When either concept is only implemented implicitly, gaps emerge in practice. Psychological safety that lacks explicit behavioural accountability often relies on social contracts, usually regulated by a leader's conduct. These implicit contracts can be efficient when all participants already share norms, and the manager is disciplined....
Why Accountability Matters
I believe accountability is primarily a learned personal skill and behavior pattern, not an innate fixed trait. It involves a willingness to accept course-correction without treating it as a personal threat. In workplaces, accountability covers decisions, behavior, and the standards governing both. It ensures that differences in opinion are resolved with evidence and reasoning, and that behavioral standards are corrected consistently and proportionately across the team and manager.
SpatzAI Changes Unwanted Feedback From Fight or Flight to Flag
Most theories of conversation assume feedback leads to learning. Sometimes it does, but mainly when the feedback is easy to hear. This also encourages overly careful, even obsequious, delivery that avoids saying what actually needs to be said. When feedback is liked, learning is frictionless. When feedback is disliked or unwanted, human systems default to biology. We either fight or flight.
Privacy, Documentation & Transparency is Fair Play in Workplace Teams
I think the modern workplace still teaches people a strange lesson: raise an issue in private and you risk becoming the problem; raise the same issue with the team present, and you are suddenly seen as the hero. The behavior hasn’t changed; only the witnesses have. That difference reveals something important about how safety, power, and accountability actually work.
SpatzAI: Helping Teams Play Fair
Play isn’t just something children do, it’s a fundamental way humans explore ideas, experiment with possibilities, and develop new ways of thinking throughout life. Researchers and educators widely recognise that playful engagement fuels imagination, supports problem-solving and cognitive flexibility, and creates conditions where innovation can emerge naturally.
SpatzAI, Plug-n-Play Emergent Safety Culture Toolkit
In a Nutshell SpatzAI is a standard plug-n-play communication and escalation safety toolkit, with a built-in behavioral team review system. SpatzAI is a workplace team communication device and review platform, specifically designed to address minor spats or micro-conflicts before they escalate. Built around a fixed behavioral protocol, the power comes from it being standardised, so the team is aligned while course-correcting each other during difficult conversations.
SpatzAI is a Plug-n-Play Culture for Teams, and So What?
SpatzAI provides a structured, real-time system for addressing micro-conflicts in workplace teams. And So What, you say? It separates normal differences of opinion from the behavioural friction that disagreeing can cause and guides team members through a clear sequence:
People Don’t Like Conflict or Uncertainty
People don’t like conflict. This shows up in behavior, not just surveys. Most teams instinctively avoid it because conflict signals risk: social friction, retaliation, exclusion, career cost, or loss of respect. Even when leaders encourage “healthy conflict,” many employees still hesitate to speak up, unsure where the boundary lies or what the phrase actually means in practice.
Let’s Say Disagreements are Not Conflicts
Around 85% of leaders endorse “healthy conflict” in honesty and innovation surveys. Yet psychosocial safety research indicates 50–60% of employees still suppress dissent, partly due to fear of repercussions and partly because disagreement is often interpreted as an infraction itself.
Helping Team Culture Plug-In and Play Fair
This new focus on a “right culture” works for branding products and services. Before the icing, teams need their house in order, built bottom up, with clear ways to navigate behaviour, friction, and accountability.
“Disagreements Are Conflicts”, I Disagree
I often question why we lean on the word conflict for what is, at its healthier core, simply disagreeing. Those terms are frequently used interchangeably by experts (Amy Gallo, LinkedIn Post), HR frameworks, and even AI labels, yet they describe different events, carry different temperature, and call for different tools.
Muzzling the Fox, and Nipping the Beaks Before Anyone Gets Eaten or Pecked
In many teams, silence is not agreement. It is self-protection. When people feel that speaking up can bruise their standing, they stop contributing long before they stop caring. That’s when the culture begins to hollow out from the inside.
