Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Why Workplace Conflict Is Surging: High Conflict at Work, Part 1 of 4

Transcript

Why Workplace Conflict Is Surging: High Conflict at Work, Part 1 of 4 · It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People

• *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 Why does one employee sometimes seem to generate more conflict than an entire team? As workplace tensions rise, HR leaders are dealing with more complaints, more burnout, more fractured teams, and more situations that seem to escalate faster than anyone expected. And often the biggest driver isn't the issue itself. It's the high conflict behavior surrounding it. In this episode, we look at why workplace conflict is increasing, why high conflict people matter so much, and why HR can't afford to treat this like business as usual. 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 We are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and ConflictInfluencer.com. And we're so happy to be joined today by our colleague and one of our esteemed HCI speakers, Michael Lomax. Hi, Michael. Michael Lomax Hello, Megan. Hi, Bill. Nice to be with you. Bill Eddy Hey, Michael. Megan Hunter Great to have you here. And welcome, listeners. Thank you for joining us during your backyard barbecue. Today it's Memorial Day as we're recording this. So I know you'll be listening to it later, but we hope you enjoyed it anyway. So in this episode, we're going to unpack why workplace conflict is rising. And drawing on insights from recent thinking on prevention, we're going to explore how leaders and HR can shift from reactive firefighting to proactive prevention. So you can expect practical, immediately usable ideas to reduce friction, protect culture, and strengthen leadership—not just manage crises, but prevent them. So we've just read a recent article that says US businesses lose up to $359 billion—that's billion with a B—to workplace conflict each year. Employees waste 2.8 hours weekly navigating disputes, while 23% quit jobs over unresolved tensions. This isn't just a statistic. It's a leadership crisis. And as external pressures mount from economic volatility to hybrid work whiplash, the old playbook of managing conflict after it ignites is collapsing. The solution? Stop fighting fires. Build fireproof teams. That was taken directly from this article that was written by Joe Segrilla. I hope I pronounced that correctly. If I didn't, my apologies. So Bill and Michael, we're here to talk about workplace conflict. First, what kind of broad trends are driving conflict in the workplace today? And how does a prevention-first approach change how we respond? Michael Lomax Bill, I think I know some of the things you might say about where workplace conflict is coming from, how it's growing. So I'll try not to step over your stuff. I think for me there's a huge number of causes that are all coming together in an amazing kind of confluence. I've talked to people who've been at conferences on the other side of the world from me, where people are approaching them and saying, are you dealing with this too? And then they're asking me about it. Like, Michael, what's happening? Why is this simply over the top? Why are people so angry? That kind of thing. And it intrudes into the workplace. So a couple for me, I think, are: people are freer now to talk about the things that are impacting them like trauma, like their stress, like burnout. I think in some ways, probably those things have always been there. Just people were taught to contain it, not talk about it, go deal with it somewhere else. They're freer to talk about it at work, and they're freer to tell someone else—particularly their boss—you're the cause of why I feel this way, and even I'm going to file a complaint about you. So those things are there, I think. Again, polarization across the world, social media feeding that more friend-or-foe kind of thinking, that kind of thing. And social media really rewarding outrage and blame. So you just see more of this kind of behavior coming into the workplace, and then leaders themselves closer to their own reactivity threshold, I think. Megan Hunter And Bill, so it seems that maybe back in our day, when we were new in our careers, there were certain job expectations. Bill Eddy Way back. Megan Hunter Right. When you went into a career, you knew you had to work hard, you had to put in the hours, it was forty hours a week at the office, you had to drive to work, get out of your car, walk across the street from the parking garage, all that stuff. Right? And now it seems the job expectations have changed a bit by employees themselves and they seem to demand more rights. Is that something you're seeing? Bill Eddy Yeah, I think so. And I think it's partly a reflection of what Michael's saying and just partly generational. In a way we have, say, leaders who are an older generation and a lot of workers who are younger generations who want to find a place right away, want to be respected right away, want to establish themselves, and don't necessarily want to commit to the company or the organization, but they want the organization to commit to them. And it's blurred, really, because older leaders are like, well, wait, you have to slow down, you know, you have to earn it. And the leaders need to change and also create a culture that lets people know how you move forward, how you progress. And there's a lot of younger employees who are very happy because the culture they're in is nurturing and encouraging them, even though it isn't making them the CEO in the second year. So a lot of it's expectations that have shifted, a lot of it's generational expectations. And I really do think the pandemic—we've never really recovered from it completely—that people got loose. People online were more bullying than people in person and more bullied than when they were in person. And that hasn't ratcheted back that much. In fact, there are a lot of indications that this kind of bullying behavior has increased. So it's generations, it's COVID, it's the instability that