Maya Wants Growth, Tom Fears Risk: Managing Conflict in Business Partnerships

In this episode, Simon Goode analyzes a case study involving business partners Maya and Tom, whose differing visions for their agency lead to escalating conflict and operational challenges. Simon Goode breaks down the situation using the five types of conflict and discusses practical reflective tools, negotiation tactics, and structural solutions to help navigate such dilemmas. The episode emphasizes the importance of meta-analysis, clear communication, and empathy in resolving conflicts within business partnerships.

TIMESTAMP:

00:00 Understanding and resolving conflicts

06:45 Managing personal conflict responses

07:42 Reflective practice and meta-analysis

11:31 Negotiating budget and interests

17:18 Processing short-term impacts of conflict

21:07 Setting and Revising Personal Goals

24:30 Balancing business with personal goals

27:22 Handling information conflicts

31:18 Addressing Child Safety in Families

33:03 Discussing relationship and communication dynamics

36:55 Considering different management strategies

39:23 Closing remarks and contact info

Transcript

Speaker 0:34

Hello, welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Goode. I set up this podcast to provide free resources and tools for dealing with conflict. So if that sounds like the kind of thing that's useful to you, please consider pressing subscribe. Well, in the episode today, we're back to another conflict resolution case study. This time we're looking at a situation involving two business partners who set up a marketing agency several years ago, and now all of a sudden they have different ideas about which direction the business should go. We've got Maya and Tom, who are the owners. Maya wants to invest in the business. She's hoping for long-term potential rewards. Whereas Tom has a different perspective. He is more oriented towards risk minimization. And none of these perspectives, similar to a lot of conflicts that we deal with in our relationships, is because there's a right and wrong way of dealing with something here. Neither of those views is right and wrong to begin with. And I think there's a number of different options that Mayor or Tom could consider. In my role, I'm a professional mediator, so I'm often called in to deal with the mayors and the toms. So I'm kind of like the meat in the sandwich, I guess, to some extent. Now you might be dealing with conflict yourself with a business partner, so you might be able to talk to use some of the different approaches that I talk about quite directly. But even if you're dealing with a different kind of conflict, or maybe you're in the accidental mediator kind of situation, hearing some of the ways that I think about conflict and using an analytical lens to approach it might be useful in your different context, in your different situation. So now I'll read the case study. I'll share some of my initial thoughts that jump out at me at least, and then choose a couple of different areas to explore in more detail. Here I think that I'll probably focus on the five types of conflict and maybe talking about some of the tools that can be helpful in the goal setting. If you're in the Meyer and the Tom situation, part of the challenge is that you're often dealing with dilemmas. You're stuck with a number of different options to choose from, and they all come with particular drawbacks. In that kind of a situation, I think having a reflective process that can help with prioritizing is incredibly useful. So here's the situation. In a small digital marketing agency started by two friends, Maya and Tom, tension grew over the company's future. Maya wanted to expand into high-end corporate clients and invest heavily in new software tools, while Tom preferred sticking to local small business clients and keeping overhead low. Disagreements over client selection and spending became frequent. Maya felt Tom was holding the business back. Tom believed Maya was risking their financial stability. Staff began receiving mixed instructions, project priorities shifted repeatedly, and several team members felt caught in the middle. Communication between the co-founders turned sharp during meetings, and daily operations slowed as decisions were delayed or reversed. When I'm dealing with conflict myself, like I'm in the conflict, sometimes I use this as a reflective tool, but also I particularly find it helpful just to develop an additional level of awareness about what's going on. I want to do something called reflective practice, and one of the things that I find particularly helpful is journaling or writing it down. So when I'm dealing with conflict myself, I often spend a few minutes writing down a summary, very similar to this kind of one, a few paragraphs. For my own kind of conflict, I often use dot points or diagrams or that kind of stuff. Some people would prefer, obviously, just text, I guess. There's many different ways that we could go about this. For me, the the aim is to externalize some of my thinking. As I need to choose which words to use to articulate it, it forces me to consider the nuances and to consider the detail and all of the alternate ways of thinking about the same situation that might be there. And they're not always obvious at surface level, especially