(audience applauds) - Good morning. How's everyone doing? - [Audience] Good. - Good. All right. It is day three of South By. It is the day after daylight savings time. I think we have all earned a
big collective deep breath. All right, so let's breathe in together. (breathing) And let's breathe out. (exhaling) All right, who's ready
to have some conflict? (audience laughs) All right, you may know me, but just in case you don't,
my name is Amy Gallo. I wrote this book called, Getting Along: How to Work with Anyone
(Even Difficult People). And I'm also the co-host of a podcast called, Women at Work put out by Harvard Business Review. And I am a contributing editor
at Harvard Business Review. I am also a big fan of this. Does anyone know what this is? It's a balance board. How many people have
tried one of these out? Okay, good. A good number of you. For those who don't know
what the heck this is, this is basically the top
of a skateboard, right? No wheels or anything as you can see. And then it's on a cylinder. And the goal is to try to balance on it. You use your legs, you use your abs, and you try to stay up on it. I'm a fan of it, but I have to tell you, I wasn't particularly good
at it when I first started. And my daughter and husband, who are both
surfers were really good at it. And they became a family
hobby where really a pastime where they would watch
me try to balance on this and laugh hysterically. It wasn't very nice. Now, for those of you who've
tried it out, how many of you would say you're good at it? Okay, two people here. All right. Fair enough. It is something most people are bad at, it's hard to figure out. And the family pastime, the joke became, how long can mom stay up on this? Eight seconds. That was it. That was the longest I could stay up. I would balance, flip, balance, flip. Now, luckily, you can put these
sort of safety things on it where you don't actually fall. So I wasn't on the ground, but I was definitely not balancing. So last summer I decided
I'm gonna get good at this, but is it a thousand hours of something you do, you can master it. I was like, I'm putting in the hours and I spend all the time on that thing, slipping on that thing, slipping. And finally, my daughter,
who's 16 at the time, walked by and said, "By the way, you know you're not trying to balance, right?" I said, okay. She said, "You're trying
to recover from imbalance." Light bulb moment, right? It wasn't about trying to
be perfectly imbalanced, it was allowing the slip
and then recovering, right? Totally different story. So, what does this, how does this relate to team conflict? How does this relate to drama on the teams that you work with? The reality is most of us
strive to have a perfect team, a team that gets along where
there are no disagreements, where there's no conflict,
but that's not what you want. What you want is a team that
can recover from imbalance. You want a team that has
disagreements, that has fights, that has conflicts, that
doesn't always see eye to eye, but knows how to bounce back
from those moments of tension. Because the reality is we
all get off kilter sometimes. Teens get off kilter. And these are two extremes that
I'm showing you here, right? On the one hand, we
have artificial harmony. This is a term I borrow
from Patrick Lencioni who wrote The Five Dysfunctions of Teams and that's where you
act like you get along. People are smiling, they're nodding, they're very polite to one another. Think about those cultures. Maybe you work in one of them where people are really, really nice, but underneath the surface
there are simmering tensions, resentments, unvoiced
opinions, disagreements. It's not a good place to be. Now, on the other extreme, you
have a team that is embroiled in conflict, fight all the time, right? Neither of these are good. And I'll be honest, I
see teams much more often in the artificial harmony than I see them in the all out brawls, right? But again, neither is better, neither is pleasant, right? What you want is a team that can recover because the reality is there are going to be fights on a team. It is a natural, inevitable
part of interacting with other humans that we
will have disagreements that we won't see eye to eye,
that we'll disagree about how we should communicate, what
the project plan should be, what our vision is, what's our mission. And you want to welcome
those disagreements. Now, show of hands, how many people in here manage other people, your people? Wow, okay, that's great. So I have some bad news for you all. (audience laughs) And that is that when there
is conflict on a team, you are the ones that are primarily responsible for handling it. You may get some
assistance from the person who manages you, your boss. You may get some assistance maybe from HR if things get really sticky, but chances are it relies on you. Now, here's the good news. I'm gonna share some
tactics that you can use to help your team recover
from those moments, to lay the groundwork
for this team resiliency. Now, for those of you who
didn't raise your hand, I also have some good news for you. Number one, you're off the hook. No, just kidding, you're not actually. You have a responsibility as well to help the team build,
re-build resilience because teams are made up of
a collective of individuals, and each of those individuals
influences the team culture, influences how you recover
from moments of conflict, how you navigate disagreements. So you don't have to be the most powerful
person in the room. You don't have to have
the most senior title. You simply have to care, and you simply have to do your
part to help the team find that balance when they've lost it. Now, when a conflict does come up, before I get to the tactics, I do actually wanna make this clear. When a conflict comes up,
it often feels like this. It's unclear, it's messy. Are things blue or red? What are we disagreeing about? Do we actually like each other? Is this all that one
person's fault, right? What's the drama here? And I do wanna make a distinction, and it's a bit of an artificial
distinction, I'll be honest, but between what I think
of as healthy conflict, this is conflict that moves
a team toward its goals that helps achieve its targets, right? It is a good tension to have, even in the moment if it feels
like it's sucking up time and wasting energy, ultimately,
you know, if we can get through this, we will be better. And here are a few
questions to ask yourself. If you're wondering, right? Am I in this healthy conflict? Is this actually a good productive thing? Is this helping you
make a better decision? Is this helping you move toward your goal? Is this helping you have stronger
work relationships, right? That's what I consider healthy conflict. On the other hand, we have. Well, actually before I
get to the other hand, let me just tell you some of the good things that
