Behavioral Disputes

There are many types of behavioral disputes that can and will occur in teams.
Bullying or steamrolling (and accompanying behavior)
Jealousy (and accompanying behavior)
Impatience (and accompanying behavior)
Envy (and accompanying behavior)
Frustration (and accompanying behavior)
Biases (and accompanying behavior)
Prejudices (and accompanying behavior)
Ignoring or avoiding (and accompanying behavior)

Generally, most of these behaviors elicit some form of anger and angry behavior from both parties. Left unaddressed, these emotions and behaviors will likely result in an unresolved internal dispute between those team members. How we resolve these disputes will determine the kind of “culture” we end up within the team or organization.

I hypothesize that most if not all organizations use a degree of gossip as their implicit, go-to solution for misbehavior in teams, “venting.” It depends on the quality and level of gossip in a team that will determine the level of safety a member feels to speak up (psychological safety).

Think about it, and ask yourself when was the last time you gossiped or listened to gossip (complaint about someone behind their back) about a fellow team member or boss, and my bet is it was in the previous 24 hours, hmmm?

A “Toxic environment” occurs when this gossip gets out of control and becomes endemic in a team or organization. Failure to provide an explicit resolution process for these disputes, that everyone in the team clearly understands and agrees to use, will eventually result in this toxic environment, by default, I believe.

So, my explicit solution to tackle misbehavior is to create a direct and real-time intervention (object123) and a SaaS dispute network (Disputz) adjudication procedure, if needed. Through this process we can mitigate and eventually stop all malicious gossip within a team.

PS Caution: This idea may not be suited to existing teams and organizations due to the entrenched nature of their existing behavior and cultural patterns. It may well only be suited to new organizations and teams such as in startup teams. And of course, like any hypothesis it needs to be fully tested.