Workplace Conflict Resolution: Alison Sayers Of Sayers Consulting On How Team Leaders Can Create The Right Environment To Resolve Conflicts
An Interview With Eric Pines
Deploy techniques for managing stress and overwhelm. When leaders and teams operate with high levels of stress for extended periods of time, opportunities for conflict increase. Rewiring our brains to operate differently, with less stress, judgement, and overwhelm, is not only possible, it can happen pretty quickly. I personally use and teach Positive Intelligence (PQ) concepts and the PQ operating system to my clients. I recently coached a group of emergency physicians through a six-week PQ foundational course, and they reported clearer thinking, better connection and fewer conflicts with their colleagues, and feeling much less stressed overall.
An important component of leadership is conflict resolution. Why is conflict resolution so important? How can leaders effectively incorporate conflict resolution into their work culture? In this interview series called “Workplace Conflict Resolution: How Team Leaders Can Create The Right Environment To Resolve Conflicts,” we are talking to business leaders who can share insights and anecdotes from their experience about how to implement Conflict Resolution at work. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Alison Sayers.
Alison is a behavioural scientist and the owner of Sayers Consulting. She helps corporate Boards and Executive leaders have hard conversations, and more effectively navigate the interplay of governance, relationships, neuroscience, and core values in their companies.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I have a background in psychology and behavioral science. In my twenties, I worked for a few years as a wilderness guide in the rivers and canyons of the southwest United States and eastern Canada. I then transitioned to working as a youth case manager at a behavioral health center in the southwest US. I eventually burned out due to the severity of my clients’ trauma and substance use, the overall ineffectiveness of the justice system, the foster care system, the public school system, and law enforcement to help these young people — and the dysfunction of the workplace I was in every day. I became fascinated with why those systems were so ineffective, and why my workplace was so draining. In those days (the 1990s) we weren’t yet using terms like “toxic” to describe workplaces, and terms like “systemic racism” and “systemic sexism” were not as widely understood or in common use. It was during that time that I reconnected with a college classmate who had just finished his Master’s degree in Applied Behavioural Science, with a focus on Coaching and Consulting in Organizations. I knew in a flash that this was the career path for me.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
In 2008 my husband and I moved to a very remote Indigenous community in coastal British Columbia, Canada. I grew up in the suburbs of New York City, so to find myself living in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, where the nearest traffic light was five hours away, was an eye-opening experience for me. I was elected to local government office there six years later. I was the only non-Indigenous person, and the only female, elected to local office at that time. The Indigenous men I served with represented three different Nations: Nuxalk, Wuikinuxv, and Heiltsuk. The complexity of how the 250-year-old colonial government system to which we had all been elected overlapped with the governance systems of each of their Nations, and how their Nations interacted with each other, which has a history of somewhere between 10,000–15,000 years, made for a complex set of circumstances to work with. I was a relatively naïve white person of northern European descent at the head of the table, and therefore a literal representative of the colonial system responsible for the destruction of Indigenous people and their communities throughout the world, so things could sometimes get a little tense. I was so fortunate to work with these kind and honest men, who were not shy about pointing out my naivete, and calling me out on my uninformed and colonial views of life and systems. The trauma that they had all experienced in their lives, and the discrimination they experience daily due to systemic racism, leveled me as a person and opened my eyes to the many grave inequities in our world. I was forever changed by that experience.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
