Workplace Conflict Resolution: Betsy Block Of B3 Coach On How Team Leaders Can Create The Right Environment To Resolve Conflicts
An Interview With Eric Pines
Be clear about the goal shared by the team, and ensure that the team focuses on putting the goal out front.
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 Betsy Block.
Betsy spent the first decade of her professional career in telecommunications software development and decided that making good phone bills wasn’t enough for her. From telecom, she became a program evaluator. She fell into coaching while on maternity leave. Once she saw the impact of coaching tools, she was hooked!
Though she originally hails from Texas, she’s lived across the country and traveled across the globe. She’s called California home now for over twenty years, and lives in a 1914 craftsman in Oakland with her spouse, kiddo, and 2 ill-behaved dogs.
She could tell you about the lengthy bunch of the trainings that she’s done, but ultimately her greatest skill is showing up for teams and giving them the space to create and explore.
She was one of the first people worldwide to receive the Advanced Certification in Team Coaching (ACTC) from the International Coach Federation (ICF).
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?
As long as I can remember, I’ve been able to listen to many voices and find the synthesis and connection among them. On the outside, it looks like I meandered: a brief stint in nonprofits before a long stay in telecommunications software development working with a Fortune 50 client; then some time in government accountability, followed by nonprofit and philanthropic program evaluation (effectiveness of programs).
What I realized is that over all this time, I had always been in a position of navigating teams to better “teaming”– of listening, integrating, and synthesizing. And as I listened to amazing folks around me, I realized there were tools that helped me hone this skill and delve more deeply into catalyzing and supporting teams. Since I completed my training in systemic team coaching, supporting teams (and the coaches who serve them) has been my sole focus.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I often tell the story of the client who wanted support to operationalize the organization’s recently crafted values. The environment was angry, toxic, and painful, as the team was navigating some difficult interpersonal challenges and a desire to fundamentally change the power dynamic in their organization. During the coaching, they made assumptions about the power dynamics my partner and I: who made more money, who held the contract, and why we had partnered. The assumptions came out as angry accusations. All of the assumptions were at odds with how my partner and I had designed our relationship, yet we didn’t correct them. We knew at the time their assumptions were about something they needed to believe, and not about us.
We had so thoughtfully designed our partnership and had such complete trust, that when the fire and anger came at us from the team, we knew it wasn’t about us. We were able to sit with their anger and hope we could help them redirect to learn about themselves.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
“Against the wall my head I rammed. And now I’m dead, well I’ll be damned.”
When I was 10, my dad was helping me navigate my frustration being at a school where I was unhappy. And he told me this to help me differentiate between effort that was meaningful. And, well, banging my head against a wall. I hear so many more poignant ways of saying this, but I love my dad’s direct Texas-speak to say what we say in so many ways these days: conserve your energy for what’s meaningful and useful.
“Being angry at someone is like drinking poison and waiting for them to die.” My cousin shared this with me, as we were considering the fruitlessness of anger. And I leverage this thinking frequently. For myself, I try to find ways to release my anger at others because it’s not serving me, and certainly not having an impact on them. And in working with teams, it’s recognizing when your reactions to situations are preventing YOU from showing up and working with the team to actually solve something.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
What makes B3 stand out is my ability to sit in the fire. Teams are always anxious to bring an outsider into their mix when there’s frustration, toxicity, or unprecedented challenge. And yet this is precisely the time to bring someone in, to help create an environment where the team can talk and find the path to their next great place.
I remember working with a nonprofit team of over 20 that felt they were so out of alignment, they would never be able to set some foundational values in place to help them move ahead. But with the help of some kindergarten-level crafting and some helpful prompting about superheroes, they realized some really beautiful and meaningful shared values. It was the first time they’d felt alignment in months.
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?
Creative. I know conversation alone won’t help leaders and teams have powerfully meaningful conversation. I bring creativity to how to engage people through channels like drawing, movement, and sometimes music. I once led a nonprofit board through a totally silent exercise, as they moved around different positions in a room, to help them move past a conflict.
Brave. I’m kind of fearless about what I’ll observe, say, bring to the table. I believe that I don’t create the emotion that sometimes lives in the room, and both I and the team I’m coaching are strong enough to navigate it. On a few occasions, I’ve aired out loud “how frustrated are you that this coaching is stagnating?” when I know people are holding back. And it’s scary yet they dive in.
Catalytic. Together with my clients, we are looking for that moment where they suck the air in between the teeth with that “oof” realization and know it’s time to let go of something so they can surge ahead — and then they surge! One leadership realized they’d been holding back on communicating a major change to their staff and originally thought they were protecting the staff. Actually, they weren’t…
Synthesis. A lot of my clients credit me work intuition. But really, I’m listening closely and finding threads. I hear what they are saying, what they aren’t, and help them lift up.
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?
The hardest choices I’ve had to make as a leader have always been deciding between the wellbeing of my staff versus a project or strategic directive. And though I made many over the years, one that stands out is this: a multi-phase software project, and I led the final phase of testing before it was to be implemented. The project was high stakes, it arrived on our team’s doorstep late and with many critical issues, and we had tremendous pressure to complete the testing on time and having resolved those issues. In the final week, we hit a snag and one of my testers was clearly exhausted having worked late the night before. I made the decision to halt her portion testing and told her to go home and sleep. No alarm, no time to come back, just sleep.