come out of conflict. Some of the good things that
create that healthy conflict, which are the natural tensions that come up on a team, right? These are just a handful of the tensions that you likely navigate as a team. Let's take this first
one, speed versus quality. Have you ever worked on a
team where there was someone who was so efficient, they moved so fast, you were sort of amazed by how quickly they could get things done, how quickly their mind moved and they pushed the team to move faster and faster and faster? And on that same team,
maybe you had someone who cared a lot about quality and didn't care how long it took, as long as they were producing the
best possible outcome, right? Those two people on a team, it can feel really uncomfortable. It can feel like you're having conflicts and fights and disagreements. But the reality is those
two people, that tension between them is good. You want someone to push for speed. You want someone to push
for equality, right? And at the same time, you want someone who cares about the details. Whereas there's someone
who constantly pulls back and says, what's the big picture here? Or you care about, you want someone who cares about innovation,
constantly trying new things, and someone who's like,
no, we've got this already. We've got the capabilities we need. These tensions are healthy, and they're especially
healthy when they don't become about the person, right? Amy only cares about speed. Amy only cares about quality. This is a tension you
want people to navigate. And the tactics I'm gonna
share in just a few moments are gonna help you figure
out how to both identify those tensions, raise those tensions, and then navigate them. Okay, now I said, on the other hand, you have got unnecessary conflict. And when I say unnecessary,
this is the drama. This is the conflict that gets in the way, does not help you achieve your goals, but actually drags you all down. And here are some of the things that cause that unnecessary conflict, right? We've got communication differences. We have some people on your team who think you guys should
just slack everything. People who rely on email,
people who like to present in a PowerPoint. People who don't like
to use slides at all. People who think we should be short and efficient in our communication and people who think we
should take extra words to be polite and kind. Those are gonna create
some tension on the team that can often suck the
air out of the room, make things harder for you. Also, unclear expectations. Opaque performance standards. These are going to cause
this unnecessary conflict because these are things
you can quickly fix by making clear, here's
how we communicate. Here are the expectations, here are the standards we're
holding ourselves against. Now, I mentioned a minute
ago that this was sort of an artificial distinction
between this unhealthy or healthy and unnecessary conflict. And that's because you can
imagine that some conflicts over these things can
actually be productive. If there's a conflict that comes up because the performance
standards are opaque, and now you have to hash them out. You've actually helped
the team be clearer about what they're holding themselves to, how are they holding
themselves accountable? But as a manager, which
the majority of you are, you have to look at these four things and make sure that by not
making these things clear, by not providing these
things for the team, you haven't created that
unnecessary conflict. Now, how do you find the balance? How do you get back to that
moment of recovery, resiliency? How do you make sure you
have more healthy conflict than you do unnecessary conflict? I'm gonna share five tactics
for you on how to do this, and I wanna remind those
of you who are not managers that don't necessarily have
to have the power on a team. You don't have to make the call about how the team spends the time
to do some of these things. You'll see you can do them as well. All right, tactic number one. You wanna make peace with conflict. What do I mean about that? All of us have a story
about what conflict means, about whether it's good, whether it's bad, whether to avoid it,
whether to lean into it. The more that you accept
that conflict is a normal, inevitable part of a team interacting, the better you'll be able to handle it. And this is in large part, not only because it'll
make you feel better if you can make peace with it, but also because of something
called mirror neurons. Because if you as the manager or you as anyone in the room,
when a fight starts to happen, when people say, I don't see it that way, actually you're off base. That's not what the evidence shows. That's not what the results
of the survey showed. And you start to tense up or shut down or look at your desk or at
the table in front of you, or you start fidgeting, right? Immediately, everyone
else in the room is go, oh gosh, this is uncomfortable. Whereas if you are calm,
maybe engaged, right? You display comfortable body language, the chances are people are gonna be more comfortable with that disagreement. So, how do you do that? How do you make peace with conflict? I'll share a few tactics here. Number one, put away the need to be liked. I know, I know it is human nature. I want you all to like
me, trust me, right? But if you are laser
focused on being liked, then you're missing out on
the chance to be respected. Because sometimes on a
team, you have to do things that are unpopular. And instead of trying to be liked, you're gonna engage in a conflict that maybe will garner you respect, but not necessarily likability. You also wanna focus on the big picture. I think one of the things I
see teams do most often is get extremely focused on the short term. How do we make things comfortable? How do we move things along? How do things move along smoothly? And we think of conflicts
as slowing us down, as distracting us from our goals. But remember those questions
about healthy conflict, sometimes those conflicts move us forward. So focus on the big picture. What is your goal? What are you trying to accomplish? What disagreements do we need to have? What tensions do we need
to navigate to get there? Accepting that conflict
is part of that process, is part of that big picture will help you. And then lastly, I don't want you to confuse disagreements with unkindness. I've worked in organizations
where when someone says, I don't agree. It's as if they said, I hate all of you. I can't wait to get out of here, right? That's not true. "I don't agree" is a
difference of opinion. We need to get away from
how we think about conflict. And you'll notice, I use that word a lot. Most of us think of
conflict as a terrible, unpleasant thing, but I think
of it as dissent, debate. Remember how fun it is to debate ideas, to get our opinions out there,