About 18 months ago I learned about a man named Shirzad Chamine and his operating system of Positive Intelligence, which is a very accessible and effective way to rewire our brains towards greater joy and away from stress and unhappiness. There are many wonderful quotes to live by sprinkled throughout his work, which has its foundations in neuroscience, positive psychology, and Buddhist philosophy. My favorite is “Every outcome or circumstance can be turned into a gift and opportunity.” When I first heard this statement, I was a true skeptic, and immediately began to think of all the circumstances in my life that felt like anything BUT a gift or opportunity. But the longer I work with his system of Positive Intelligence, the less often I get bogged down in stress and the faster I am able to focus on finding gifts and opportunities in very difficult personal circumstances. When I was 41, shortly after I gave birth to my first child, we survived catastrophic flooding of our home and farm. It was a very traumatic experience which was full of loss and grief, and it also has made me a much kinder, empathetic person.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I work in the space where governance, relationships, neuroscience, and core values (personal and corporate) overlap and interact, which is a space not a lot of companies have expertise in. I was raised by a Canadian father and an American mother outside New York City. I lived in the US until I was in my late 30s, and now I have lived in rural Canada for over 15 years. All of this is what allows me to be relevant and effective in so many settings, from a church basement in a very remote community, to a corporate boardroom in a large city, and to speak both “American” and “Canadian” with my clients. For example, I recently mentioned to a Canadian corporate client that I am American, and therefore can sometimes tend towards being quite pointed and direct when I give feedback. Her response was “Oh thank God!”. She described her Board (all Canadian) as having a tendency to be too polite towards each other and unwilling to give direct feedback, and that they could “use a dose of American efficiency.” My efficiency and directness help many leaders and teams climb out of their low-risk approaches to their primary challenges. On the other hand, when clients need my empathy, understanding, and permission to slow down and consider things more carefully, I also help them do that.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I have a lot of courage, I can tolerate a lot of emotional discomfort, and I truly connect with my clients and their challenges. I developed the beginnings of these traits at a young age due to the circumstances of my childhood, and I continued to develop them as a wilderness guide, taking inexperienced clients down whitewater rapids and challenging trails in the American and Canadian wilderness. This laid the groundwork for my ability to succeed as a political leader and as an entrepreneur, and also to be able to help my clients with their biggest challenges as leaders. I equate my work with leaders and teams in offices and boardrooms to wilderness guiding, in that I often lead them into insights about themselves and their teams which are brand new to them, and therefore feel exciting and also risky. Then I give them the skills to navigate these new insights effectively and make real, lasting change.
In order to be really successful, leaders need to have guts — to put themselves out there and try hard things over and over again — and also to be humble in the face of the risks they undertake. Recently I said something in a team meeting with a new client team of mine which I instantly regretted. I could see on everyone’s faces that it had the opposite impact to which I was intending. As the meeting continued on, I noticed I couldn’t shake the feeling of regret, so I apologized, stated my intent for saying what I did, and turned it around by sharing something very personal. It was a hard thing to do, and it felt risky to admit my mistake in front of new clients. It was partly my humility and courage in that moment which brought the entire group to a new place, and secured a level of honesty in our work together which would not have happened if I didn’t take that risk.
Also, leadership is continually uncomfortable. Many of the clients I work with are high-profile and therefore publicly exposed. A client recently said to me “I love it when you work with our team. You are always so calm, and it helps me to feel calm as well, no matter how uncomfortable the conversation.” My calmness comes from my ability to empathize with my clients and provide a safe space for them to be vulnerable, my confidence in the process I introduce which supports my clients’ ability to work through their challenges, and lots of practice tolerating the emotional discomfort of both my own public exposure as an elected official and the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life.
Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader?
I have always pursued a life of variety and adventure, and I love so many things that choosing what NOT to focus on comes with loss. One example of this kind of choice was deciding to leave my political career to pursue my consulting business full-time. I loved being an elected official. Being a regional district Chair (similar to the Chair of a county council in the US) was challenging, interesting work which engaged my behavioural science skillset and also kept me on my toes. I could see the positive difference I was making in my community and I felt proud of the work of my entire team. It was a very difficult choice not to run for office again. Fortunately, I still work in the political space as an executive coach to politicians and their lead staff. I also consult to clients in provincial government-related organizations such as health care and Crown corporations.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. Let’s start with a basic definition so that all of us are on the same page. What does Conflict Resolution mean?