as you get upset about the conflict, the more angry that you become, for example, or the more stressed or overwhelmed, or the more anxious and worried. In more and more ways, we paint the situation with a black and white brush. We oversimplify, we assume that we know the other person's intentions behind why they did the thing that they did. We react rather than responding. If we could pause and just reflect for a moment, it causes us to effectively rush in. And what that means inherently is that we're going to sometimes mess it up. So I find just writing it down in a way like this incredibly useful. And then if you're watching on the video, you'll see I often underline or jot down a few different notes in the margins of what I've written down. For me, this pushes me it into the meta-analytical way of thinking about the conflict. Like I've got the issue, I've probably got some needs or interests, some various competing priorities. Sometimes there's a dilemma that I'm facing of things that I'm trying to avoid. And then I want to come up with a rational way forward. Now that's me. I'm a I sort of pride myself, I think, on being a logical, rational kind of person, not that I always am by any stretch of the imagination, but I aspire to be, and so I want to take a logical approach to dealing with the conflict. I don't want to rush in and then mess it up and do something that I regret later. By the same token, though, I want to be able to think about the way that the conflict is affecting me, for example, or the way that I'm responding to this issue, which might be connected to the other experiences that I've had similar to this in my life. Like I might be doing something because my buttons are getting pushed and I'm not aware of it. Or I might be repeating some of the old mistakes that I make when I go into my A, B, C, Groundhog Day kind of approach to dealing with conflict. You can't talk to me like that. This is the way that I talk to people who talk to me like that. And what do you know? It's this script, and before we know it, we're in the same old place that we were when it comes to the conflict that we're dealing with. So we externalize it. We write it down once, which helps with the rational logical bit. For me, doing a little bit of annotation on my own reflection, like it makes sense, doesn't it? It is then forcing us to go to that layer deeper to consider where we might be catastrophizing, where we might be taking responsibility for something that's not our job to fix it, where we might be um compromising on something that's quite important to us, but in the heat of the moment and under pressure, it's difficult to know where the line is. Like all of these kinds of situations, that's the meta analysis that I'm talking about there. For me, that's what makes reflective practice. It's a practice, like we do it. And then when we're in the middle of the conflict situation, because we've practiced, we're able then to perform. So if you're watching on the video, you'll see kind of the notes that I'm taking. If you'd like a copy of them and you're just listening to the audio, shoot me an email, podcast at SimonGood.com, and I'll shoot you a copy. So let's go back to the beginning here. We've got the small digital marketing agency. So for me as whoops, for me as a mediator, I often start by thinking, well, what do we mean by small? How many other people are involved? Are you growing at the moment or is it relatively static, etc.? Like I think that probably does affect the conflict in a number of different significant ways. And started by two friends, I really like to sometimes try to remind myself about the positive relationship that I had with the person that I'm in conflict with. If it's my wife, I cause myself to just pause and consider how incredibly grateful I am for all of the things that she does for me, for the kind of person that she is overall, and why I love her. And so the fact that I'm irritated by this small thing, I just want to see it within the grand scheme of things that this is somebody that I care about, even business partners or your children or your parents. We might fall into patterns of like, you can't treat me like this. And it might be true that they're doing something that's not okay from your perspective. You actually do think it's an issue, but you don't want to then make them an enemy. That doesn't necessarily mean that they need to stay an other. Like I don't need to operate in this binary way of you're in my rel in my life or you're not. Like there's a very thin line between being cut off or something like that. So for me, if I was Mayor or Tom, I would probably want to reflect on just my overall intentions of I want to look after this person and remind myself that they're a good person. So tensions are growing over the company's future. Mayor's the one, I'll just put a little square around that, wanting to expand into the high-end corporate clients and invest heavily in new software tools. I spent a couple of years over in Korea teaching English, and part of what we would do with the lessons with the kids was analyze sentences and paragraphs, and we would always go through and circle the ands and the buts because they really did make a big difference in terms of our understanding of the scenario. I think the same thing holds