to hash out what is best for this team, for this project. That can be fun. We have to restore the fun to these disagreements, right? And we have to not take it so personally. So, that's tactic number one. Tactic number two, get to know each other. Do you know who I'm really
good at having conflicts with? And then moving on with? People I like, right? And that's not to say you're gonna like everyone on the team. I wrote a book about difficult people. I know you're not gonna
like everyone on the team, and that's okay, but you
really do need to get to know one another. There's something called
the mere exposure effect. And the way I like to think of it is, have you ever heard a
song where you're like, oh, that's a catchy song. And then you keep hearing it
again and you hear it again, and then like six months
later, you're in a bar or a restaurant and that song comes on and you're like, I love this song. And then five minutes later you're like, I don't love this song. I just know this song, right? That's what I mean about the exposure or the getting to know your teammates. The more you know them, the more we are predisposed to like them. Now, I'm sure you're thinking
of like, that's not true. I have one colleague who
I got to know really well, and the more I got to
know them, that's fair. But the science shows us that if we know people we're more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt. We're more likely to engage in what might be
a difficult conversation and then move past it. So there's a couple ways
to get to know one another. Just talk to each other,
ask each other questions. You don't have to ask,
what'd you do this weekend? Where were you born? What are your values? You don't have to go that deep. Just ask them, what do
you think of this project? What did you think of that big decision that was made by our CEO, right? Get to know what, how they
think, what they care about. One team I worked with
did this wonderful thing. They created user guides to themselves. So each member on the team
wrote a user guide to Amy or to Peter or to Dan, right? And that user guide said things like, hey, if you're planning a
team dinner, I'm a vegetarian. Please keep that in mind when
you choose the restaurant to I've gotten feedback that
I'm really curing my emails. Please know I'm often answering emails as I'm putting my kids to bed. That's why I'm short, not
because I'm rude, right? Anything that could explain who you are, what you care about, that would
help other people understand and interpret your behavior
in a kind and generous. So get to know each other. Now, the third tactic is to set norms. One of the biggest mistakes
that we make as teams is that we get put on a project
together, or we hire everyone. We start working together
and we just make a ton and ton of assumptions. Well, of course, they're gonna
communicate the way I do. Of course they think the same. We have the same goal, right? But we don't actually
talk about how do we want to work with one another? How do we wanna handle
disagreements when they come up? Setting norms around conflict specifically can be enormously helpful because we actually don't often agree on how we are going to disagree. And instead, when a
disagreement comes up, we get, you know, most of us haven't
made peace with conflict. So we get really nervous and upset, and that tension comes in
and it can be really hard. So here are some norms
that I might suggest. These are just a few example ones, right? Which is we communicate
openly and say what we mean and mean what we say, right? Can you agree as a team that, that's a norm? Can you agree that you're
gonna listen actively to one another, right? Can you agree that yes, sometimes we may disagree, but eventually we have to commit to what we're doing together. So I may not always get my way, but eventually I can
commit to moving forward as a team, right? Can you do that? And I suggest as a team, you actually create these together. Those of you who are managers, don't just set some norms as saying, by the way, here are the norms, right? We all know if these are
created as a collective, people are much more
likely to adhere to them. All right, tactic number four. A lot of drama on a team
comes from gossip, right? How many people would say they gossiped about someone at work this week? Come on, be honest. Okay no, really be honest. Okay, more and more hands are going up. I am guessing actually most of
you have gossiped about work, someone at work. And that's because gossip
simply is talking about someone when they aren't present, right? The problem is that we think
of gossip as a negative. I am talking meanly about someone. I'm saying that they're not capable. I'm disparaging their outfit
or their skills, right? That's what we think of as gossip. But there are actually upsides to gossip. The research shows it
helps us form bonds, right? It can help us gather
information, especially people who don't have power in an organization. This is a good way for them
to find out information, maybe even have some influence
over how things are shaped. There's also really
interesting research that shows that it helps guide good
behavior in an organization. So if me and my colleague
Kelly, are gossip, being about our friend Dan, about our coworker Dan, and
we're saying, you know what? He's really manipulative
and he's dishonest, right? And another colleague of ours, Richika hears us talking. She now knows, ooh, it's not
good what Dan's doing, right? And it helps to set norms. It's not helpful for Dan, let's be honest. But it's helpful for the
rest of the team in that it establishes what is acceptable behavior and what is not. However, there are lots of
downsides to gossip too, right? It can lead to hurt feelings. Who would love to find out that their colleagues were talking badly about them behind their back? Pretty much no one, right? It could also be a time suck. Sometimes there's misinformation, right? Did you hear that? They're gonna cut that big project and then there's all
this noise in the system about whether they're gonna
cut that big project, right? And then it also leads
to confirmation bias. So if me and my colleague
Kelly are talking about how Dan is manipulative, now, everything Dan
does seems manipulative 'cause that's the lens that
we're seeing it through. It becomes evidence of our belief. And when we bring in Richika
to the conversation, right? She's like, oh yeah,
Dan's manipulative, right? And we've created this
narrative around him that may be true, but also may be unfair. So, what do you do about gossip? 'Cause it's gonna happen. First of all, research shows actually that most gossip is
positive or neutral, right? I've talked about my
colleagues' backs all the time. Did you hear so and so did this? Wasn't that great? Wasn't that helpful? Have you talked to so and so about this? Right, we're talking
