skills lacking, because of what people are learning from social media, other forms of media, television, reality TV — where big emotions and all of that are rewarded. Michael Lomax No — you might be saying to someone, the way you text your friends outside of work every day will get you fired here. If you text your coworker like that, you need to not do that. We can't take certain things for granted anymore around values. For some people, it's "good if it works for me," instead of asking what it means for it to be good for the organization, and for you as an employee, to support that. We can't take for granted that people have all been taught the skills to regulate their emotions, to think flexibly. And I think when you do that across the board, you're really helping individuals — you're still going to have high conflict individuals in your workplace, but now you're empowering them: how do I set my boundaries with this person, how do I stay connected with them so things don't escalate? And that helps everybody, including that individual, engage better in the workplace. So I'd say, for an organization, focus on your leaders and your systems, top down, and then, where you can, give everybody across the board that same value. Some organizations recognize that conflict resolution — getting along with your coworkers — is a core competency, right along with being able to do the forms and do the work properly. I remember meeting a guy once who said, "I don't have to talk to my coworkers if I don't want to — there's no rule that says I have to." I said, "Actually, there is a rule that says you—" Megan Hunter Actually— Michael Lomax —have to. And we're actually saying, we're going to train you on how to use this computer system, but these other things are so important — we're going to train you in that too. Now that we've told you what we're wanting, we can hold you accountable. Megan Hunter Set the limit. And it doesn't have to be a negative — setting limits is a positive. I see setting limits as a gift, honestly, organization-wide and individually. Because the cost — the cost of conflict to organizations is huge. What was the number, $359 billion? It's big. What does it result in? We're talking absenteeism, productivity, leadership time, retention, morale — these are big. There's burnout, the amount of money and time spent on investigations, and just perseverating about this. This is really big for an organization, and it doesn't have to be. Michael Lomax And sometimes there are spectacular, public failures that hurt the brand of the organization. I'd say when leaders have the skills, and HR has that structured approach — "we've got a system" — then even the five percent can be manageable. There's always going to be some you can't fully resolve, but now you have a chance to be successful, instead of just being in reactive mode, "oh my gosh." If you have an organization with thirty thousand employees — I did the math last time — you're going to have over a thousand of these folks. Bill Eddy You're right. You're right. Megan Hunter Yeah, I think it was fifteen hundred — I think that was episode two in the series. This is big, and we feel here at HCI like we've been holding on to this secret for a long time. We've trained for eighteen years, a lot in the workplace, courts, the legal arena, education, healthcare — you name it. We really want to help organizations with the secret sauce, because this does not have to impact an organization to the level it currently does. There is something that can be done, and it's not that difficult. It doesn't take years and years of planning — there are pretty significant shortcuts — but there has to be commitment. So we want to come in and help assess an organization's conflict readiness. And look, if there's a high score, awesome — you're set. I think at that point your company is more valuable, because you aren't spending time on people issues. You're spending time teaching skills and getting down to the work you meant to do there, and people are having better relationships because it's a calmer environment. It doesn't have to be case by case. It doesn't have to be something you dread. So what does it look like for an organization to be conflict ready, conflict smart, conflict-proof? It's what we've discussed: getting everyone in the organization trained, skilled up, and then continuing that — it's not a one-off, it's practicing. It might take a year to get your organization really conflict-proof, conflict ready. And that's okay, because think about the amount of time spent training on the technical aspects of a job. I think in this day and age, we need to pay the same attention to the social aspect. So I want to ask each of you — because what we're talking about here is helping organizations make a choice: do you want to be conflict ready, conflict smart, or conflict-proof? Do either of you, Bill or Michael, believe an organization can be conflict-proof? Bill Eddy You mean totally preventive, no conflict at all? I don't think that — but I think the resilience of being ready for conflict, managing conflict, having these systems in place, and making conflict resolution and conflict prevention normal — that's