true with a lot of conflict as well. Like you want to expand into high-end corporate clients and invest heavily in the new software tools. So these are what we might consider Maya's proposals or her initial options, her idea of the solution, something like this. Like I'm going to put there that there's a proposal element to this proposal. This is what Maya wants. Now, underneath the proposals that she's making, there will always be different sets of interests and different sets of needs. So I could choose to either deal with the issue just in terms of the proposal. We can't spend that full amount of money, but would you be happy with this more limited budget? Maybe that means we can invest in a new software, but it's not the premium tier or something like that. Yeah, I don't know. Like there might be some way to negotiate just about the issue. Or I could talk about her interests, like maybe she wants autonomy, or maybe she wants to know that the business is growing year on year. Or maybe this is about diversifying to increase the range of work that's coming into the agency, or maybe for her this sets the foundation because then you can apply for government programs or something else. Like we could talk about the interests, either the short-term or the long-term things that Maya wants out of this. The dollars, like when does she want to get paid? Is she hoping to maybe just work your butts off for five years and then eventually start to draw quite a significant income? Tom might have a totally different idea in mind. He might be thinking, I need steady income right now, like I got I've got a mortgage to pay or something similar. So we could choose to talk about it just at the level of the proposal itself, or we could go to the interest layer. Or I think underneath a lot of that is what we might think of as needs, like the need for um respect, the need for stability, the need for a peaceful working environment, the need for respect from the people that you work with. Like these are probably underneath that interest thing of I want to be the project manager for this new project, which underneath it is the proposal of this is what I think that we should do. So there's the two areas that May is talking about, the proposals there, expanding into high-end corporate clients, and then the investing in the new software tools. Now, either of those two issues, as well as Tom's proposals, which he'll make in a moment, could be dealt with in a number of different ways. We could approach it thinking about the five different types of conflict. So we could talk about the data, the facts, talk about the interests, what we both want, talk about values, what we think is right or what should happen, talk about the structure and maybe changing things or tweaking the arrangements for decisions or communication, or we could focus on the relationship layer. And we could deal with it either in a very assertive kind of way, or we could compromise, split the difference. We could be accommodating and just be flexible. We could look for a win-win option, collaborating, or maybe we just avoid it. We'd say, can we just talk about this after the next financial year, or can we just talk about this after we've got the new compliance documents in, or whatever the thing is that's the window that you're aiming for, I guess. So Tom prefers, let's go back to the situation, sticking to local small business and keeping overhead low. So again, these are Tom's proposals in response to Maya's proposals. Now, the next paragraph is where I think it begins to look more like what I would call relationship conflict. This is the back and forth, the reciprocal patterns that build up over time. I'm so sick of the way that you keep doing this. God, why do you have to be such a whatever? Um I just wish you'd do, I just wish you'd realize this. Like all of that frustration and the wishing that the other person would just get a brain transplant, or you need to apologize for that comment, or you know, it's just exhausting dealing with you, so bloody unpredictable. Like all of this back and forth, it's the stuff that exists really between us. It's all the build-up. There might be some misunderstandings that contribute to that at times. Maybe I've just been a bit frustrated and lost my cool. It might be nothing to do with you specifically, it might be things that's happening for me outside of work. Like how I treat you is going to depend on what's going on in my context, and how you treat me is going to depend on what's going on in your context, and how and you interpret the way that I'm treating you will depend on what's going on in your context, and how you interpret how I'm treating you will depend on all of those things as well. There's really, I think, a mistake that people make in oversimplifying all of these levels of the conflict. So, especially when we think about the relationship layer, we go back to that case study. This is where I'm really trying to think about the patterns. So let's have a look at what's going on here. Disagreements over client selection and spending became frequent. Maya felt Tom was holding the business back. Tom believed Maya was risking their financial stability. Staff began receiving mixed instructions, project priorities shifted repeatedly, and several team members felt caught in