Mastering Workplace Conflict: Insights from Carol Bowser’s Journey in Conflict Mediation

Ever wondered how childhood experiences shape our conflict stories in the workplace? Join us on the Leadership Vision Podcast for an eye-opening conversation with Carol Bowser, founder of Conflict Management Strategies. Carol shares her unique journey from employment law to conflict mediation, offering profound insights on how leaders can effectively navigate conflict and foster a healthy work environment. You'll learn how different mental frameworks and professional backgrounds can lead to competing decisional frameworks within teams, and why understanding these dynamics is crucial for creating common ground where everyone feels comfortable and respected.

We also tackle the complexities of workplace conflict, discussing how assumptions about roles, authority, and team involvement can significantly impact team dynamics. Past traumas and psychological biases often shape our responses to conflict, making it essential for leaders to approach feedback and reactions with sensitivity. Discover strategies to avoid potential legal implications while fostering a healthier and more productive team environment. We'll provide practical tools and frameworks to help you manage these intricate dynamics and create a workplace where every team member feels valued and understood.

Finally, we explore multifaceted conflict resolution strategies and the vital role of leadership in this process. From coaching emerging leaders to mediating team conflicts, Carol emphasizes the importance of tailored solutions and the challenges leaders face in relinquishing control and fostering trust. Through engaging analogies and real-world examples, you'll understand how to develop balanced skill sets, make efficient decisions, and leverage the role of consultants for fresh perspectives. This episode is packed with actionable insights to help you build a conflict-competent workplace where communication skills and soft skills are highly valued. Don't miss out on this invaluable discussion that promises to transform your approach to team dynamics and conflict resolution.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I talk about becoming conflict competent. I would love being able for managers and leaders and ask like how much of a conflict competent organization we are. Because you hire people for their thinking and their professional thinking and because different professions have different mental frameworks and address and appreciate risk differently, there are going to be combating and competing decisional frameworks and I think being able just to talk about that there are different decisional frameworks that people use and, as leaders, I would love for you to thoughtfully consider, is how you make decisions a mystery to people?

Speaker 2: 0:52

You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting firm has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg and in this episode, the founder of Conflict Management Strategies, carol Bowser, chatted with Linda, brian and myself about the importance of becoming conflict competent in organizations. She explains how different mental frameworks and professional backgrounds can lead to competing decisional frameworks. She also shares her journey from employment law to conflict mediation, emphasizing the impact of one's conflict story formed during childhood and past experiences. We explore how leaders can effectively navigate conflict, engage their teams and foster a healthy work environment. Thank you, we hope you'll enjoy it. So click the links in the show notes for more information. And here it is our interview with Carol Bowser. Enjoy.

Speaker 1: 2:11

So I'm Carol Bowser and my company is Conflict Management Strategies, and one of the things that I love about my work is I get a chance to talk to people about what's important to them.

Speaker 1: 2:23

I went to law school and practice employment law, but I always had the mediation training that I had taken pre-law school in the back of my mind, and that training was specifically talking about what people's interests are like.

Speaker 1: 2:38

How are their interests or their values at play in the conflict, and this particular mediation model that I was trained in and later trained people on and continue to train people on, talks about and assumes that there's some type of ongoing relationship, which is why this idea of my interest in the rights and responsibilities in the employment relationship versus what's going on that is important to people and ongoing relationships seemed like it was a bit of a natural fit.

Speaker 1: 3:11

And I love to talk and I love to train and I love to design trainings and coming up with creative ways to be able to do something, to maybe find some universal tools and truths and frameworks so that people feel more empowered, so being able to have people talk about what's important to them and try to be able to navigate within the working relationship and that particular team and that particular organization, and so it's fun, it's challenging, it's frustrating. Sometimes it is never the same thing twice and if I assume oh, I got this covered, I know exactly what this is, that totally bites me in the butt. So it is sometimes an exercise in ongoing education and humility and curiosity and more often than not and I'm so excited that we're going to, you know, hopefully dive into a little bit about the neuroscience, because conflict happens in people's brains, that impacts what happens in their body, which impacts what behaviors they choose to engage in or don't choose to engage in, which can either escalate or de-escalate conflict.