Conflict resolution can mean a couple of things: it can mean addressing an acute conflict in a manner which means it doesn’t come up again, or it can mean learning how to more effectively manage a chronic conflict which, due to its nature, will never go away. Either way, it involves exploring the conflict until everyone understands the issues which are at its core, then creating agreements about how to move forward in ways which are supportive of its resolution and of the relationships which are being stressed by the conflict.
What are some common misunderstandings about Conflict Resolution that are important to clear up?
One common misunderstanding is that at the root of every conflict is a problem to be solved. This isn’t always true. Often, conflicts are due to fundamental tensions, or polarities, which we will eternally navigate but never “solve”. Polarities, a term which is attributed to psychologist Barry Johnson, are states of being or ways of doing things which have two necessary and unavoidable “poles”, such as “planning vs. action”, or “centralizing vs. de-centralizing”. Each pole has both positive aspects and negative aspects. Teams can create a lot of tension, frustration, and conflict when they attempt to solve polarities, when in reality they cannot be solved, they can only be managed.
Another common misunderstanding is that conflicts between two people are usually due to personality differences or fundamental disagreements, or some other problem between those two people. While this is sometimes the case, interpersonal conflicts can also be caused by structural issues, such as lack of role clarity, a policy at the corporate or government level, or the way in which a team is distributed within a physical space, such as how close together or far apart two particular people’s offices are. Interpersonal conflicts often fall away when structural issues are fixed.
This might be intuitive to you, but it will be helpful to clearly express this. Can you please explain why it is so important for leaders to learn and deploy conflict resolution techniques?
It’s important for leaders to learn and deploy conflict resolution techniques because avoiding a hard conversation at work doesn’t make it go away. Instead, it keeps a leader or an employee up at night. It makes us dread the next meeting, or take the long way around a problem, or someone’s office!
Avoiding conflicts sucks time, energy, and mental space. These are three precious resources companies can’t afford to waste. In short, conflicts are expensive, especially if they aren’t addressed.
Forbes recently published some stats that showed that 43% of respondents said they waste at least two weeks or more ruminating over an unresolved problem at work, and one third of employees estimate that their inability to speak up in a critical moment cost their company at least $25,000.
And research cited in Inc. magazine says that over two thirds of employees are avoiding difficult conversations with their boss, peers, or direct reports, over half of employees are handling “toxic” situations by ignoring them, and every conversation failure costs any single organization an average of $7,500 and more than a week of work.
If team leaders can learn skills, particularly coaching skills, to help their direct reports directly address and resolve their own conflicts, it will lower stress on their teams and save their company money.
On the flip side, what happens to a work culture when there is not an effective way of resolving conflict? How does it impact employees?
When there are no clearly defined pathways and expectations regarding conflict resolution, companies will see an increase in triangulation, gossip, and stress. Important tasks take longer to do or don’t get done, morale drops, and good people leave.
Can you provide examples of how effective conflict resolution has led to increased team performance, collaboration, or innovation within your organization?
I worked with a hospital physician recently who was struggling with ongoing interpersonal conflicts with several members of his team. I taught him how to first regulate his own nervous system, then we developed specific ways for him to approach conversations when he was experiencing conflict. With about six weeks of diligently practicing his new skills, his team’s morale and productivity increased and everyone’s stress dropped.
I performed a couple of 360 reviews last year on an executive team where the CEO and CFO were constantly at odds. Their conflicts were affecting others on the team, and were eating up everyone’s time and mental energy. The CFO’s 360 review was an opportunity to support the CEO in directly addressing this conflict pattern with her. Prior to the conversations, I prepped them both regarding how to give and receive feedback. I sat with them during the conversations and provided supportive feedback along the way. Although the conversations were very difficult, and did not instantly fix everything, they began to develop new patterns of communicating with each other, and they learned to keep their conflicts from affecting others.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “Five Ways Every Team Leader Can Create The Right Environment To Resolve Conflicts”? If you can, please share specific examples of a workplace conflict you’ve encountered, and how you applied conflict resolution techniques to address it.