Resolving AI to Become AGI
AGI is usually framed as a future machine that will solve humanity’s biggest problems. Climate, health, energy, logistics, discovery. Yet the more I think about it, the real gateway to AGI may well lie somewhere far more ordinary: helping us resolve our problems with each other.
Conflict-of-Interest Cause Conflicts, Maybe
I think the root of most micro-conflicts or minor spats start with a simple reality: everyone carries their own level of conflict-of-interest into every discussion, no exceptions. Not financial interests, but personal ones. Opinions, priorities, preferences and especially the ego’s instinctive drive to be right.
Competing Interests Vs Conflicts of Interest
I don't believe in 'healthy conflict". In my book, every workplace micro-conflict, conflict, or global conflict is unhealthy and needs to be resolved and dissipated as quickly as possible. Let’s tighten the wording while keeping our point sharp and neutral: Let’s get the lexicon clear...
What if Managers Were Not Responsible for Their Team’s Well-being and Culture
What if managers were not responsible for their team's well-being and culture? What if managers didn't have the constant strain of mediating the minor infringements and misunderstandings that flare up during heated discussions?
SpatzAI – Self-Managing Culture and Wellbeing on the fly
Most consultants on LinkedIn still view culture and wellbeing as something managers must maintain, a kind of ongoing caretaking or guru-type role layered on top of everything else they already do. The problem is that this model doesn’t scale.
SpatzAI Documents Your Spats
In-team workplace conflicts rarely explode out of nowhere. They build from small lapses in tone, timing, or behavior that go unaddressed until they harden into something larger. Most teams rely on goodwill or leaders to manage these moments, but so much time and effort can be taken up if managers need to intervene in every minor issue.
Fight, Flight, Freeze, Now We can Flag
Most of us were taught that when uncomfortable friction arises during a disagreement, we have only three responses to consider: Fight Push back using a tit-for-tat reaction. Flight Step away. Avoiding the moment, and sweeping it under the carpet. Freeze Get stuck. Go silent. Ignoring the situation and shutting down.
There’s a Fraction Too Much Friction
I was in a discussion on LinkedIn the other day about disagreement in conversation. The point he raised was that disagreement is a form of friction, and that some amount of friction is necessary for a healthy discussion. I think there is something slightly off in that framing.
Overly Dogmatic “I am right, you are wrong”, Thinking
Most of us don’t recognise it because dogma hides inside conviction. The stronger we feel about being right, the less likely we are to question the beliefs that make us feel that way. And in the world of management and consulting, where confidence sells, this blindness is rewarded.
The Holy Grail of Team Culture – Repairing the Blown Fuse
And so, tension quietly builds, trust erodes, and what was once a cohesive team begins to fracture. We can keep encouraging people to “speak up,” but the real question is how should a team member respond in that very moment when someone crosses their line?
Plan for the Perfect Culture, Then Prepare for the Failure
In workplace teams, everyone nowadays seems to be talking about psychological safety and how an ideal culture protects people within it. But little thought is given to preparing for the daily failures that occur ad nauseam - the small ruptures born of our human fallibility, emotions, and egos. It’s these subtle moments, when someone’s tone sharpens or a correction feels like unfair criticism, that can quietly erode trust.
The Age of Micro-Conflict Intelligence Has Arrived
For years, organisations have been talking up psychological safety, inclusion, and communication culture. But talking isn’t the same as doing, and certainly not the same as addressing and resolving. We’ve mastered the art of reporting major incidents but still struggle with what happens before they escalate, the small moments of friction, tone, or misunderstanding that quietly corrode trust and alignment.
The David Howell Challenge
I figure we’re at the Wright Brothers moment, trying to get this thing called teamwork to truly fly. And I can’t help feeling a bit like one of those amateur bicycle mechanics (perhaps with mild delusions of grandeur).
From Micro-Conflicts to Systemic Harmony: The Emerging Partnership Between SpatzAI and Nøgd
In a long and insightful dialogue between Des Sherlock (the creator of SpatzAI) and his consultant, a powerful alignment emerged — a potential partnership that could redefine how organizations handle workplace conflict....