Speaker 3: 4:25

Ooh so good.

Speaker 4: 4:26

Okay.

Speaker 3: 4:27

You're baiting us. It's part of my job Come.

Speaker 1: 4:34

You're talking about things that people tend to avoid because it is awesome and it is cool. You know conflict put me in cold coach. I am ready to play.

Speaker 2: 4:43

I love on your website. You you have what kind of person likes conflict. I do we do yeah, yes that's great.

Speaker 4: 4:50

I have a question from the beginning and I'm not saying next part because I always say it like it's not gonna be a part of the podcast but I'm really curious what was the role of conflict as you're growing up like, when you think about your childhood, your family of origin? Because some of the things that we found is that the way people are dealing with conflict now in the workplace in themselves is deeply rooted in how conflict was managed or whatever in there, or modeled, or modeled or not Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 5:16

So I refer to that as like what's somebody's conflict story and part of kind of my training and when I'm working with managers and teams I'll say most people learned their conflict beliefs and conflict behaviors in their family of origin or what they created as their family of origin. So I will do a dramatic pause and look at the audience and say so how's conflict handled in your family growing up? And we bring that to the workforce. So I think I wouldn't have even had said I wouldn't have used the word conflict. It's because it's so embedded. This is just the way that we do things. And so I would say, looking back and contrasting it, it was all just pretty middle of the road. There weren't like high levels of emotion, there weren't low levels of emotion, it was just we get through the day. The only thing that kind of comes out is like when I was a teenager and let's just talk about neuroscience, everybody's brain and their executive function is just whack-a-doodle and people try to figure out what they're going to do.

Speaker 1: 6:20

And why can't I stay out late? You're just so mean and why can't I stay out late? You're just so mean. And so I think that was part of it. But also I'm not sure that there was like a lot of language about or problem solving or brainstorming or help me understand stuff. It was just more we're just getting through every single day. I want to contrast that and you may see this also. Actually, you may have seen it or people have maybe reported it to you In a lot of my coaching work.

Speaker 1: 6:56

I will ask people. I don't like making a fuss or they just seem really reluctant, and so I sometimes float questions saying things like abuse and neglect and alcoholism and drug addiction and mental illness are prevalent in our culture and, depending on what's happening, that also impacts conflict resolution skills or ability. And if there were traumatic events in somebody's life, the ability to avoid a conflict and deescalate and navigate around it was actually a life-saving skill. And a lot of times in work what do we say is oh, come and talk to that person directly. Yeah, really, they're going to do that. Or go and talk to somebody else, and it's almost like we're over asking people assuming that how they were brought up and their beliefs around conflict, their beliefs around direct communication, their beliefs about the appropriateness of negotiation, falls in one particular dynamic, and I'm not sure that really happens.

Speaker 3: 8:10

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 8:10

You've already mentioned beliefs and values multiple times. What's the importance of discussing values and beliefs with people that are struggling with conflict?

Speaker 1: 8:19

First and foremost, I think the reason why there's tension or conflict or frustration is that in some way, shape or form, what is going on is symbolically significant of a threat to a closely held core value. And so if we're talking about where the threat or the undermining or the lack of realizing what that closely held core value is, that's at the root of everything, I'll give a little disclaimer. In my opinion, and I find in organizations that people will assume they're here because of our core value or they're here for a variety of reasons, and they may assume that the behavior behavior that somebody believes symbolizes trust or respect or value in people or autonomy or good communication is the same across everybody. Not everybody has the same behaviors that they believe symbolize a particular value. So I think that's an important thing, that when we're talking about conflict or tension or frustration, we're talking about somebody feeling impeded and, chances are, a value impeded back.