1 . Practice no tolerance for triangulation and toxic gossip. I recently coached a new Chief of Operations who was hired into a company with a long-standing culture of tolerating gossip and triangulation. The high-stress environment caused many people to operate in fight-or-flight mode and their pressure relief valve was triangulation, or venting to someone else about their conflicts, but hardly ever directly addressing them. I coached my client to first lead by example, and to begin coaching people who vented to him to directly address their conflicts, as long as there was no serious risk to either person (such as harassment, racist or sexist backlash, or a risk of losing their job). He would then ask the person to commit to directly addressing their conflict, then held them to their commitment by setting up a date for a follow-up conversation to debrief how it went. He also taught everyone on his team to do the same, and it began to turn the culture around.
2 . Deploy techniques for managing stress and overwhelm. When leaders and teams operate with high levels of stress for extended periods of time, opportunities for conflict increase. Rewiring our brains to operate differently, with less stress, judgement, and overwhelm, is not only possible, it can happen pretty quickly. I personally use and teach Positive Intelligence (PQ) concepts and the PQ operating system to my clients. I recently coached a group of emergency physicians through a six-week PQ foundational course, and they reported clearer thinking, better connection and fewer conflicts with their colleagues, and feeling much less stressed overall.
3 . Leaders must make respectful behaviour a top priority. I have worked with many teams who talk about “that one person” who is hard to deal with. They continually interrupt, storm out of the room when they are angry, undermine colleagues to get ahead, or any other myriad interpersonal behaviours which most people would label as unacceptable. Yet, their behaviours are tolerated by their bosses “because they bring a lot of good things to the company”. They continue up the chain of command to higher and higher positions of authority, chasing off great employees along the way. Bullies in the workplace can be scary for leaders to confront, but they need to find the courage and support to deal with someone like this, and implement consequences for their behaviours, including firing them if needed. Anything short of this is a failure of leadership, contributes to an unhealthy workplace, and models ineffective conflict resolution for everyone on the team. In cases such as this, I coach the bully’s supervisor (and perhaps even their supervisor!) to stand up to this person, develop a performance management system which includes measuring changes in interpersonal behaviours, and take action as needed to protect the rest of the team.
4 . Direct intentional effort towards understanding each other’s worlds and developing empathy. I worked recently with a corporate Board which formed during the pandemic. By the time I arrived to work with them, there were long-standing conflicts between a couple of Board members, and a sense of disconnection and not knowing each other. I took them through a half day of activities together specifically designed to get to know each other on a much deeper level, as human beings. It took courage and a willingness on everyone’s part to be vulnerable, and the results were astounding. Over the following weeks and months, I heard from members of their Executive team that they had never seen them so unified as a Board, which has been speeding up their ability to make decisions, among other benefits. We are working on building in regular times for them to check in with each other, and continue to build their relational skills and strengths as a team. This type of work is critical to reducing conflict.
5 . Tend to structural issues first. I have been called in many times to help teams with interpersonal conflict that on the surface look like personality issues. One corporate executive team client of mine was struggling to find a sense of unity on their team. One team member continually felt left out, and her colleagues saw her as disconnected and aloof, even undermining. One of the contributing factors to this relational disconnect turned out to be the location of her office. She was on the 8th floor, while the rest of the team were all on the 4th floor, some of them right next to each other. It really highlighted the tremendous positive impact that informal interactions — which those on the same floor had regularly — have on team development and building trust. This awareness resulted in the 4th-floor team members intentionally visiting her on the 8th floor frequently, and the entire team creating more opportunities for informal 1:1 interactions with her.
In your experience, what are the most common sources of conflict within a team, and how do you proactively address these potential issues before they escalate?