Stone-Age Behavior Meets Godlike Technology
The biologist Edward Wilson argued that humanity has Paleolithic emotions, Medieval institutions, and Godlike technology. I think that combination explains why we feel so unstable as a species. Our tools have outgrown both our psychology and our systems.
Disagreeing vs Objecting: How Objectionable Behavior Distorts Objectivity
Most people treat disagreeing and objecting as the same thing, but in my view, they are very different, and understanding the difference changes how we handle micro-conflicts.
The Missing “Roll” in Psychological Safety
Attention all systems thinkers. I’d love your take on all the talk about psychological safety, and just how scientific it really is, especially here on LinkedIn. Even from leading experts, I find plenty of claims but little verifiable science. Don’t get me wrong, achieving genuine psychological safety would be the holy grail of behavioral psychology. But when I search for “the system of achieving psychological safety,” I find a lot of rhetoric and almost no mechanics.
To Call Out or Burn Out? That is the Question
"To be, or not to be—that is the question:" Hamlet’s eternal struggle wasn’t just about existence. It was about endurance; whether to suffer in silence or speak truth in a world that may not be ready to hear it. Today, that same dilemma plays out in workplaces everywhere. When we see unfairness, disrespect, or overly dogmatic behavior, the question echoes in our minds: Do I call it out, or do I stay quiet and burn out slowly instead?
Complaining vs. Objecting: A Subtle but Powerful Difference
I agree with neuroscientists suggesting the negative effects of complaining: it drains energy, breeds resentment, and often changes nothing. But not many people know that there is a responsible way to complain. It’s called objecting.
Rethinking Leadership: From Setting the Cultural Tone to Sharing It
“Your behavior as a leader sets the tone for your team.” That’s the line we often hear. And yes, it can be true, if you believe it’s only the leader’s role to do so. But what if leadership wasn’t about setting the tone, but enabling it to be set collectively? Imagine instead of one person determining the culture of the team, you had a system that allowed anyone in the team to fairly course-correct the tone of another team member, even the leader.
If Psychological Safety Can Be Lost So Easily, How Safe Is It Really?
In a recent exchange with Eadine Hickey, she described psychological safety as something that can be reduced whenever someone feels shut down or made to look “stupid.” It got me thinking, if psychological safety can be so easily disturbed, is it really "safety" at all?
Maybe Psychological Safety Isn’t a Feeling, But a Process to Be Measured
It seems to me that I see psychological safety a lot differently than most.. Team members often don’t stay silent because they have nothing to say, but because they’re concerned they won’t receive the respect they deserve for contributing. Not because they are weak, but because they don’t know how to address objectionable behavior without exasperating the situation.
Why Your Organization Needs Micro-Conflict Intelligence—Yesterday
We believe that most team blowups don't start as major conflicts. They slowly unravel through micro-conflicts, born by dogmatic, "I am right, you are wrong thinking." Subtle tensions, repeated interruptions, and passive-aggressive comments. These aren’t “small” problems; they are early signals of cultural erosion.
Why the Future of Dynamic Collaboration Could Lie in Micro-Conflict Intelligence (MI)
In Design Studies (2017), Joel Chan and his colleagues observed that teams that failed to resolve their micro-conflicts often failed to achieve their project goals. Conversely, those that successfully navigated these everyday tensions didn’t just avoid breakdown, they reduced uncertainty, built trust, and ultimately delivered stronger outcomes.
5 billion Ways to Handle a Spat. Time for One that Actually Works.
How many workplace team members does it take to screw up addressing misbehavior in a meeting? Five billion....ha! That's because every human on the planet seems to have their own specific way of handling a spat. Some avoid it. Some explode. Some smile and stew. Others call HR. Few actually address it fairly, in the moment
Why My SpatzAI Pitch Was Rejected by Atlassian Ventures
Two years ago, when I pitched SpatzAI fair play for teams to an investor from Atlassian Investment, he listened carefully, smiled, and said something that stuck: “Managers might start getting honest pushback from their teams.”