about them all the time. Try to keep it positive. Try to keep it at least neutral 'cause it's information sharing. It's a natural part of
interacting with other humans. Be careful about where and how you do share information, especially if it's sensitive. If it's positive or neutral you probably don't have to worry so much. But everything you say,
particularly in writing, but also out loud, think about if that
person heard me say this, how would they feel, right? It is the golden rule
and it is so important. I think because so much of our communication happens in text. And I don't mean SMS, but I mean in the written text. We've diluted ourselves to believing that's private in some way. And it's not. Also know who you're talking to. Gossiping to the biggest
gossip in the office is not a good idea. Trust me, they will eat it up. They will be so happy that
you're feeding that rumor mill. But you have to know what
you're gonna say is gonna get out to everyone. Another interesting thing about
the research on gossip is, it shows that we think
it damages the reputation of the person we're speaking about. And actually we see that it reflects most
negatively on the gossiper. So keep that in mind when you decide to engage in this conversation, keep in mind that your
reputation may be at stake, not just the person you're talking to. And then lastly, normalize
direct feedback on your team. The more people can tell
one another directly, if they have an issue,
if they have a concern, if they don't like the way
the person is talking to them, or they're concerned about
their relationship in some way, the less you have a need for gossip. One of my favorite things that you can do around gossip is when
someone comes to you, 'cause this is the thing, everyone, no one thinks they gossip, but they always are like,
well, people come to me, you know, what am I gonna do? I can't turn them away.
You actually, you can. And one of the things you
can say is when they say, I'm having an issue with Amy. First question, have you told Amy? Do you want me to help you think through how to talk to her about it? Right, normalize direct feedback, encourage others to do that. They may not take you up on the offer. They may go find the big gossip and say, wow, just talk to her. That's much easier. She actually will engage in it. That's okay, but at
least you set the norm. I'm not gonna be on the
receiving end of this. And on our team, we talk
to one another directly, and that's where those
norms come in, right? All right, tactic number five, double down on psychological safety. How many people here would say they know what the term psychological safety means? A few hands. I'm not calling on anyone. So you can lie actually if you want. But it's funny. This is a term, I think five years ago, very few people knew what it was. And it's something that
we're talking a lot about these days. How do we build psychological safety? And I'll share a
definition with you, right? Which is, it is the shared
belief that it's okay to take risks, express ideas and concerns, speak up with questions and admit mistakes, all without fear of negative consequences. Now, I'm not talking about
negative consequences like being fired. Yes, of course that would be a fear, but I'm also talking about
negative consequences of not getting that project
you wanted to be assigned to. Now getting the raise. Garnering a reputation for being someone who's
unreliable or is a rabble-rouser or just wants to create
noise in the system, right? Those are the negative consequences. Now you can see the benefits, the upsides. And actually I'll just quickly share the origin of this term,
team psychological safety. There's a professor named Amy Edmondson at Harvard Business
School who in the 1990s, I see some of you nodding. Maybe you know her. Her work is brilliant. I highly recommend it. In the 1990s, she was
working on her dissertation and she was looking at team effectiveness at teams in hospitals. And she had this
presumption that the teams who rated highest on
effectiveness would have the fewest mistakes, right? Makes sense. You are highly effective team, high performing team, you
don't make as many mistakes as the teams that are struggling. But when the data came back,
it showed that the teams that were rated high on effectiveness actually had more mistakes than the teams that were
related low on effectiveness. Does anyone wanna take a guess why? You can just shout it out. - [Audience] Deal with
the mistake (indistinct). - You know what? The shouting out's not working 'cause I'm not hearing any of you. I'm just gonna tell you, I'm
sure some of you were right by the way. Because they were reporting the mistakes. Part of being an effective
team was not being afraid of the consequences of actually admitting
you had made a mistake. Did anyone guess that, by the way? Is that what anyone said? Yes. Okay, good. Thank you. So, that's what we're talking about when we talk about psychological safety. The willingness to admit mistakes, to not hide them, to take risks. And I don't mean big risks like, we're gonna put out this product that no one has ever put out before. I mean small "r" risks,
interpersonal risks. I'm gonna challenge someone in authority. I'm gonna disagree with my colleague. I'm gonna push, once we reach consensus, I'm gonna push us further to see if this discussion
can go even more beyond where we've become where we've landed. Now, the question about
psychological safety, of course, is what is it? What it like? That's all good, Amy, right? But what is it made of? So we think of the psychological safety as having three pillars. The first is caring. We have one another's backs, right? And now this caring doesn't
mean you're best friends with the people that you work with. You go out on weekends,
you have drinks together. It simply means you're invested
in one another's success. You don't even have to like someone to be invested in their
success, but you care. The second pillar is consistency. Remember that norm. We say what we mean and
we mean what we say. You want to have people
that you can rely on. I worked with someone years ago who we often talked about
having two sides, right? There was the good Brad,
and there was the bad Brad, and we never knew which we were gonna get. And you could see all of us in the room. As soon as Brad started talking, looking, it was like, are we getting good Brad? Are we getting the bad Brad? It was incredibly damaging. It took up tons of time. 'Cause we were using all
of our cognitive resources to figure out which Brad we were getting. This is why consistency is important. It puts people at ease. It requires less of us in terms of what we need to figure out. Now, the third pillar is candor, right? And that is, we say what we mean. And we're not afraid to deliver bad news. Now, I want you to take a moment right now and think about the team that you manage, or the team that you work on, and think about these three pillars and how would you rate them in