Speaker 3: 9:45

I'm curious as to some of the themes that you hear, like some of the meta themes, because we have a as part of one of our courses. We have a what we call a team engagement session. It's a 90 minute session about conflict. It's not conflict resolution, but it's just being able to name some of the conflicts. We believe in leaders going first. So Brian and I will often some of the conflicts. We believe in leaders going first. So Brian and I will often model the way, like we'll share a little bit from our life or our examples. And Brian went first this one time and said the reason I do not like conflict. Once again, we had not talked about this ever as a married couple, so you could probably help us. But he said I do not like conflict.

Speaker 3: 10:24

I didn't see it modeled at all in my family. I saw my parents disagree once, but any conflict was behind closed doors. So there was none of that witnessed, which I was like, excuse me. And I actually looked at the Zoom screen and said just a second. I was like you, never, this wasn't it.

Speaker 3: 10:43

So this whole group is the whole team on zoom is basically eating popcorn watching the two of us share our conflict story with one another because my parents I grew up in a loving home and my parents were complete polar opposite personalities and so there was always a low level of tension just because they did not see eye to eye, um, or they didn't have similar. Because they did not see eye to eye or they didn't have similar perspectives. They actually saw eye to eye quite a bit, but the perspectives or then how they behaved in the world was very different. So I was used to low level tension in our family. So that's just an example of one of the ways that we have learned so much about the conflict story. So, going back to my question, are there some meta themes around people's conflict story that provide the good handles to get people talking, connecting and teams functioning better?

Speaker 1: 11:36

I do think that there are, through lines, how people were treated in past employment situations, what they believe having a particular role or title entitles them to do or allows them not to do.

Speaker 1: 11:53

And I don't think that there is a universal agreement on the team about what the roles, what the level of authority is and what is considered team-worthy level of involvement in production. So I look for those types of things and I also know that I'm not going to get up in front of a group because not everybody even has the same idea of what the boundaries between the personal and professional are, and so even discussing where they went on vacation or where they went to high school, it's no. I want to keep that barrier there and recognizing that. So there are some people who are very comfortable talking about that stuff and there are some people who are exceedingly uncomfortable. So I'm trying to create a zone of agreement so that way we say we can operate in this zone. So I think that's a universal thing of just having very different assumptions about what the roles and the boundaries are.

Speaker 3: 12:57

Yeah, as you're talking, I'm thinking of a recent client who has just stepped into a really healthy team and she has had horrible experiences at past employers. And she said I made a comment to one of my colleagues last week and I said, because she was starting to get emotional about something and she's like, well, you know, everyone cries at work. And her colleague said, but not here, we don't cry. And it wasn't like shaming, like you shouldn't cry, but we're healthy. Like she was trying to invite her into this layer of health of we shouldn't get to the point of crying every day because of conflict, because the conflict is is navigated in a healthy way and not as a point of making people feel small.

Speaker 3: 13:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 13:43

What's fascinating to me about that is and I can't remember the exact kind of psychological term, but it was along the lines of assuming that your experience is universal.

Speaker 1: 13:55

And when she's saying everybody cries at work, she's saying, based on my experience, all, all employers and all work environments and all teams are like this, so much so that we are crying. And from what you were saying, it's like it's not crying for joy and satisfaction and being moved. It's like this is a poop show and I'm feeling damaged by this and I can't deal with the stress. And this is my body and my psyche's expression of that is again that this is hitting a core value and being threatened and I'm feeling demeaned and less than and I can't feel successful and this is just normal. So we're normalizing that this is happening and I think that kind of normalizing is a bit of a stress response. It's a little bit like a pain response. If you keep hitting that pain reactors, your pain tolerance goes up and up and up and up. So you're living in chronic pain and just have those moments where it's just tips over and you need to be able to release it.