the key. That's where high conflict comes in; it catches everyone off guard, but it doesn't have to. So I think an organization can be, if you want to use the term, conflict-proof — meaning it's not going to be knocked off its center because there's a conflict. Yes, I think that can happen. And so much of it is just having the skills, having the positive attitude, and having a really positive organizational attitude. Because we're talking about conflict, but you also want to be a cheerleader for your organization — make people happy, make them glad it's like, "I'm going to work now, I'm going to have a good day." Having that kind of attitude and feeling is all part of it. There are organizations that do this well, but I think there are more that have difficulty and need help. So, that's my thoughts. Michael Lomax I think you can absolutely build a culture where people are capable and effective at dealing with conflict, including these extremes we're talking about here — extremes that can disrupt the whole system, the whole culture. The problem is, you may have had a positive culture, and then one of these individuals drops in, and all of a sudden — so, yes, I think you can do that. It takes commitment, and it's not something where you're here today and you need to get somewhere else tomorrow. We're not there right now — I'd say it's a multi-year commitment to change culture. But I have seen it happen in organizations. I've seen it where I'm working somewhere and I know what it used to be like ten years ago, and I turn to someone and ask, "How do we handle this?" And they say, "This is what we do about this kind of thing," and the answer is exactly what I was hoping for. I think, okay, it's starting to pay off. This person is a junior leader in the organization, and they know how we handle these things and what to do — they're an example of it to their peers and the people who report to them. But it is a multi-year commitment, and it means seeing it as part of your organizational culture — a core competency for leaders and a core competency for your employees. And it has to be driven from the top down: this is what we want in this organization, this culture. Megan Hunter And it will reduce risk, right? It will make you more competitive. It will impact your bottom line. Absolutely. Michael Lomax Yeah, it's just that sometimes the costs seem hidden. They're not — if you actually measure for it and look, they're not hidden at all. It's just that you don't see it the same way you'd see it on a financial spreadsheet, on the bottom line. But it's absolutely there. Bill Eddy Let me put in a plug for learning the kind of conflict skills we're talking about as an organizational benefit. So many times, people have come up to me after a training and said, "Well, I'm going to use this at work, but I'm really going to use this with my sister, my neighbor, or my uncle." And they say it's a benefit — a mental health benefit to an organization — to have people learn something they can use everywhere. So I want to put in a plug for it as a benefit. Megan Hunter I love that, right? I mean, that could go in the benefits package: you're going to be able to handle conflict. Bill Eddy Yeah. Yeah. Megan Hunter And that is awesome — I'll let us end with that word. That was a very positive way to wrap this up. So I thank both of you for being part of this series and talking about high conflict, and how we can help organizations manage it and even prevent it to some extent, and really just what to do. It's possible. I thank you both, and I thank all of you listeners for listening to this four-part series. We've moved from the problem, to the assessment, to the leader tools, and then taken a look at that bigger organizational question. The larger takeaway is this: organizations don't become healthier just by getting better at crisis response. They become healthier by becoming more prepared, more consistent, and more conflict capable. And that's where we can help at the High Conflict Institute. We now work with organizations to assess conflict readiness, identify the cost of conflict across the workplace, and then decide if you want to be conflict ready, conflict smart, or even conflict-proof. So if you're ready to move beyond reactive conflict management and toward a more strategic approach, we'll put that link right in the show notes: HighConflictInstitute.com/corporate-partnership/. And if you found this series helpful, please subscribe, rate, and review our show, and share it with an HR leader, executive, or manager who wants a smarter way to think about workplace conflict. If you're looking for training or consultation about a high conflict situation for your organization — whether it's HR, healthcare, it doesn't matter where — we'll come. You can find us at HighConflictInstitute.com. If it's for your personal life, come to ConflictInfluencer.com. Keep learning and practicing the skills. Be kind to yourself and to others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace. It's All Your Fault is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes, and transcripts at TruStory.fm or HighConflictInstitute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.