the middle. Communication between the co-founders turned sharp during meetings, and daily operations slowed as decisions were delayed or reversed. Okay, so I think a lot of the frustration and those kinds of elements are what I would call the relationship conflict. I'll put an RX there for the relationship. These kind of elements are what I would think of more in terms of the fallout. Like these are the short-term ways that this is all starting to affect us. I do exactly the same thing with conflict that I'm involved in. I try to pause and consider: well, what's all of the different impacts that this is having right now? Like I've been at times really upset about an issue at work that's kind of a few hundred dollar issue. I've been charged incorrectly for something, or a subscription renewed that I didn't expect it would, or whatever. It's that kind of thing. And sometimes I just get so angry about these things and pausing and considering how distracting this is, or the opportunity cost of spending my time dealing with this, or the amount of sleep that I'm missing, or something. It's like I don't want to keep on this hamster wheel of experiencing the same thing again and again. So for me, that's often I need to do something differently. So for Maya and Tom, they might like to consider the fallout in in the short term. Like what's some kind of a holding pattern that would work here? We don't want this to be continually affecting our staff. So maybe we agree not to talk about it in front of them. Or maybe we set up some specific meetings so that we as partners can discuss this uh and have enough time to go through it in detail, like change the structure of the meeting itself. Or maybe we suggest that we both go away and have a think about it, and then we send through a proposal that we can both consider, and then we'll organize a time to talk it through. Or maybe you just leave the building and go for a walk together and get a coffee and just spend some time reconnecting. Like there's different options that would be important depending on the other elements that are at stake. If it's really causing like thousands and thousands of dollars impact on the business per day, then it's probably time to do something right now. If it's more like, well, we don't really know how this will affect, you know, the longer-term progress, then maybe it's not such a priority. It might be the people stuff. So where would you start if you were dealing with this as an issue? Would you focus on the facts if you were mayor? Would you be trying to convince Tom that this is correct because of these reasons? If we do this, this is how much better it's gonna be for us. If we make this, you know, if we make this new uh market segment, if we can crack it into this opportunity, these are the benefits. So either talking about the facts of the change itself, like you might be thinking it's gonna be more expensive, actually, it's quite affordable, or talking about the facts of the goal, like how in how much benefit this is going to bring to the business, or something similar. Like it's still the factual kind of stuff. Or maybe you could focus on the interests and just say, look, it seems like both of us have different priorities for the business. How about you run this section of the organization? Therefore, you can have as much autonomy as you'd like there, and I'll focus on this other area, including the high-end clients. How does that sit with you? Or maybe it's just talking about the values of look, the thing for me is that I didn't think that we would we would need to make every single decision completely by consensus. I know that we're together in a business, but I still lack a level of flexibility. It's really important for me to have a level of autonomy. So when I feel like you're just saying no to something that I think is important, I find that very difficult. Could we organize a time to talk through the process that we use to make some of these decisions moving forward? So none of those are right and wrong. We could talk about the values, we could talk about the facts, the interests, we could talk about the structure, etc. It really depends on our goal, doesn't it? Now I talked about the importance of the meta-analysis when it goes to the conflict itself. The same thing is very true when it comes to identifying your priorities. If you write this down as a first wave, a first sweep through, and then you go back and revise or edit or annotate or reorder your goals or consider the wording. I think what that often means is it really does both increase the true importance of it, like these are genuine goals that you've got, and it increases the likelihood that you'll follow them. The more specific we are about the plan or the importance of the goal itself. Obviously, the more likely it is that we're going to take the actions to move us in that direction. And I like to use just very simple structures for this kind of thing. So I like to write down goals for myself. Like what are the things that are important to me? There's probably going to be dollars. So in relation to the dollars, I might also want to consider time horizons. Like obviously, a regular income is important, but how much income? And is it immediately? Am I flexible if we could invest more this 12 months, but then we make a lot