Speaker 3: 14:57

Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Speaker 4: 14:59

Many things that I could comment on about what you've been saying. I'm trying to frame from a listener's perspective what the question is based on all the little nuggets that you just gave. One of the things I'm hearing you talk about is how that underlying psychological bias is something that we carry from employer to employer, from team to team, throughout our lifetimes. The longer we carry it, the more reinforced it gets, and sometimes that knot of presuppositional bias that people have around conflict is almost impossible to untie. There's a lot of unlearning that comes there. People just have learned, like you said, to tolerate that. Have you found in your practice that there are just some people that cannot really begin to loosen their understanding on what healthy conflict really is or what constructive conflict could possibly be?

Speaker 1: 15:50

Absolutely, absolutely. And I I have so many. I have so many thoughts and feelings. One is I would be I'm not going to take it as a personal crusade, but I'm just saying I would love it if we could set aside I want to say kick to the curb and dump a light on fire when we talk about constructive conflict, because I think we talk about that in the work setting, but I'll go back to for a lot of people, when we talk about conflict and tension, it caused trauma and that even just that word brings up all of those emotions and all of those neuropathways that say no. When things get escalated, we are actually in physical and psychological danger. That's a big hurdle to overcome. I think it can be overcome.

Speaker 1: 16:41

However, being able to recognize is my experience different. How can I get to know my team without getting all up in their business of something I don't want to know? And here's a former employment lawyer If you start asking questions as an employer sometimes there are legal consequences to those things about tell me about your intimate relationships and tell me about your family and tell me about your health and, by the way, are you pregnant? Do you really get a mind? That's a whole, that's a whole lot of cha-chingy ring ding for any employment lawyer out there. Yes, thank you Again, please. So I will say but being able to say how can I within my appropriate role here and respecting boundaries of privacy and boundaries of legality, maybe just ask questions about, for example, if someone is it seems like they're reacting in a much more extreme way to what looks like normal feedback of just being able to say, hey, I thought this was more constructive feedback. What I'm getting back from you is a lot more pushback Again.

Speaker 1: 17:52

I wish we could kick the word defensiveness to the curb, because it's just been a shorthand for a lot of different stuff, versus being able to say, like I'm seeing that the response to that, what I'm hearing a lot, is a lot of questions, a lot of explanation, a lot of rationale for that, and what I'm trying to tell you is that the output, or how we achieve that output, wasn't where we want it to be as a team.

Speaker 1: 18:18

And so I'm hope into your thing about entrenched views. I think sometimes our language reinforces those entrenched views and we want people to come and we want them to love conflict as much as we do. We want them to love teaming as much as we do. We want them to love communication or hate communication to the same degree that we do. That's why I think about can we at least talk about what's our general zone of agreement, versus trying to advocate or convince people to do rightness or perhaps even the righteousness of our own thinking being able to maybe say hey, it sounds like you really want them to agree with you and you really want them to love it or dislove it to the same degree. Am I getting that right? Because nothing really kills camaraderie than constantly feeling like you have to go to one particular person's point of view.

Speaker 4: 19:13

So, in your practice, are you doing most of your work with teams, or is it with coaching, or is it in training? What's the general delivery system Then? Where does it go from there?

Speaker 1: 19:25

So I have a couple of different things. One, I do a fair amount of coaching and I do coaching with hey. We've got a little bit of a problem to hey. We want to be able to provide leadership tools for our up and coming leaders, for people who are have been already been promoted into leadership. So there's coaching, then there is group work and it could be facilitating groups and that could be like hey we're, we've hit a rough patch here. Or it could be like you know what? We never actually congealed and we need some help pulling together to be able to get some stuff done.