terms of what you're best at? 'Cause the thing is, these
three pillars are also levers. So if you are really good
at caring, that's excellent. So, but that means you need
to get better at candor. And you can use them, you can leverage them
to get better at one. So let's say you're not
as good as at candor. How do you convince the team that part of caring is being open and
honest with one another? How do you dismantle this
association between kindness, between caring and disagreement, right? You don't have to agree with one another in order to work out together,
in order to work well. All right, the other thing
about psychological safety is because it's become sort of
more and more talked about, there are a lot of
misunderstandings about it. Number one, people think, oh, safety, I'm gonna feel comfortable, right? It's gonna make, I am gonna
feel free to say what I want. No fear of consequences. The reality is when people
are direct and honest and they say what they mean
and mean what they say, and they call out mistakes and they're not afraid
to deliver bad news, it's pretty darn uncomfortable. It can be deeply, deeply uncomfortable. But that's part of it. Part of it is getting
through those tensions. Remember those tensions I shared, right? It's about navigating
those tensions in a way that you can actually achieve your goals. The second misunderstanding is that we think it lets people off the hook. If anyone can say and
do whatever they want. Are we actually holding them accountable? Absolutely yes. Psychological safety is not about giving people a soft landing. It's about holding them
accountable to meeting their goals. Remember, all of this
is not about in service of individuals, it's in service of a team. The phrase is team psychological safety. And it's something that everyone
has to feel on the team. I'll talk about that in a moment. But I also wanna talk about
this third misunderstanding, which is people like, how do I get this? I want psychological safety. What course can we go through, right? Can I get the certificate
on my wall that says, our team is psychologically safe? No, you cannot, right? It is something you're
constantly building, you're constantly striving toward. And here's the bummer
about psychological safety, that it is very, very hard to build and very, very easy to break. And that's what I want to talk about here, because I think one of the
things, when you think about how to build it, there's a lot you can do. And again, you don't have to be the most senior person
in the room to do this. Anyone can take these steps, right? And first, and I think this
is really important, is that, you have to agree that
everyone makes mistakes. One of the most comforting
things that my mom has ever said to me was, I called her because
I had purchased something. I'm hoping this has happened to all of you on Instagram for $20. And it never showed up. It was only $20. But I was like, oh man, I got real. I mean, and I'm a grown woman, and I called my mom to complain about being
duped on Instagram, right? It wasn't a proud moment. But she said, "Amy, you
are not the first person to make a $20 mistake," right? You are not the first person. I want you to remember that phrase, because you will be surrounded by people who are making mistakes and
how you respond to that. Whether you're their
manager or their peer. You're not the first person
to make this mistake, and you probably won't be the last, right? We wanna normalize those mistakes. And when mistakes happen, rather than figuring out
whose fault was this, who's gonna be held accountable, which is maybe important
depending on the size of the mistake, you wanna
replace that with curiosity. What happened? What could we do differently? I worked for a manager years ago who was a pretty good manager, I will say. But she was a little bit harsh sometimes. Her feedback was very direct. I thought she had very high standards and she held us to them. She was a pleasure to work for, but you certainly were a
bit guarded around her. I had taken a risk and encouraged our team
to invest in a project that took a lot of time. And I really thought this was gonna be the next best thing for our team. We all put time and effort into it. And about halfway into
the project, I realized, ooh, this is not gonna deliver
the results I thought it was. And I had been really clear
that I thought it would, and I knew I had to go tell this manager
sooner rather than later. What I was noticing in the data that this was not gonna
recoup its investment that we might need to pull
the plug on this project. I got into a conference room with her. I can picture this
conference room perfectly. Her chair was turquoise and she had a sort of
stern look on her face, which sometimes she did. It was fine. And I sort of laid out my spiel. I had practiced it many times. And she said, "Hmm, so what did we learn?" What an amazing question, right? What did we learn? Not why did this happen? Why did you think, we should do this? Why didn't you notice this sooner? Why did you take that risk? No. What did we learn? Now, to be fair, I did get
held accountable, right? That also came in. But her first question was about learning, not about execution. And that was incredibly,
incredibly helpful. And lastly, as a leader,
especially, you have to admit that you are fallible. You have to admit that
you two make mistakes and you have to hold
your opinions lightly. And by that I mean you
have to be open-minded. Not that you're gonna sort of hedge and say, well, I don't know what's, but if I really believe this or not. Of course you believe this, but how about I believe this? But if someone has a
difference of opinion, I'm open to hearing it, right? That's what you want is open-mindedness. Now, there are moments
that we encourage this sort of psychological safety, but what ends up happening
is people sort of fake it. They're like, yeah, yeah, it's safe here. Yep, yep. And these are the things
you wanna watch out for, especially as managers. And these are things you can
watch out for others doing and even hopefully call them
out so they can correct it. Number one, don't pretend to be uncertain to solicit feedback. If you know what direction
you want the team to go in, don't go in a meeting going, "What direction do you
think we should go in? Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. Okay, we're gonna go this direction." Right, we've all had
people who've done that. Don't pretend to be uncertain and don't ask for feedback
if you have no intention of listening to it or doing
anything with it, right? I love when I work with leaders and I'm like, you need
to solicit feedback. Most important thing you can
do is ask people for feedback. And they say, yeah, I did. And I'm like, what'd you hear? They're like, I don't know.