more next year? Is that something that I would be willing to accept? Like I would think about all of these things to some extent trying to develop ranges. I'd be happy really with somewhere in between this and this. I think if we come to the other person in terms of our proposal and we say, look, this is some of the area that I'm sort of thinking might work for me, but how does that sit with you? Is there any overlap there? What you might have had something else different in mind. It's very different to saying we should do this. This is my ultimatum. This is my take it or leave it proposition that I'm giving to you. So I think about the range and I think about the time. Let me just draw some very helpful little diagrams there and I can take advantage of this little iPad that I've bothered to set up today. I've bothered to set up many other times as well, I should say, but often run into whatever technical glitches get in the way and I spend 30 minutes talking to the microphone and the screen, and then for whatever reason the audio is not correct or something else. By the way, if this is useful for you, I'd be incredibly grateful if you would consider pressing like. Leave a comment, let me know what you are taking from it, what are your main takeaways from the stuff that we're going through today? So I think about the goals for me. There's going to be money, and as I said, I think about time and ranges there. There'll also be other things that are important to me too. I might have young kids, and so for me, it's really important that I can leave work at 4 p.m. or something similar. Or I really want to minimize the amount of out-of-office hours that I'm doing right now. I might really want to shorten my commute, or I might want the flexibility to work from home. I might want more, what would you call it, like solvency. Like you might want a quicker option to cash out of the business or change our investment, whereas other people might be perfectly happy to have money locked away over a period of several years where it is a long-term investment kind of focus. So what's important for me in terms of the dollars, but also the amount of hours, the amount of risk, the amount of stress, the amount of energy, and then what's the opportunity cost for all of those different elements too? For me, therefore, the goal for the business is really seen in context of the other goals that I've got for my family, for me as a person, all of those kind of areas. Then I like to think about something in terms of the goal for the relationship. Like whatever happens, I don't want things to be really gross and negative between us. Or whatever happens, I'd still really like to have the opportunity to collaborate on these different areas. I'd be perfectly happy with us having a bit more autonomy, or maybe I really do like the fact that we collaborate and work very closely together. This might be something that changes over time, and sometimes it's worth just considering it and reflecting on it, almost a bit of a meta update. And then we might even consider the other people that are involved here, especially if there are stuff that you're dealing with. Obviously, you might not want this conflict to negatively affect them. So however you decide to deal with it, that would be something that informs the approach that you take. So I mentioned those five types of conflict. For me, that's probably where I would start with this kind of a scenario. I would initially try to think through well, what would each of these different approaches involve? Now, Tom could use like a focus on data, and then Maya could either just deal with it in terms of the data, like kind of hit the tennis ball back over the net, or she could change the game. She could kick a soccer ball to him and say, hey, how about we deal with interest conflict in instead? So Tom might be saying, This is how much it's going to cost. Don't you know that we don't have enough in our holdings, enough in our savings? Like, where do you think this money is going to come from? So that's the data, that's the facts. Or he could talk about it in terms of the interests. I'm not prepared to make ongoing investments of additional capital. It's not something that we've discussed, and that's not something that I'm willing to agree to. They could think about it just in terms of structure. Maybe Maya has the option to invest more money, and then she takes a higher percentage of the profit that comes back or something similar. Maybe they could just talk about it in terms of values, though, like it's too risky. Okay, well, look, it sounds like we've got quite different perspectives in terms of what's too risky and what's tolerable. Could you walk me through your perspective there? How have you come to that position? What happened? What have you read or heard? Or what did you experience that led you to that view? And then what's the level of flexibility here? It seems like we've got two different perspectives. Neither of them are right and wrong. Let's see if we can figure out some kind of common ground and develop a way forward. So the data conflict is the first area that I often suggest considering. It's the facts. Where have you got that difference in terms of understandings? Like, are you aware of the things that they're not aware of? Maybe Maya has