Speaker 1: 19:57

And sometimes it's just I think I'm fun and entertaining. So sometimes it's like we need somebody fun and entertaining to get here and and I wish I could remember the children's program that ended that started with a hey, and if you're just not careful by the end you just might learn something. There's that aspect of it. Then I also mediate when there are speaking and a fair amount of training, when people want to have similar skills, similar language and similar frameworks. So that way I make the analogy of you can go to a lot of different trainings on your own. You can go to look at TED talks, you can take online training, but you might be a rose in the desert, meaning you're the only one with this and you're trying to get other people to notice and appreciate the tools that you're bringing when it's a little bit far from them and there's a risk of starting to sound like kind of preachy.

Speaker 4: 20:55

So when you're brought in, are you brought in as a mediator, Because I know that the work that we've done before this conversation. You have that background. Are you brought in as a mediator? Are you brought in as a presenter on conflict? I know you're going to say it depends, but that's going to be my follow-up question then is then do you get a chance to actually work with the individuals to help them make some progress towards conflict resolution?

Speaker 1: 21:22

Yes, absolutely, and sometimes it depends on the employer and it depends on we'll tell them it's how much time, money and effort do you want to invest in this particular person or in this team or in the organization? And sometimes there may be a specific conflict going on with a team. So I'm working with a team and then in my pre-work I may find that there's one or two individuals who are having strife that are really adding to a negative working environment, and sometimes with the leader, it's the leader is. I don't know how. I'm at the end of my skill set rope here. I've tried everything that I can think of to try to work with these individuals and work this team and work with this one particular person. So sometimes it's a full meal deal and other times that they order off of the a la carte menu.

Speaker 4: 22:10

Try to work with these individuals and work this team and work with this one particular person, so sometimes it's a full meal deal and other times that they order off of the a la carte menu. Yeah, I totally get it, because sometimes in the work that we do, we're trying to wrestle back control of whatever's happening, because that's where the conflict is really being interjected, and sometimes the leader doesn't want to let that go. And so in the work, how do you begin to solicit a type of buy-in that we need to work through the conflict that's at hand? Sometimes the leader doesn't want to give up control of the problem solving or the conflict resolution.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Okay.

Speaker 1: 22:40

So I think, specific to the leader, one is some people view it's their job to be able to solve the problems, and I think the further you go up the food chain, the more they view their role as problem solver, therefore erasing any obstacles, and they may appropriately hold on to that role because they are looking out for the good of the organization and the individuals may be looking out for the good of the individual or the good of their organization, and the individuals may be looking out for the good of the individual or the good of their specific team.

Speaker 1: 23:08

The leader may also not know how to safely delegate and also then how to appropriately hold people accountable, because those are skill sets and it may be very difficult. But when I hear I don't want to let go of it. What I hear is a lack of trust that the people are going to make the quote, unquote right decision. What I also hear is I don't know how to do it, or I did it, they screwed it up and I'm not willing to go and do that again, or the team hasn't developed a good track record.

Speaker 4: 23:39

And the reason why this line of questions has arisen is because we've always worked with teams where they're trying to like put their hands in the middle. As a consultant, that it's the leader that's really going to have the control of what's happening, because everyone has that yeah, the shaping control of the outcome, because there's a learned behavior to how a team is navigating conflict.

Speaker 4: 24:03

My question is when you are working with a team that has learned patterns of conflict resolution, how do you reinforce the right ones and dial back the ones that aren't that helpful?

Speaker 1: 24:16

It's certainly one of the things like I'm going to. One of those great questions is how's that working for you? You know I we talk about like. Well, there may be a tool and I often use the analogy If you're going to the gym and you skip leg day every time, you got a great chest and back and biceps and triceps, you got little skinny chicken legs. So it may be that one particular tool has been overdeveloped and we're not looking at it and saying is this tool appropriate in this particular place or is there a more effective way to do it?

Speaker 1: 24:46

And sometimes I don't know if the two of you have seen this is that decisions just need to get made, and people may not like having to make that decision. They may not like the speed in which the decision made, and people may not like having to make that decision. They may not like the speed in which the decision was made. They may not like who was consulted for the decision. But sometimes the leader's job is you have to make a decision and move on, and it may be an unpopular decision, but sometimes you still have to make it. So you're dealing with the emotional aftermath of that.