I wasn't really listening. Right, or I got this feedback. Okay, what are you gonna do about it? Nothing, I don't actually
don't think it's right. Okay, don't ask for that feedback. Similarly, don't welcome input, only if it makes you retain power, right? So many leaders say, we want
input, we wanna hear from you. Mm. But we don't wanna hear anything that actually challenges
the power structure here. We don't wanna hear
anything that might sort of make us all question whether we're headed
in the right direction. When I say we want input,
it's about really small things like maybe the size of the font, right? Make sure that you're actually open to hearing challenging opinions. You are not gonna get psychological
safety if people believe you only want one type of feedback. The other mistake that people often make
is allowing failure, but only allowing failure
from certain people. Typically, people who
look like them, right? Oftentimes, psychological safety. When we think about whether people feel it in a team, there might
be two or three people, usually the boss's favorites, who would think, oh yeah, I
feel totally safe to take risks. I can say whatever I want. But remember that definition. It is a shared belief
for the team to have it. The entire team has to feel it. And one of the best things you can do is measure whether the person with the least power on the team. And least power because of their position or because of their identity. Measure whether that person
feels psychologically safe. And if they don't figure
out what needs to change, 'cause that's gonna
benefit the whole team. So when I say you want
psychological safety, I mean genuine psychological safety. Here's a summary of the tactics. I know everyone loves a picture of the summary of the tactics. This is your moment. Remember, you're gonna
make peace with conflict. You're gonna get to know one another, give one another the benefit of doubt. You're gonna set norms
for how we disagree. We're gonna agree on how we disagree. We're gonna right-size gossip so, that doesn't cause drama on the team, cause a lot of that unnecessary conflict. And then we're gonna double
down on psychological safety. Now, those are things that you can do in your spare time, right? But what if you're having
a conflict right now? And I suspect some of
you came to this session because you're thinking, I
have a conflict on my team. What do I do? So I wanna give you a little bit of advice about what to do when the
conflict actually comes up. Number one, all that work you did on those other five tactics
are going to help, right? They're gonna help you all recover. But the big question for many managers, and for anyone who might be
drawn into a conflict is, should I get involved? Right, is it my role to actually help facilitate a resolution? And I want you to ask yourself, is the conflict unhealthy in some way? Is someone being harmed? Because that's absolutely a
reason to get involved, right? And most importantly, do
you have the skills to help? A lot of times we wanna
escalate a conflict to a manager or to a boss, or even to someone in HR, and they don't actually know
how to facilitate an outcome that will be beneficial for everyone. If you do have the skills, if
there is an unhealthy tenor to this, yes, absolutely get involved. Maybe you can set clearer expectations. Maybe you can make the
performance standards less opaque. Maybe you can do something
that can help turn that conflict into something
that's unnecessary, that's something that's healthier, right? My sort of rule of thumb is that conflicts are best resolved at the level that they happen. If you escalate a conflict
to the next level up, you're gonna have to escalate
every future conflict, right? You need to learn the skills to be able to resolve those conflicts. So as a manager, part of your job is to resist getting involved
in every team conflict and letting that team, letting those people build the skills they need to navigate it. Now, you might provide an
intense amount of coaching, and I hope you will to help
the team get through that, but you don't necessarily
need to get involved. Now, if it involves many people
on the team, you may need to shift the tone of the conflict. Again, remember, the goal
is to move from unhealthy or unnecessary conflict
to healthy conflict. Something that helps us achieve our goals. So number one, always take a break. When things get heated,
when it feels really messy, when people are saying
things, you're like, ooh, I think they're gonna
regret that later, right? Take five minutes, agree
that you're gonna come back to it tomorrow, but don't
say, let's take a break and never return to it, right? You actually have to come back to it. You also can ask questions,
curious questions, not why are you being such a jerk, right? That's not gonna help anyone. But questions like, wait,
tell me what's underlying that thought, that belief? What is most concerning to you here? If you had complete say and how this sort of carried
out, what would you do, right? Just trying to get people to start articulating what's
underneath the conflict. And oftentimes what you'll
see is that it's often one of those tensions. It's one of those important
tensions on a team that people are having. And if you can highlight
that, if you can try to depersonalize it, take it
away from the personalities and focus on the issue,
it's gonna shift that tone. You also wanna remind
everyone of a shared goal. Oftentimes what happens when people, when there's a team conflict, people start to get into factions, right? And that's person's side. I'm on that person's side, or there's three different units here that are really going at it. And if you can remind everyone, remember, we all want X and X may be to get this
project done on time, to look good to the
senior leadership team, to make this client happy. That starts to get everyone feeling like, they're on the same team again. And you might have to
remind them quite regularly, and that's okay, but you
want them to come back and you might name one of those tensions that they're having, right? You might say, I think this
is a disagreement of over how quickly we move or how high quality the end product is. That's a good tension to have. Let's talk about the trade-offs. Let's talk about why we would wanna go in one direction or another. And then lastly, take a break. Again, if things get really
heated, you might say, let's come back to this tomorrow. It's amazing how much people
care less the next day. All right, then when you