been to some new seminar and so she's heard this really groundbreaking new opportunity that the software package she's looking at would give them. Whereas Tom is not aware of that. So Maya could approach that of giving the information. Here, I think though, the approach often that works is clarification. If we come to it too much in terms of like, I'm right and you're wrong, what we're often doing is inviting back a lot of resistance and defensiveness. Whereas if we can say, look, uh look, I'm not sure if maybe we're thinking about this in terms of the same underlying facts, or can I walk you through a little bit of the information that I've been looking at, and then maybe we can compare notes and see whether you've got something different that you've been reviewing. So it's not really about you're wrong and I'm right. I think often the approach that's helpful is let's clear things up, let's figure out where there might be some crossed wires. Um, or maybe it's something that neither of us have thought of. We could do a little bit of investigation together. The second option that they've got is dealing with it just in terms of the interests. So Tom could say we don't have enough money in the savings. That's the data kind of approach, I guess. Or he could deal with it in terms of interests. Look, I am prepared to do the investment, but not for the next three months. Let's get the other case, the other projects that we've got working on for other clients at the moment wrapped up, and then that'll give us a little bit more breathing room to think about the networking or the other events that you're talking about there, mayor. So it's more of a direct negotiation. It's like I'm not prepared to do it right now, but let's do it later. Or I am prepared to do it if you would be prepared to invest the money up front. Or I am prepared to do it if you really take the reins and there's no additional time that's needed from my perspective. Now, again, this isn't about right and wrong. It's not like how dare you ask me for it. It's just this is how far I'm prepared to budge. We could just do some middle ground, like split the difference, or maybe there's a bit of creative problem solving that could work. Like maybe Maya opens up her own agency, they can share some of the same stuff, even some of the same resources, but then she would have a higher level of autonomy for that separate section of the business. There would be many different options for collaborating there, but that would be about Tom and Maya Maya trying to sit down and think: is there some kind of a win-win that might be possible here? The third option that we've got is what I think of as value conflict. This is our ideas about what's right and wrong, what should happen, what's fair enough, what's acceptable, etc. It seems to me like in this situation, both of them have very different ideas about risk. How May is saying she feels like Tom is holding the business back, in what ways? Like, where does she think that he's being unreasonable? What is he doing? And how come? Why does she think that that's overstepping the mark, so to speak? And then Tom, from his perspective, is saying we're risking their financial stability. To me, this is a little bit like safety. It's one of these issues that's constantly wheeled out so frequently that it's beginning to you lose almost any meaning. We're safety first, we're concerned about safety. Well, that's fine, but who's safety and in which context? And for how long? Like, how safe are we aiming for people to be? I've worked in a number of different organizations where we're dealing with people going through separation and we're safety first, safety first, safety first. Like, we don't want to put two people in the room who are angry at each other. And then we know from the statistics, like the horrendous rate rates of abuse from step family and blended family kind of situations. Like, not all of them, but my goodness, if our fundamental goal was safety of the children, we should investing in programs that stop these people from splitting up, helping couples and marriages to stay together for longer. I mean, it probably sounds a little bit ironic coming from me, given the fact that I do divorce and separation mediation, or I used to certainly much more than I do these days. But for me, I've always been much more concerned about early intervention. So safety is, well, how safe? Like one parent could easily say to the other parent, I don't want the kids going to your house. I've got concerns about their safety. And then how come? Well, it's because you don't supervise them. It's all of these subjective layers that we just add on top and add on top. And risk, I think, is something that's very similar. I've done a few different mediations, and I'm dealing with business partners, sometimes it's a husband and wife, and one of them thinks that the risk is too much, and the other one thinks that it's okay. There's usually an option that they're considering. And so as we explore what's actually going on here, like when you say that it's too risky, how come? What are you worried that might happen? We might lose the house. Well, how can we quantify that? Like it's very, very difficult, isn't it? I wonder if sometimes what people are warning when it comes to conflict about these issues is