Speaker 2: 25:15

How do you assess for that? And what I mean is, I guess, to use the working out metaphor, how do you? Sometimes it's obvious that someone has teeny chicken legs Okay, we need to work on this skill but other times it might appear that they're fairly well balanced. So if a leader does have a I'm trying to stick with the metaphor does have a muscle group that's out of balance, how do you go in? And this is where it breaks down, because we're talking about conflict. Does that make sense? Like, how do you figure that out?

Speaker 1: 25:44

Yeah One do. They know they have little teeny tiny chicken legs. Or they're hanging out with a bunch of people that have little teeny tiny chicken legs. They're looking kind of buff.

Speaker 2: 25:51

Right and that buff Right.

Speaker 1: 25:52

So one of the things I think consultants can do is, if you're going to a wide variety of organizations, working with a wide variety of people, you could say based on my experience I've been doing this for 20 years, I talk with a lot of people you guys seem like a bit of an outlier. So I think that's one thing consultants do is you can bring the ability, hopefully, to speak truth to power but then also say there are things that I'm noticing and seeing here that seem a little bit different. You don't say off or messed up, look at your chicken legs. The other thing is, as the gym that I go to, the guy will say I'll give you prompts, I'll give you prompts, but if what I want for you you really have no interest in, at some point in time I'm going to stop trying to get you to lift harder or go heavier or challenge yourself, because if you're comfortable with the status quo, then you're comfortable with the status quo. I don't have a site for this, but they talk about motivational interviewing.

Speaker 1: 26:42

What do you see? How are you describing the issue? Do you see that's an issue? Do you see a benefit in making a change? What obstacles do you see in making the change and how likely are you to make the change? So it's a lot in addiction and recovery types of things. But you can also with teams of, if you're doing a new system and process, of, what do we see as the potential benefit? Do we want to invest the time? What are the obstacles that we see? Are we going to see a benefit in doing this? And I think that if we're talking about teams, getting teams to talk about what where they see the benefits for, and then how we can potentially address the obstacles as well, so good.

Speaker 4: 27:20

Yeah, have you seen any trends in how people have been able to make some adaptations in the way they deal with conflict, positive trends that people have or that?

Speaker 3: 27:30

where they grab your strategies and it works, yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:33

I would say that part of it is figuring out how I want to communicate and I, at least, I see when I work with people I think I've got a talent for reflecting back and paraphrasing and summarizing of what I hear are really critical issues for them.

Speaker 1: 27:46

And when someone goes oh my God, yes, that's totally it. That I think one of the trends that I would like to see take hold of. Can we distinguish? That if somebody feels seen and appreciated, being able to distinguish, do you really want them to agree with you and maybe going past looking for kind of aspirational?

Speaker 1: 28:09

We want everyone to get along. We want everyone to feel super happy all the time, like I love what I do and I don't feel super happy about doing it all the time I'm not super engaged, I get somewhat annoyed. So I think that there is more of a trend to answer your question more specifically, of people talking about soft skills, which I view as those are the skills that actually get the work done, that operationalize the technical language, and talking about what we're wanting and expecting of leaders in being able to increase their communication and their conflict resolution skills, and this idea of like how are we bringing the team along even through difficult times. I think that is important and I'm seeing that is. I'm hoping that's less than a trend and more of a shift in thinking, an evolution, or maybe some people would say a revolution of the workplace.

Speaker 4: 29:04

I want to pause here. We've covered a lot of topics and I'm paying attention to time. Is there anything specific that you want to make sure that you cover?

Speaker 3: 29:14

We could ask you that would set you up. Yeah, like a question we can set you up with.

Speaker 1: 29:19

I would say, if I could just reiterate something of if we talk, I talk about becoming conflict competent.