Organizations Are Supposed to be Organized
Organizations are supposed to be organized, but when it comes to helping teams resolve their minor spats, the best advice we’re still getting (even from Harvard Business Review) is for managers to intervene. Here’s what they recommend managers do:....
Formally Addressing Micro-Conflicts Vs Toxic Conflict Resolution
Why is it that formal conflict resolution is always at the end of the process and not the start? When most workplace conflicts, needing resolution, usually (if not in every case) start with a minor infraction, why not enable team members to more formally address these micro-conflicts or minor spats, well before intense and expensive conflict resolution is ever needed?
The Scam of the Respect Industry & Why Disrespect Still Rules
Now ask any expert on psychological safety and they’ll repeat the same rhetoric, that people need to feel safe (respected) when they speak up. In fact, ask anyone on the street and they’ll probably say the same thing. We all want to be treated with respect, especially when we share ideas or concerns.
Why is conflict resolution at the end of the process and not at the start?
When most workplace conflicts, needing resolution, usually (if not in every case) start with a minor infraction, why not enable team members to effectively address these micro-conflicts well before expensive conflict resolution is ever needed.
Attitude Indicator
Imagine if we had an attitude indicator (Wikipedia) for when we are having discussions during difficult workplace decision-making? It would help us see early on when we were starting to lean too far in one direction, when our tone, emotions, or assumptions were pulling the conversation off balance.
The DNA of Dialogue: Why Conversation Must Diverge to Converge
I think a truly great conversation is never a straight line. It twists and turns, converging when understanding is reached, and diverging when curiosity reopens the field. Seen from the side, this pattern looks remarkably like a double helix, two minds circling, rising, and learning in rhythm
When “Team-Building” Isn’t in the Team Charter
Sometimes the friction isn’t a difficult colleague (Narcissist) at all; it’s a ritual that outlived its usefulness. When teams centre on the Charter and let SpatzAI handle real-time respect and accountability, they often discover they need fewer “team-building” events, because the real bond is forged in how they handle minor spats, not in how well they throw a trivia night.
What is SpatzAI in a Nutshell
SpatzAI is a real-time micro-conflict resolution platform designed to help teams address and resolve minor workplace spats before they escalate into disputes or conflicts. It combines a structured messaging app, team, and AI review platform that holds team members accountable, creating fairness and psychological safety through transparency.
Stop Calling Your Colleague a “Narcissist” and Start Addressing Their Behavior Instead
In many workplaces today, and especially on LinkedIn, the word narcissist gets tossed around like confetti. It seems that everyone has an opinion on fellow team members' mental health now. A teammate pushes back on an idea? “Classic narcissist.” A manager insists on a deadline? “Total narcissist.” Most of these snap judgements aren’t clinical insight, they’re armchair diagnoses. And once that label is out there, the conversation stops being about what actually happened. It becomes personal, polarizing, and unfair, playing the man and not the ball.
When “Practical” Advice Isn’t So Practical After All
My response to Adam’s post: “With regards feedback Grant, I believe there is either fairly delivered feedback or unfairly delivered feedback. I will accept the content of fairly delivered feedback even if I disagree with the content. I will object, however, to unfairly delivered feedback, no matter if I agree with the content or not. Feedback can be split into two parts, in my book: the content and the delivery. Personally, I think the delivery of feedback is more telling and interesting than the content.”
Conflict Resolution Vs Dynamic Collaboration
Picture two work colleagues locked in a simmering disagreement. Their spat drags on for weeks, finally reaching HR and senior management. Meetings are scheduled, statements are taken, emotions harden. By the time the official “resolution” arrives, the energy that once drove their work is long gone, trust has eroded, and collaboration has been compromised.
Helping Turn Team Spats into Dynamic Collaboration On-the-Fly
Imagine there was a clear, visible rule of engagement in every adult team conversation: if someone spoke up “too often” or said the “wrong” thing, anyone and everyone could issue a simple verbal caution in real-time....
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