we're in. I really want to reinforce one of the things Michael was saying about social media. There's an odd kind of impact of social media that I didn't realize until I worked on my book about adult bullies, Our New World of Adult Bullies. And that is, rather than people adapting to the organization and pulling their behavior in line, they're talking to people in small groups to agree with them that it's all the organization's fault. And so it's reinforcing all these pockets of polarization. And this is just a weird effect—that the standards of behavior aren't pulling people in anymore, that people are finding people to agree with them not to follow the standards of behavior. And I think that's a bigger factor than people realize. And we've got to factor that in as well. Michael Lomax Yeah. Like, Bill, I would say if you were to go on to, say, a Reddit page for your organization, whichever one you belong to, and check out how does HR deal with us or how are the leaders—you're going to get those extreme points of view for the most part. Again, I'm not going to say everybody on Reddit. But those are the things that get the attention. And even my own reading, I'm going to focus in on those things. And so you get these extreme views being rewarded, and you might get that kind of extreme perspective that, oh, that's what is going on in the organization. Bill Eddy It's almost a freedom-to-vent culture. Megan Hunter Yeah. Freedom and right to vent. So Michael, I'm wondering about organizational design, like policies, leadership styles—how does that influence the likelihood of conflict and friction? Michael Lomax There are a lot of leaders themselves who are uncomfortable dealing with conflict, who might avoid it until it gets really difficult or it's escalated and now they must. Or they are dealing with conflict, but maybe they're too aggressive, too direct, too controlling. And Bill, as you said in your description of the generational differences, there are people nowadays who just won't put up with that. They'll leave. They'll go somewhere else, right? So leaders do really need to find that middle ground where they're comfortable addressing conflict and dealing with it early, but not in ways that alienate the vast majority of the employees that just want to come to work and enjoy their jobs. And conflict is a natural fabric in the organization. It's just part of the human condition. And even good ideas can come from conflict. So being comfortable dealing with it, addressing it, helping people work it through. And I think that really means leaders need to be really good at intervening early and confidently doing that before it escalates, responding to misinformation quickly, those kinds of things, coaching their employees on how to address conflict with each other. But then that means the organization needs to support those leaders and set those expectations. I remember once being struck by doing a training with a group of senior leaders on conflict resolution skills and approaches, and somebody who I have a lot of respect for asked, is this what they want us to do? Meaning, is this what the organization wants us to do? We're taking this course. And so that was the missing piece—yes, we want you to do this, we expect it. And we can even point to policies, systems, structures that really do encourage and prioritize this. And even if you say, well, we have a policy—what I'll say about that is culture eats policy for breakfast. So what do you actually do on the ground day to day as a senior leader to really instill that in your leaders that report to you—this is how we address things, right? Megan Hunter Yeah, and I think it's really fascinating. Leaders have big shoes to fill. And I think especially middle managers—people in that middle area have to look up, they have to look down, they have to look sideways, they have to manage in a lot of different directions. And if there's not strong structure, strong policy, depending on what style they are, if they're conflict avoiders or conflict-comfortable and don't really have those skills, it can be very much a recipe for disaster. Like you said, Michael—they'll eat those policies for breakfast. So I love that quote, by the way. In this article, one of the points made about what to do about this, the prevention piece, right, is make work about work. So instead of having lots of programs for employees and fun things—like I remember a training I did some years back. The biggest problem that the organization was having, this was from the HR department, was social media groups that had been formed during COVID when everyone was working from home perhaps for the first time or hadn't done it very much. They were trying to come up with things to get people communicating together and building connection and not feeling disconnected in their remote locations in such a difficult time. So it might be a knitting group, it may be a dog lovers group—there are groups all over. Well, it turned out that there were groups that became political, and maybe there were religious groups, and all of the hot-button topics you can imagine. When they started getting into other groups, but in the workplace they're on the same team—now you had some real division. So I thought this was interesting. Make work about work. Have you seen this anywhere, Michael? And what's your thoughts on this—make work about work? Michael Lomax Yeah, it's an interesting one. And I can certainly say I have seen sometimes social activities or discussions where it enters into politics or other kinds of things that are going on around the world. And you get it then into values—and people with different values, when they disagree, you're disagreeing with my values. I can't compromise on my values, and things escalate very quickly, very fast, and form beliefs about the other person. You're bad because you have different values than me or just a different perspective about this issue that I hold dear. So I do get that. On the other hand, the whole idea that work should just be about work—I think that's really sad. I think about some of the