Why Your Leaders Need an SOP for Conflict
Nate Regier is the CEO and founding owner of Next Element Consulting, the leader in helping companies build their cultures of compassionate accountability. Learn more at next-element.com.
How do your leaders navigate conflict? How often does conflict go off the rails in your organization? Do your leaders have a standard operating procedure for conflict?
Unfortunately, in most work cultures, how leaders approach conflict is varied, inconsistent, and mostly fraught with drama. While there are many causes of workplace conflict, including personality and value differences and unclear expectations, the most common cause we see is the tension between relationships and results.
Addressing The Tension Between Compassion and Accountability
When expectations rise and time pressure is on, it’s almost guaranteed that your leaders experience tension between preserving the relationship but compromising results or pushing for results but leaving a wake of bodies behind. Either way, choosing one over the other creates problems, as shown in the diagram below.
Which way do you lean? Which way to your leaders lean? What about your culture as a whole? In an online poll we conducted, 72% of respondents said they choose compromise to keep the peace.
This dilemma arises from a false belief that compassion and accountability are somehow at odds, working against each other. To resolve the tension, leaders will often resort to picking sides, and justify their decision with excuses like, “You can’t be someone’s friend and boss at the same time,” or “If you show vulnerability, people will take advantage of you.” My favorite excuse is, “I’m just practicing tough love.”
The Leadership Conflict Skills Gap
Leaders are not adequately equipped to navigate the tension between people and performance. A study by the Victoria State Services Commission in Australia discovered that managers spend 30-50% of their work lives managing conflict. These managers reported that they didn’t have adequate training for conflict and didn’t feel equipped to negotiate conflict effectively.
We just completed a large study of workplace trust and conflict and the results were revealing. Only 60% of leaders had received any formal training in conflict skills, and less than 50% of those leaders believed that the training made a positive difference. Only 48% of leaders reported feeling confident in their ability to use conflict as a catalyst for greater trust, innovation, and productivity. And it shows, because over 50% aren’t confident in their direct supervisor’s ability to lead effectively through conflict.
Over the past 15 years we’ve collected outcomes data from leaders using the Compassionate Accountability® conflict framework. Ninety-six percent of those leaders say this model is more useful than anything else they’ve used. This illustrates a clear gap in skills-development resources for leaders who are dealing with increasingly tense and conflict-ridden work environments. For example, learning about conflict styles has the unintended effect of normalizing unhealthy conflict and doesn’t address the need for basic conflict skills, regardless of your style or personality. Scripted formulas for difficult conversations don’t give leaders an effective and transferable template they can use in varied settings, so they don’t have the confidence they need when it matters most.
Learn more about the critical difference between conflict styles and conflict skills
One consequence of this problem is that leaders are losing passion for their role. The Wall Street Journal recently featured manager engagement research by Gallup showing that only 27% of managers are involved and enthusiastic about their work. DDI’s 2025 Global Leadership Forecast showed a related and equally alarming trend. For the first time in the history of their forecast, trust in immediate managers fell below trust in senior leadership. One of the top drivers of trust in leadership is their ability to communicate through conflict productively.
Good Conflict Is Good For Business
Counter to what most people believe, conflict is not the problem. Mismanagement of conflict, or drama, is the problem. Most people we work with have a negative association with conflict because of how it has been mismanaged in the past. Do any of these things happen when conflict arises in your workplace?
- Some avoid conflict at all costs because they are anxious about the tension, worried about hurting relationships, or afraid of negative consequences.
- Some immediately switch into fight mode, turning every conflict into a win-lose battle.
- Some stuff it in until they blow up.
- Some scurry around seeking consensus to ease the tension.
In our Trust and Conflict research, only 15% of respondents reported having mostly positive past associations with conflict.
Four misconceptions about conflict that give it a bad rap
Conflict is a natural and inevitable consequence of differences in personality, beliefs, values, experiences, and perspectives. It is a necessary part of any dynamic workplace. Good conflict has many positive benefits. Some of them include:
- Building trust and loyalty
- Accelerating problem-solving and innovation
- Boosting team cohesion
- Developing confidence and resilience
Counter to what most people believe, conflict is not the problem. Mismanagement of conflict, or drama, is the problem.
NATE REGIER
Two Conflict Trajectories
Conflict will never go away, and it can’t be avoided or ignored, so the only real question is how leaders will navigate the energy. There are two trajectories, based on how conflict is viewed.
One trajectory, which we call the Red Line of Drama, is based on a belief that conflict is the enemy. When faced with tension between compassion and accountability, leaders choose one over the other to resolve the tension, which only creates drama, wasting tremendous amounts of energy and costing your organization in terms of lost trust, talent, time, productivity, and brand reputation.
The other trajectory is the Green Line of Compassionate Accountability, which sees conflict as a catalyst for greater trust, innovation, and performance. Leaders on this trajectory reject the notion that building relationships is at odds with achieving performance, and they embrace healthy conflict as a way to achieve both without compromise. The result is less wasted time, more positive energy, and meeting their KPIs.
Drama Resilience: The Measure of Organizational Health
Drama Resilience is a person’s ability to resist the pull of drama, and instead, apply Compassion AND Accountability during conflict. Think of it, simply, as the ratio of Green Line behaviors vs. Red Line behaviors. The more Green Line behaviors relative to Red Line, the more Drama Resilience. At scale, this single index can show you how the energy of conflict is being used.
Next Element has pioneered a scientifically validated, behavior-based assessment of Compassionate Accountability. You can assess yourself for free, find out your Drama Resilience, and get expert tips for improving your conflict skills. [Michael, we will have this assessment ready to go on Sept 1. Let me know before this article publishes and I can get you the link. If not, you can direct people to our website homepage where they can access the assessment for free]
Why Wouldn’t You Have an SOP for Conflict?
A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is a set of instructions for any repeatable process. SOPs are critical for processes and procedures that require consistent execution. For example, preparation for takeoff in an airplane, handling customer complaints, securing passengers in a rollercoaster, or installing airbags in an automobile. As you can imagine, SOPs become more important as the stakes increase.
So why wouldn’t you have an SOP for conflict? It’s one of the most frequent, important, and consequential activities any leader deals with. Conflict gone bad is simply too costly.
I remember when my daughter came home from school one day in first grade, so excited to demonstrate what she’d learned about fire safety: Stop, Drop, and Roll. Stop, drop, and roll is a fire-safety technique to help minimize injury if a person’s clothes catch on fire. It is simple, effective, and something anyone can remember under pressure. That’s what leaders need for conflict, a procedure everyone knows how to do, the right way, when it counts.
When you are ready to build your own SOP, here are some criteria to guide the process
What to Include in a Conflict SOP
- A behavioral definition of what conflict is so everyone can recognize it when they see it.
- A way to distinguish positive vs. negative conflict through clearly observable behaviors.
- An easy-to-remember template for conducting conversations that maintains compassion AND accountability across a range of situations.
- A method for reflecting, debriefing, and making adjustments.
- A way to assess consistent implementation so teams can support each other and hold each other accountable.
- Metrics: If you can reliably measure the behaviors that matter, you can begin tracking the impact of your efforts.
Do your leaders have an SOP for Conflict? If not, you are leaving a lot up to chance, especially in situations where people are playing with fire.
At Next Element, we’ve been refining and teaching conflict SOPs for 15 years. Learn more in the book, Conflict Without Casualties, or visit NextElement.com to learn more about installing Compassionate Accountability in your leadership culture.
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