I have seen many conflicts due to unclear roles and responsibilities, lack of alignment during change efforts, and a failure of leadership to effectively deal with unacceptable interpersonal behaviours.
When I am called in to help with conflicts between colleagues, the first place I look is structure: physical space, policies, roles and responsibilities, and performance management systems. Tending to structural issues helps many conflicts which appear personality-driven to fall away very quickly. Different understandings of who is responsible for what are often at the root of conflicts, for example between Boards and their Executive teams. Board members, even despite years of experience and training regarding strategic stewardship and what it means, will still sometimes make requests of their CEO which signify a lack of awareness regarding the reality of day-to-day work of executives, or which cross the line into operational territory. If this isn’t well-managed and addressed in a healthy way, the conflicts become personal and resentments build. Navigating the line between strategy and operations requires ongoing conversations and an environment of psychological safety to manage it well.
Another time that conflicts escalate is during change efforts. Just about every CEO who I work with tends to rush through the first stages of change efforts in their company, and misalignments abound. My advice: manage change efforts most tightly during the very beginning stages. Slow down even more than you think you need to, and take lots of time to make sure your executive team fully understands what is happening, what their role is, and how to talk to their teams about the changes. Support them to implement the same approach with their managers. While it feels really slow to work this way, it saves so much time later, because it avoids the cascading misalignment and resulting conflicts on teams which often happen during change.
In order to ensure that poor behaviour doesn’t contribute to team dynamics and conflicts, leaders must develop performance management systems which include measuring relational skills. Support employees to spend time improving their relational skill sets through training, and develop clear, specific standards regarding what is expected behaviourally in the workplace. Make sure your company policies align with this. Above all, do not tolerate chronic relational underperformers.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I want every leader and every company to hold relational skills at an equal level of importance to task skills. Annual retreats which go beyond the usual (and often cringe-worthy) teambuilding exercises, developing relational skillsets (especially the ability to directly address conflict!), and a ton of attention paid to a basic understanding of neuroscience and developing skills for neuro-system regulation should be primary in every workplace.
How can our readers further follow you online?
Find me on LinkedIn at Alison Kennedy Sayers and visit my website.
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
About the Interviewer: Eric L. Pines is a nationally recognized federal employment lawyer, mediator, and attorney business coach. He represents federal employees and acts as in-house counsel for over fifty thousand federal employees through his work as a federal employee labor union representative. A formal federal employee himself, Mr. Pines began his federal employment law career as in-house counsel for AFGE Local 1923 which is in Social Security Administration’s headquarters and is the largest federal union local in the world. He presently serves as AFGE 1923’s Chief Counsel as well as in-house counsel for all FEMA bargaining unit employees and numerous Department of Defense and Veteran Affairs unions.
While he and his firm specialize in representing federal employees from all federal agencies and in reference to virtually all federal employee matters, his firm has placed special attention on representing Veteran Affairs doctors and nurses hired under the authority of Title. He and his firm have a particular passion in representing disabled federal employees with their requests for medical and religious reasonable accommodations when those accommodations are warranted under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (ADA). He also represents them with their requests for Federal Employee Disability Retirement (OPM) when an accommodation would not be possible.
Mr. Pines has also served as a mediator for numerous federal agencies including serving a year as the Library of Congress’ in-house EEO Mediator. He has also served as an expert witness in federal court for federal employee matters. He has also worked as an EEO technical writer drafting hundreds of Final Agency Decisions for the federal sector.
Mr. Pines’ firm is headquartered in Houston, Texas and has offices in Baltimore, Maryland and Atlanta, Georgia. His first passion is his wife and five children. He plays classical and rock guitar and enjoys playing ice hockey, running, and biking. Please visit his websites at www.pinesfederal.com and www.toughinjurylawyers.com. He can also be reached at eric@pinesfederal.com.
Workplace Conflict Resolution: Alison Sayers Of Sayers Consulting On How Team Leaders Can Create… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.