organizations I've worked in that I've really enjoyed working in, it hasn't been just that. There is a sense of care and concern—my boss cares about my well-being, not just my productivity, and the relationships I've had with co-workers. So I think on another level, somehow we've got to figure this out. I don't know that simply the solution is to say work should just be about work. Bill Eddy I think the big issue really is divisive issues versus unifying issues. So if you have—I remember I worked in a therapy clinic, and in the summer we had some baseball games, we played together. That was great and it was great fun and we talked about it, we were planning it, and afterwards talking about how it was fun. It wasn't really time consuming, but it was energizing. So I think a lot of it's divisive issues. And I remember growing up, you don't talk about politics and you don't talk about religion. Everyone just knew that. And so we didn't even know where each other stood politically. My father worked for the government and he wasn't allowed to talk about politics at work. And I think it's been blurred in more recent decades because growing up in schools, schools talk a lot about current events, and in many ways they should. Colleges and universities get into current events. But sometimes people are used to it being twenty-four seven. They don't know how to just set some things aside. And I think that's what we all have to do to get along, and that's okay. It's a lot about boundaries—setting limits on yourself so that other people set limits on themselves. Michael Lomax I agree. I just think the world is so much more complex in terms of the work cycle. You know, the idea that I might get an email in the evening and then I might be expected to respond to it—there's already that kind of intrusion. And then just the things that people talk about at work, the things they talk about themselves, their identities that they bring to work now. We need to find ways to kind of work through these things respectfully and even sometimes agree to disagree, understand my own reaction—where is that coming from for some of these things? I just don't think you can simply say we're going to—I agree there are certain topics that may just not be fruitful, it's not work-related, so let's not go there. But there's just so many now and so much in terms of the complexity that I think we've really got to figure out how do we be together, how do we work through these things? It's impossible to eliminate the causes of conflict. That's never going to happen. Megan Hunter Yeah, like you said—it's woven in, right? It's part of the fabric. Conflict is part of the culture, and that's fine as long as it's handled okay, right? So if we talk about those complexities—from politics to religion to all of it—in any workplace, that can be tricky to manage. But what happens when you have someone with a high conflict personality involved in those conversations or in that culture? What's going to happen? Bill Eddy My experience is they're going to not pay attention to the boundaries and limits. That's why we wrote Setting Limits and Imposing Consequences—the SLIC Solutions book—because high conflict people mostly ignore limits. It's when there's a consequence that it gets their attention. And I think that's where managers really need to learn it's okay to set limits. It's okay to say there's a consequence for this, and do it in a friendly, matter-of-fact way. I want to help you out. I want you to succeed here. And I just want to let you know—if you do this, then we have to do that. Like if you park in the disabled parking space and you're clearly not disabled, our team's going to get in trouble. And so to prevent that, we're going to have to go out and see where you parked your car in the morning or whatever it is. But the idea that you are going to have to get firmer about setting limits and imposing consequences, and yet doing it with empathy, attention, and respect—because in the workplace, you want to motivate people, not alienate them. Megan Hunter Yeah, so setting limits is a huge piece of this. But if an organization is to create a culture that's conflict ready, it's starting from the top. I think leadership has to have this at the forefront of their agenda. Right—I want to have a workplace, we want to have a workplace as a board, that is going to be weeding out high conflict situations. Because high conflict situations, let's face it, are all about risk. So this is risk management, unless you can get some coaching in and get someone into setting limits. There are some who probably are going to be able to work in an environment who have high conflict behaviors, and some who don't. But if an organization doesn't understand that even despite your best efforts to prevent this kind of behavior in the workplace, your hiring policies are not going to, so to speak, weed out anyone with a high conflict personality—let's face it, they're already there, right? And you're always going to have that. So what we're trying to do here at the High Conflict Institute, and it's really supported by this article, is to help organizations understand that they have to be conflict ready. You have to be prepared for it. That requires structure. That requires good policy and understanding what those limits are and the consequences, and having the entire organization on board and skilled up. So Michael, have you seen organizations that believed they're conflict ready—or maybe they don't even know? Like, we're here to make widgets or we're here to serve the public or whatever, and that's what we're doing. So there's this focus on achieving those objectives, and often just a complete lack of attention to conflict. Michael Lomax Well, I remember an organization somebody told me about where they knew they had some kind of internal conflict or problem because they produced—I'm going to say, like, barrels in a factory. And they knew if a certain number of barrels were made every day, then everything was running properly, but if they dropped below that number, they knew there was a problem somewhere in the