get through that conflict, take a moment to reflect and recover. What did we learn, right? You might even say, you know what? Yesterday was a tough meeting. We actually had a really big disagreement. What did we learn, right? This now feeds into your norms, and if you have the norms
set, you can go, great. Do we need to revise any of
them based on what we learned? Now, I will tell you all
of this that I'm asking you to do, to be calm, to direct your team to, you know, have healthy conflict, to have enough sort of
emotional presence in the moment to redirect the conversation
is so hard to do when you are stressed, when you are tired, when you're overwhelmed,
when you're under pressure, and when you are moving
at the speed of light. How many people believe they
will work on a fast-paced team? Yeah, most of us feel like we're under time pressure these days, and that's possibly very true. But I would also argue that a lot of the hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. Get this done is artificial. It's of our own creating. And I think what if we
want to be able to do any of this work around how we interact around supporting the
team to have less drama and more healthy conflict, we have to take care of ourselves because it's not just teams
that get out of balance, it's also individuals. And I'm gonna tell you a
story about this quote here. In the fall, I was having
some health issues. I was supposed to go on
this big tour in the UK, it was a 10-day-long tour around my book. And I remember calling my friend Lisa. Two days before I was going. I was like, I'm sick. I don't feel good. I think I need to cancel the tour. She said, "Okay, tell me
what you're worried about." And I listed all the things. I said, "I'm worried I'm gonna get there and the hotel room is
not gonna be comfortable. And then I'm gonna feel terrible and I'm not gonna have
anyone who's gonna be able to help me if I feel sick and I'm gonna disappoint the clients and my speaking agent
is then gonna drop me, and then I'm gonna be destitute and my daughter will grow
up without a mother." I mean, I was going on and on. And this is what she said to me. "Amy, anxiety is a liar." And I want you to remember that because conflict makes
so many of us anxious and it will tell us,
I'm a terrible manager. I don't know how to do this. The team is going to hate me. The team will never recover from this. The project is going to fail,
and that is most likely a lie. So ask yourself, okay,
if I wasn't anxious, if I wasn't calm, call your friend Lisa. We all have a friend, Lisa, because you know what she told me? She said, just get on the plane. You can always come home. And she was right. I got on the plane and I made the decision
getting off the plane. Am I going home or am I staying? No, I'm staying. Okay. I got to my toe. Okay, am I staying or I'm going home? Okay, I'm staying, right? And every step of the way,
I got to make the choice. I was in control. Anxiety wasn't. And that's what I want you all to do as you are navigating
these moments, right? I want you to throw yourselves
a metaphorical life preserver in the form of pausing and asking yourself,
"What is actually true?" Because conflict is gonna
make us feel uncomfortable, but we have to work through
that in order to get to the good stuff that's
on the other side. And you will most certainly get there. Alright, before I get to questions and we do have a few
minutes for questions. Oh, I was supposed to
tell you, you're supposed to use your app to ask questions. Hopefully some of you already have pull it up if you have questions. Before I do do that though, I wanna tell you I am
offering a raffle, two sets of signed books. I have my HBR Guide to
Dealing With Conflict. The latest one, which is Getting Along. I also am gonna throw in a third one. We've done some books based
on the Woman at Work podcast. So I will send a set
of three signed books. If you just text this number,
sign up for my newsletter, you'll be entered in the raffle and I'll let you know if you win. Okay now, questions. And it looks like you did
enter some, so I will, you can bring those up. There we go. All right, as a leader, how do you manage conflict when
employees come to you saying that they have an issue with someone but they don't want you to intervene? This is a good question, but
I'll have to say it's sort of the best possible scenario because you don't necessarily
want to intervene. Chances are those people can probably solve that on their own. This is where you come into coaching and I'll just give you
a quick coaching tool that you can use, right? There's four steps that, and this is actually from my first book, the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict, which is that you first wanna ask what's going on with the other person? What do you think they care about? What do you think they
think about the situation? Because chances are, if
someone's having an issue with someone, they're getting
focused on themselves. So ask them about the other person. Second, ask, what's at stake? What are you actually disagreeing about? Third, ask, what is your goal? What do you want out of this? And then considering those three things, what do you actually wanna do? What are the pros and cons
of difference approaches? Okay, go try this and then report back. So I think that, and it's
hard when they don't want you to get involved, but they
want you to solve it. But that's a coaching opportunity. Thank you for that question. Okay, Raja asks, "team members may have a different notion whether conflict is solved or not, and bring it up weeks after again. Do you have a tip on how
to navigate this? Yes. This is a really important question because sometimes conflict is
in the eye of the beholder. Disagreements are in
the eye of the beholder and they can go on and on for time. And some people think it's
resolved for moving on. And some people think, no, not yet. Right? And they keep bringing it up. It's important I think, actually to put an end point on
your conflict, to say, okay, we disagreed about X and this is where the tensions
can be really helpful. If you can name the conflict, this is what we're disagreeing about, this is what we're making
trade-offs on, right? If you can do that,
then you can say, okay, we've reached a resolution. Here's what the conclusion is. Is everyone on board with that, right? That's where that norm
disagree, then commit. Right? And you can even say, you know, you brought this up several times and I understand it doesn't
feel resolved to you, but we have to move on. This is the resolution. And it's important. Sometimes people ask
questions about a conflict or about a disagreement because they don't actually
like the resolution. So sometimes they're bringing it up because they're like, I just