Speaker 1: 29:26

I would love being able for managers and leaders and ask, like how much of a conflict competent organization we are.

Speaker 1: 29:35

Because you hire people for their thinking and their professional thinking and because different professions have different mental frameworks and address and appreciate risk differently, there are going to be combating and competing decisional frameworks and I think being able just to talk about that there are different decisional frameworks that people use and as leaders I would love for you to thoughtfully consider is how you make decisions a mystery to people Because it's clear and obvious to you. But unless it's clear and obvious and articulated regularly, it is confusing to other people and they will get upset and mad and disappointed at you. They will get upset, mad and disappointed at you regardless. But if they can't feel successful because they think your decision making methods are consistently inconsistent and they don't know what you are wanting, that is hard. So if you ever hear, just tell me what to do, it just means that they have no clue on how to be successful at work, and a part of that is if you are consistently inconsistent in how you make decisions.

Speaker 2: 30:53

Yeah, oh, that's so good consistently inconsistent in how you make decisions. Yeah, that's so good If you could tell leaders out there one little nugget about conflict, or about how to deal with it, or the first step of people. I don't know where to start with this. Our team's a mess. What do I do? What would be that kind of elevator pitch soundbite?

Speaker 1: 31:11

If you could ask the question of what's happening here from the other person's perspective.

Speaker 1: 31:17

I think that's a good way to start building a sense of curiosity. It may have a sense of empathy, and then the next logical question for me is being able to say, hey, this is what I think might be going on here. Did I get it right? Am I in the right ballpark, or is there something else going on here that I should, that you think I'm not really understanding or I'm not really appreciating, either from your perspective or the team's perspective? That's engaging, that's a sense of curiosity, and it then becomes a way of being. If that's the first step you always take, like if you're going on a journey and your first step is to program your end destination into GPS and it becomes a behavior that is done deliberately and consistently, that it becomes a habit, that then all of a sudden we start getting teams who may tell you I don't think this is going right. This is what's, from my perspective and all of those things that you're actually creating, those things about teaming and culture and your role modeling, and encourage people to steal those questions.

Speaker 3: 32:27

That's great people and teams and leaders become more healthy by way of practicing the strategies that sometimes have to be unlearned, to be learned so that people know how to navigate two-way conflict instead of just building a case on the polar opposites, but to have the professional decorum to have the back and forth conflict that will have innovative breakthrough, because that is sometimes what we find on the other side of a conflict.

Speaker 2: 33:02

Yeah, brian Landon, do you have any final anythings? I do.

Speaker 4: 33:07

Nathan always tells me he's really curious to see what I see at the end.

Speaker 3: 33:10

Me too. I'm always curious. That's funny, it's true.

Speaker 4: 33:15

So this is my observation I appreciate how you really wrestled with this topic, because it's a topic that's not easy for people to talk about just in general, and I really believe that, because we do a significant amount of work with teams and this topic of conflict, it's just so hard to come alongside of a team and help them journey through it, and so for you to have enough courage to be that person that's not afraid to sit with them in the conflict but to help them move through it Great recognition for that, because I know that's just not an easy place to be because we're in it a lot, and so to meet somebody that has not only the insight but the experience and the education to actually do this in an effective way. I'm super grateful that we had a chance to talk to you about it Carol.

Speaker 2: 34:02

thank you so much. This has been exciting and enlightening and I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3: 34:07

Absolutely so good, thank you.

Speaker 2: 34:10

Thanks again to Carol Bowser for taking the time to chat with us and share her insights on conflict and its role in creating a positive team culture. If you have questions about anything you heard in this episode, check out the show notes or please visit us on the web at leadershipvisionconsultingcom. We would really appreciate it if you could review our show wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow us on social media, join our free email newsletter and please pass this information along to someone that you think might benefit from developing a strengths-based team culture in their organization. I'm Nathan Freeberg and, on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.