system. And if it wasn't a mechanical problem, it was a human problem. So they could measure it every day, and then they knew—we've got to go in and figure out what's going on. Otherwise we've just lost so much production. There are lots of organizations that don't measure things that they could measure to know how conflict gets dealt with on their teams and the cost of that conflict in terms of the number of investigations they do, the length of time they take, the cost of those things in terms of the outcomes. All those kinds of things are there, but they don't necessarily look at them. And then as well, they really do underestimate the impact of some of this stuff. They deal with it, sadly, as kind of each one as a one-off, even if it's with the same person. Oh, they did it again. And they deal with it as kind of isolated things, and they just get pulled into repetitive cycles, they get pulled into emotional reactivity, they get pulled into team dysfunction. But they don't necessarily step back and say, what should we be doing about this bigger picture in terms of the way we hire people, the leaders that we promote, what we ask them to do, even how we terminate people. With AI now—when I talk about this, people go, oh yeah, that makes sense, but what are you going to do about it? Like, with AI—let's say social media gave high conflict people a megaphone. AI gives them the script, it gives them the strategy, and it gives them a twenty-four seven broadcast. So all of these things—organizations aren't able as easily to step back. They say we've got a policy, but just understand the impact of some of this behavior—a profound impact. I remember—I'll just say one more story. Twenty-five years ago I was working with an organization, before we knew anything about high conflict people, before I ever met Bill. And this contractor came up to me and said, Michael, I think there are certain people in this organization that get moved around. They get moved around regularly. There's kind of a honeymoon period as they get on with their new boss, and then they get into conflict again, and then we move them again. And he said, I'm going to say maybe these people cost the organization $100,000—I'm just throwing that number out there, right? And yet we don't really understand who these people are, how to manage them, and yet they eat up a ton of time. So that was twenty-five years ago. And I think organizations can measure this. They can get more intentional about how they actually engage, how they support their leaders, how HR engages on it instead of maybe one transaction at a time. Bill Eddy One of the things I want to throw in here is I think leaders lack confidence around dealing with high conflict people. So they kind of avoid them, or they kind of give gentle hints that of course aren't absorbed because you've got to hit them over the head with possible consequences to really have an impact. And so I think one of the surprisingly important things that we do is role-play practice—having people say, you know, you can't talk to me that way, or I'm going to end this conversation. Just saying that is really uncomfortable for nice people. And yet what we've learned is high conflict people break the rules of nice people, and they have a different operating system, as Megan says. And I love that term you came up with, because it just makes it so nonjudgmental—it's just different. But you have to intervene. You have to intervene early and possibly often. And so getting that kind of orientation—oh, here's where the weak point is, I've got to deal with this today—is to make it a normal expectation. About 10% of adults have high conflict personalities. Everybody runs into this, but they think they're the only one, and so they try to keep it hush-hush and maybe don't get too direct about dealing with it. But the more people realize this is just part of work everywhere, then we just have to deal with it. I have to remind people of the rules and expectations, remind them of the consequences, and give them a pat on the back in the process. It's all doable. And there are some people just incredible at these kind of leadership positions, and other people just aren't made for it and probably shouldn't be in a management position. But we've got to realize we have different personalities and we have to deal with all of them. And it's not really that hard. It's just we're not used to it yet. The culture has changed. Michael Lomax And it's really seeing that leaders need support, advice, and coaching in how to use these skills, and that conflict competency—it's a core competency as a leader. And that organizations need to take a look at their approaches and see where they're really focused on reaction—after things have escalated. And in a high conflict situation, that very often is too late. How you're going to correct that behavior now—you're going to be in a war for one or two years with this person. Whereas if you can prevent these things or head them off early, or even really be clear about the expectations and setting limits, you may be able to prevent some of these really dramatic and huge consequences for organizations. So it's just getting really intentional about it in terms of how the organization handles it, and then that support for leaders to help them be more confident in addressing these things. And as you say, Bill, very often leaders feel alone—they think they're the only one dealing with this. And once things get a bit normalized, they're more confident. Megan Hunter Or they may think that they're screwing things up, or that the problem is theirs. Michael Lomax Well, especially if this person is telling you—you are the worst manager in the entire organization, who hired you? Well, some—maybe that's true. I don't seem to know what I'm doing. I seem to be messing this up. This person's telling me I'm awful. Maybe start to believe some of that narrative a little bit. Megan Hunter Right. So Bill, you mentioned role plays. I trained a group recently who, as part of the training day, I read out loud some scripts that you and I worked on together