don't, I'm not happy with it. So they're asking like,
oh, did we resolve that? And it's like, yeah, of
course we did. Right? So you have to make that very clear and again, if you have that
norm disagree, then commit. That will be much easier. Alright, we have time for
a couple more questions. Leonardo asks, "What advice would you give to improve relations without trying to fix someone's behavior when
people are very different?" Oh, I love this question
and I'll tell you why. Because so often I have people come to me and saying, you will not believe what this other person done. And they tell me what they did and they're like, isn't
that horribly inappropriate? And sometimes I think it's inappropriate, but I'm thinking, well, that person doesn't think
it's inappropriate, right? And you have to remember, and you have to remind people that your perspective
is just one perspective. And while you believe that's
not an appropriate way to communicate or to act in the workplace, someone else might. They come from a different culture. They were raised differently than you. They probably had four other
different jobs than you before they came here in which perhaps that was a normal thing to do. It was an acceptable thing to do. You have to remember, there's
this social psychology concept called naive realism,
which is that we think, we see things absolutely clearly, right? The chairs in this room are black. And if someone came in and said, no, they're really, really deep gray, I'd go, you're wrong. Misinformed, right? Because I believe those chairs are black. And so you have to remember,
you're just seeing things. When you see things and you become certain that they're that way and someone sees it differently, you presume that they're wrong. So you have to help people
understand your perspective is just one perspective. It's valid, yes. But you do not have to
have a shared world view with the people you work with
in order to move forward. You just have to have an agreement about how you're gonna treat one another. How you're gonna handle
conflicts when they come up, and how you're gonna
achieve your goals together. So this isn't about fixing someone, right? This is about helping people understand there's different ways
to approach a problem. There's different ways to communicate and not all of them are acceptable. I'm not saying that
there's no norms, right? But if you have those norms, then you can refer to them, right? And remember, oftentimes
bias plays a really big role when we perceive someone else's behavior as a negative, right? It's oftentimes simply not what we expect or it's not what we like. So, that behavior may be okay, just not in our perspective. And what is it, if you can
describe the impact it's having, how do you change the impact
it's having rather than trying to fix the behavior that my book getting
along will really help with that question, Leonardo. So, thank you for that one. Alright, last question. What do you do if your manager
likes to avoid conflict? And so all of the conflict is
under the table on the team. I did say that you don't have to be the most powerful person in the room to do all of this. It is very helpful if you are. And it is incredibly difficult
if you have a manager who is just shutting down
conflict all the time. That said, there is
some of this you can do. And I've actually worked on a team where I was not the leader,
I was just a team member of the team and an individual contributor. And I said, "Hey, could we
set norms on this team?" And you know what the manager said, "Yes, please would you lead that?" Right? Because they didn't wanna do it, they didn't know how to do it. So you can volunteer and say, "Hey, you know, I think
we need to figure out how to handle disagreements." They're gonna come up, it's normal. Can I help the team set
some norms around that? Can I run a a meeting where
we discuss what those are? The research shows that the team defaults to this conflict style
of the senior most person of the leader of the team. So it is a challenge to be sure, but if you can set the norms,
if you can start to get to know one another, and
you can model healthy, constructive disagreement, right? You can actually change
the tone of that team. The other thing is you
might even ask the manager if you have a good
relationship with your boss. You might even give them feedback. Say, you know, I feel like
our team is in this thing called artificial harmony. You might even give them
Patrick Lencioni's book, right? I really think it would be
helpful if we got better at learning to disagree. What do you think? Right? Not necessarily an easy conversation. And as someone avoid conflict, they might say, oh yeah, great idea. And then do nothing about it. But at least you've shown them that this is something you want to do. Alright, I lied. We're gonna do one more
because we got time. Okay. How do you get through
paralysis in a group of partners who are in a pattern
of artificial harmony? This is a certain scenario
when no one speaks up. So people often ask me, what are the signs that were in artificial harmony? And I say, are your meetings
full of nods and silence? Right? That is the artificial harmony. So I have sympathy, Troy
asked this question, I have sympathy for this paralysis. There's another conflict expert named Jennifer Goldman Wetzler, and she talks about how moving
beyond conflict, you need to take a pattern-breaking action. And that means doing
something very different than the group might expect. And it's a risk, right? This is where that small "r",
interpersonal risk comes up. And you might say, I'm gonna do something
really counter-cultural here, but I'm just gonna propose this, right? Or I'm gonna do something here and just sort of, I know
we're reaching consensus, but I'm gonna throw a
wrench in the system. Can we talk about it? The first few times you might be met with total silence and that's okay, but you wanna keep at it. Keep sort of trying to move that forward. And if you take that risk, you
might see like that manager who told me, yes, please create the norms. You might see that there's the
other people in the room are like, oh, thank God, right? Because oftentimes many
people are frustrated with this artificial
harmony, but they don't know what to do to get out of it. So take that pattern-breaking
action, just one step that will help the team sort
of rethink how they're working that may break them out of that paralysis. Okay. That was genuinely
the last question. Thank you all so much. Enjoy the rest of your day. (audience applauds) Thank you. (audience applauds) (gentle music) (gentle music)
