Teams now carry more social, political, and cultural tension than ever before. DEI, woke, civil rights, identity, fairness, gender, race, religion, politics, and then, before we even get started, the normal work issues arrive as well: deadlines, pressure, mistakes, ego, authority, status, and disagreement. No wonder teams get caught up in minor workplace spats....
I have been thinking about a possibility that sits at the heart of workplace conflict research. What if disagreement and conflict are not the same thing? Reference: Understand Conflict Most conflict researchers seem to define conflict broadly enough to include disagreements....
Addressing Workplace Impingements
For years I've been interested in workplace conflict or micro-conflicts, but lately I've been thinking about something even smaller. Not conflict. Not even an infringement. An impingement or someone impinging on the other player's space. In soccer, a player can subtly tug an opponent's shirt. It may be almost invisible. The referee might miss it. The crowd certainly won't notice most of the time....
Ignoring is Ignorant Behavior
Ignoring is one of the quietest ways minor workplace tension becomes conflict. That is: Not answering. Not acknowledging. Letting a concern hang in the air. The difficulty is that “ignoring” is hard to prove. A person can always say they missed it, were busy, misunderstood, or did not think a response was needed.
Measuring Team Micro-Conflict Resolution Efficiency
Most organizations already measure productivity, delivery speed, incident rates, and customer satisfaction. Very few measure how efficiently their teams resolve the everyday micro-conflicts that quietly affect all of those outcomes....
What If Conflict Has Been Made Too Complex?
We see this pattern everywhere, from workplace teams to organisations, communities, politics, and even global disputes. Minor issues are often left unresolved until they become major problems. By then, the process needed to resolve them is far more complex, expensive, emotional, and entrenched....
Mary Parker Follett, SpatzAI & the Future of Disagreements
Mary Parker Follett was ahead of her time in how she understood conflict. By 1924, she had already articulated her framework of domination, compromise, and integration, later presented clearly in her 1925 paper, Constructive Conflict. She did not see conflict simply as something to suppress or avoid. Instead, she saw it as a possible source of learning, creativity, and mutual understanding.
SpatzAI: Psychological Safety PPE
I think psychological safety should be treated the same way. It is not created by speeches, slogans, workshops, or encouragement alone. It is created when teams have practical systematic protections in place, such as ways to hold team member and managers to account, an open and transparent way to ensure issues are fairly resolved, agreed behavioural standards, and a fair way to address, in real-time, when these behavioural standards are infringed upon...
Ideas Assembly Line: Early Quality Control for Team Thinking
I think most teams run an "ideas-assembly-line" without realising it. Ideas move from person to person, meeting to meeting, slowly taking shape. But unlike a factory floor, there’s usually no explicit quality control built into the flow. So small issues get waved through. A comment that lands poorly. A challenge that feels one-sided. A tone that creates friction.
Still Cleaning Up the Manure at Your Workplace
Most people can see the problem. Employees stay silent. Warnings are missed. Risks are hidden. Bad behaviour is tolerated. Retaliation is feared. Boards and leaders are surprised by issues that many people lower down already knew about. There is even a new name for it when these things are present it is considered there is a lack of "psychological safety".
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