At that moment, it was clear to me that her wellbeing came first — and if she was well, she would make clear decisions and have sharper focus. The product would be better if SHE was better. I was consistent with the whole team that week: I wanted them focused, with a good mindset, and healthy. If they could do that, they could deliver the best product.
And they did. We completed the testing on time, having resolved all the critical defects. I have never forgotten the power of a team that is cared for.
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 is defined (on the internet anyway) as resolving a dispute between parties or finding a peaceful resolution to a disagreement.
What are some common misunderstandings about Conflict Resolution that are important to clear up?
The most common misunderstanding is that conflict is bad or harmful and must be avoided.
Effective leaders know how to harness constructive conflict in a positive way, avoiding the destructive conflict that can cause harm to a team and its members.
The other misunderstanding is allowing team members to avoid conflict is protecting them. Actually, I see conflict be more toxic when conflict is avoided than when practicing constructive practices for conflict on an ongoing basis.
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?
To start, I don’t want to “resolve” conflict as a way of avoiding — I want to help leaders and teams find the means of being constructive. Leaders who welcome constructive conflict will benefit from more creative problem solving as team members will be more likely to introduce ideas without fear of being the “odd person out.”
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 team members are afraid of conflict, teams are on a quick road to toxic behaviors like resentment and backchanneling. They fail to bring forward their best ideas, and often stagnate because no one is willing to rock the boat.
Can you provide examples of how effective conflict resolution has led to increased team performance, collaboration, or innovation within your organization?
At the end of the day, I’m a fan of conflict, or to be more precise, constructive conflict… In other words, I’m trying to help teams learn to be more effective with *how* they conflict.
Years ago, I was brought on to lead a strategic planning effort with a small nonprofit organization where the staff felt the board was out of touch with their needs, and the board felt the staff was unrealistic about what was possible with the organization. The framework of the strategic plan was to be set in a board meeting, where only two senior staff would be present, and they were concerned about a growing conflict between the wishes of the staff vis-a-vis the purview board.
Not only were we trying to skillfully work through the potential conflict, we had to do it without everyone in the same room.
We got creative! Literally. I asked the staff to lean into art and share through a tool called “photo voice” a Venn diagram that described the intersection of what the community deeply needs (and their personal values/passion for the work), and the state goals of the organization. Using a facilitated process, we then created a list of consensus statements that would be shared with the board.
At the board meeting, we did a gallery walk of the staff’s photo voice posters and followed with a similar facilitated process to define the organization’s new strategic goals, after which we shared the staff’s input so we could reconcile.
Amazingly, the staff input was profoundly aligned with the board’s proposed direction, and we had created a map to show the staff where the values aligned and how staff input was honored in the creation of the goals.
While conflict existed, the senior staff were able to turn back to the shared values and strong alignment, and that created a solid strategic plan for the next few years that was adopted energetically by the staff.
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 . Introduce the value of balancing dissonance and consonance. I like talking about music when I share this with teams — consonance is a band full of violins playing one night all at the same time. Dissonance is the masterpiece of multiple instruments bringing forth powerful, evocative music. If they can imagine a song that has had an impact on them, there is musical dissonance in that song. And such is the potential in the work place, learning to work through consonance and dissonance to be more impactful.
2 . Define and turn up the dial on the team’s shared values. Values are glue, and the more clear the team is about its shared values, the more they can lean into them when the road gets rocky.
3 . Be clear about the goal shared by the team, and ensure that the team focuses on putting the goal out front.
4 . Find effective ways to get the team to disagree, and make it consistent. You have to lead by example on this one, and really focus on evolving the practice with the team. You can be playful (“worlds worst” type improv), and/or more structured and facilitated, but regardless you have to ensure this isn’t a one-off effort.
5 . Address the cracks. If you’ve been avoiding a conflict between staff, or a personnel issue, this will rear its ugly head during any time where you are trying to be constructive. These fissures escalate during conflict and take constructive to destructive and toxic.
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’ll focus here on destructive conflict since I’m clearly a proponent of constructive conflict. The most common sources of destructive conflict are the “counters” of what I talk about above:
- Avoiding conflict altogether and trying to constantly keep the peace. This is exhausting, and teams can’t keep this up.
- No clearly articulated shared goal: this can devolve into teammates focused on their own ambitions rather than being shoulder-to-shoulder focused on the path ahead.
- No shared values: I can feel my values are being stepped on when I assume my values are different than yours.
- Letting personnel issues go unaddressed: there’s no healthy way to support constructive conflict if, for example, one employee is clearly bullied. When a team sees management tolerating that, it’s inconsistent with promoting a healthy team dynamic.
- Forgetting to model how to disagree. Constructive conflict is a skill, and it requires training and practice.
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 imagine a world where people are unafraid to do the work they love, focus on mission, and leave when it’s no longer a fit. I’ve watched fear of losing one’s job — and equally fear of talking about transitioning people out of roles — diminish teams’ abilities to focus on doing mission-focused work.
How can our readers further follow you online?
Find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bbblock/
and Medium: https://medium.com/@b3coach
and soon on Instagram
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: Betsy Block Of B3 Coach On How Team Leaders Can Create The Right… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.