Building Caring Culture out of Conflict

A few years ago, a small company had a major workplace conflict that escalated to the point of someone being fired. For the people who were left, the whole thing felt horrible and confusing. They decided as a team that they needed to approach conflict differently going forward: not avoiding difficult conversations, nor jumping straight to escalation, but instead building the structures, skills, and culture to work through it generatively. Find out what they did.

Surfacing the Wisdom in “No”

You can probably think of a time when you were in a group that was making a decision, and you got the sense that things were heading rapidly in the wrong direction. Whatever the reason, you might have ended up in groupthink: when everyone gets swept along with an idea, and careful questioning and thinking about implications doesn’t happen. In these moments, it can help to spend some time looking for the wisdom in divergent perspectives.