for filming some educational videos—to show scenarios of what not to do and then what to do in high conflict situations. That even in itself, just having—in one instance, I read the scripts out loud to them. That was really powerful. Then having them read the scripts was very powerful. It was a big shift from the ordinary role plays I've done with groups. And so I think there is a lot to be said for role play, and just even reading the scripts, giving someone the words to say. Like people who've watched the mediation video that you do—recorded several years ago—there are many people who've reported back that when they're in these high conflict situations, those words you've said in that high conflict mediation are in their head and they just come out naturally. So it's kind of hearing them, reading them, saying them out loud—giving someone a script is very powerful, and I think all leaders should experience that if we're going to see some shifts. Bill Eddy You know, it reminds me—I just want to quickly mention, Michael and I wrote the book together on mediating high conflict disputes. And one of the things we made sure to put in there was a lot of the things to say when you transition from one step to another step in the mediation process, or you calm down someone who's upset. So I'm glad you pointed that out, Megan. And I'm glad to hear those scripts were so successful. Michael Lomax Well, sometimes when you're training people, you teach them the words and the brain will follow. Right? And other times you need to do it another way, but that is one way—use these words, get comfortable with them, and then your brain starts to kind of follow that. Bill Eddy It's all doable. Michael Lomax Yeah. And with any new skill, with adults, it's like adjusting your putter grip or something like that. It feels uncomfortable and then you're going to go back to what you were doing before. Even if you know—I still can't putt very well, but it just feels more comfortable. So again, how do you get people to overcome that discomfort with new language, new approaches? I mean, I think a lot of the high conflict skills, people already know how to do them. Sometimes we're just asking them to do them in certain places and times where you don't feel like doing it. Megan Hunter Yeah, that's true. And I think none of us goes into the workday anticipating conflict unless we have some big high conflict dispute happening. But I think we're going in looking at KPIs, looking at what's the latest metrics, right? And we're not necessarily thinking about conflict. We're not prepared for it. I think if we could anticipate every day—I just have to be prepared, I have to be watching for this so I can be ahead of it. But if we shift back to the organization, the organizations that are going to succeed, I think, in the next decade, are those who have made conflict competency—as you said, Michael—being conflict ready. They're going to have that competitive advantage, right? Because risk will be greatly reduced. You know, the cost of a single lawsuit, a harassment suit, bullying—you name it. What you'd spend on training and being conflict ready is just far less than you will probably have to pony up in a lawsuit, even just paying legal fees. That's at least my thoughts on it. And I'm curious—with the two of you, if there was one thing you could say to decision makers in an organization about being conflict ready, what would it be? Conflict ready as an organization. Michael Lomax Leaders need a structure. They need to find ways that they can stay calm, set clear expectations, and be proactive. And then even the most challenging situations can be manageable. That's one thing I would say. Bill Eddy Yeah, I would agree with structure. Maybe I'd add—get to know your people and find things you like about them and let them know you know that. Because in many ways, I think the most successful leaders are good at one-to-one connection. And if they've got a good one-to-one connection with 25 people that work for them, those 25 people are going to be happy. If you just treat them as a mass and you fear them, it's not going to go well. And you'll know who's easier and who's harder, but if you connect with people—that one-to-one connection. And I think new leaders, that's one of the first things you've got to do is meet with everybody individually, even if it's 10 or 15 minutes, so that you can form a connection. That's what we're all about as human beings. Michael Lomax 100%. Megan Hunter Yeah. Alright. Well, we examined how high conflict individuals drive workplace issues—the costs to HR, to the organization—and some prevention-focused things you can do. Having structure, setting limits, getting leaders prepared, and just being ready as a whole—as an organization, having it top of mind—are really critical. We'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate, and review our show, and share this episode with HR colleagues who could benefit from a proactive, research-backed approach. In the next episode—by the way, this is a four-part series. This one we were just talking about what's going on in the workplace. In episode two, we're going to explore early warning signs of escalating conflict and how to build a conflict-ready HR function that supports teams before crises erupt. So we will put some links in the show notes to some books, particularly the one Bill mentioned, Our New World of Adult Bullies, and the other one both of you mentioned—Mediating High Conflict Disputes, that you two wrote together. We also have It's All Your Fault at Work: Managing Narcissists and Other High Conflict People. If you're looking for training or consultation about a high conflict situation for your organization, visit us at HighConflictInstitute.com, including if you are interested in having us assess your organization to see if you are conflict ready. And if you have a high conflict situation in your personal life, come see us at ConflictInfluencer.com. Keep learning and practicing skills. Be kind to yourself and others while we try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace.