252. Employee conflict resolution, how I’m approaching it as an owner

Navigating the choppy waters of workplace conflict is never an easy feat, but it's a journey I embarked on with two team members whose professional tiff had escalated beyond casual banter. I found myself in the mediator's seat, striving to untangle a web of miscommunication and bruised egos. This episode pulls back the curtain on the delicate dance of conflict resolution within a professional setting, showcasing the intricate art of listening, probing with the right queries, and steering a conversation that aims to heal rather than hurt. It's a candid storytelling of my personal trek through the challenges of keeping the peace, all while ensuring the studio's mission isn't derailed by discord.

As the host, I lay bare my approach to reconciling both sides without favoritism, a balancing act that's as precarious as it is crucial. You'll get a front-row seat to the strategies I employ: a blend of diplomacy and firmness, with a pinch of empathy to keep things grounded. There's no guest to lean on here—just the raw, real dialogue between colleagues seeking common ground and a leader intent on guiding them there. Tune in to hear how I maneuver through this sticky scenario, prioritize professional relationships, and find the silver lining without compromising the collective goal of our team's success.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:33

All right. Well, tonight we are doing some conflict resolution. So two folks on staff keeping it nice and vague, two folks on staff are having some disagreement on some things. One person feels like they were slighted, the other person thinks they were joking and the first person thinks that wasn't the case, and there may be some additional things they want to have discussed between person A and person B. I'm not used to going in on weeknights, but I'm doing that tonight because I think this kind of conversation is best in person rather than over Zoom or text thread or whatever.

Speaker 1: 1:18

I guess here's how I'm approaching it. First and foremost, I want to be a good listener. I want to hear what is actually going on. What do we know? What are we assuming? These are folks that have known each other a couple of years and so it's not just like a first intro, like they haven't met. They're trying to figure out how to interact as humans, but they know each other for a while and, at the end of the day, we want to make sure that we're delivering great classes. We're having members that want to stay around, we have staff that want to stay around, and that's the goal, and right now there's just intention, some relational tension between two folks, and so my role is just to to be a third party, listener and allowing folks to bring some of their, some of their concerns to the table, discuss it, figure out what actions, apologies, remedies that need to happen. And my goal, my goal, is to guide the conversation as to what happened, what was the attention, what was the the ripple effect If there was any from all that happened, and how are we going to proceed from here to accomplish the mission of our, of the studio? And, at the end of the day, uh, that's what the goal, um, at the end of the day, that's what they call it, and I'm I personally.

Speaker 1: 2:42

Something that I struggle with is I give people the benefit of the doubt and I give credence and weight to both sides of a disagreement. And it's not like this is a moral disagreement, like good versus evil. It's like this person's opinion, disagreement like good versus evil. It's like this person's opinion, that person's opinion, this person's not doing that. This person's not doing that. Well, you should be doing this. Well, no, because that's not my role. Well, you should be doing it. Well, no, it's not my role. But why are you doing this? Why are you behaving this way and it's probably just fair to like have a part two to that conversation instead of just actually in the moment when the the miscommunication was going on.

Speaker 1: 3:23

So that's the approach. You know, I don't need to be the arbiter, I don't need to be the judge and jury of this. My role is to bring both sides to the table, have a discussion, ask clarifying questions, because these are folks that do want to, from what I can gather, from what they've told me, that they want to work together, they want to interact together, they want to continue engaging with each other. So it's not like there's an ultimatum of someone burning the studio down or whatever. It's uncomfortable because I have a lot of these uncomfortable conversations to me.

Speaker 1: 3:59

I'm I would rather be like myself and this other person were having the miscommunication, because I feel I'm usually pretty good at this kind of stuff when I'm in fault. But here my role is to not be side a or side b, but to to just be like an overseer of the situation, and I don't know how you learn this kind of stuff other than having a lot of siblings having disagreements with coworkers, trial by fire. So that's where we're going to go. We're doing that tonight, missing out on some bedtimes and dinner time with the fam. But this is a conversation that I believe I should be a part of and engaged. We do that so you don't have to have this stuff figured out before buying a business. You can figure it out as you own the business. That's where we're at, that's where we're going rock and roll.