actually a shared understanding. It's the sense of being heard and listened to and understood. So it's possible that Tom, if we go back to the scenario, actually feels like Maya's not listening to him. So he might have said, Look, I'm worried about this, and he feels like she's just brushed it off and not listened to him, or something similar. So although we're talking about the value, which might be the what's the level of risk that we're both okay with, what's actually happening is that this is very much connected to the relationship layer as well. It's the back and forth kind of stuff that's going on here. So for me, I think we sort of need to go back and forth between these two. Given that that's your perspective, how does that lead you to act when these topics come up in the discussion? Given that that's so important to you, where do you think some of your misconceptions might be? Given the fact that something that you see is a priority, what are the other things that you're therefore deciding that we should not do? Like, what are we saying no to because we're saying yes to this other kind of area? So if Maya could listen to Tom and say, tell me a bit more about what you're worried about. Okay, fair enough. Are there particular conversations that we've had that made you feel that way? Look, I can see how that might have come across that way. It probably did still seem like I was a bit insensitive. Or I can certainly imagine why you might have felt like I was undermining your authority in front of the team, given the fact that we were talking about this and they were all listening. To be honest, I just felt sick after that conversation. I really regretted it. I wish that we'd done it privately. And I also regret a couple of the different things that I said. Um, what's gonna help to move forward? What would it take to make it right? Is there something that I can do? Or maybe there's something that I can do to demonstrate the fact that I can kind of get where you're coming from. So it's possible that Tom, if may I could just listen to him and slow down and pause and just consider it, might be willing to be flexible, at least to some extent. So that's the fourth type of conflict, and we could choose to focus on that one too. We could apologize, we could demonstrate empathy, do a bit of listening. We could think about options for restoring connection if there's been a really terrible argument, maybe just spend a bit of time together, like letting the dust settle, letting the steam sort of blow off a little bit. I really like going for a walk together for that kind of thing because you're not sitting there staring at each other, you're kind of doing something which is naturally getting rid of the buildup of that kinetic energy that's connected to the fight or flight response. But also you're walking in parallel, you're um walking in the same direction, which probably might be a nice metaphor for some people. Um, it naturally makes you look left to right, which is engaging the right and left left hemisphere. There's so many different benefits to it, I think. So the the final option that we've got is the structure. So that might be structured in terms of the issue itself. Like Tom might propose to Maya that as long as she's willing to bear the risk for it, then she can do what she wants. Or if she's willing to invest additional capital, then she can basically call the shots there. Or maybe they separate and there's going to be a city office that's focused on the high-end kind of clients and a regional office that's focused on the small local businesses. And Tom and Maya could both have their own little teams in the different locations. Or maybe they could set up regular review meetings as a management team so that they have an opportunity to just investigate this as it moves forward, like which potential high-end clients are coming in. If we've got a regular monthly meeting or whatever to talk about it, then that might be a time where we can discuss specifically just what kind of an investment is needed here. Are you talking about flying to meet them or taking them out and schmoozing them? Is it more about an investment of gathering data to put together a detailed proposal? Are you talking about hiring a grants officer or an estimator or something similar? Like, what are we actually talking about here? Bringing on additional staff to manage the new venture might be another option. Maybe that gives Tom the reassurance that his time's not going to be sucked up dealing with this because they're bringing in the new general manager or an operations manager or something similar. So changing the way that they communicate, the way that they make decisions, more frequent meetings, having agendas to the meeting. Maybe they suggest that both of them go away and reflect on it and then send each other a proposal about what they would ideally like, regardless of the situation, or maybe putting forward a detailed proposal. Maybe Tom says, look, the challenge for me is I don't really know what you're talking about. There's a huge range of cost involved in these different options for software. So then Maya would go away and identify three different options that, and then they could set up a time to talk it through and review it together. Like there's really unlimited options in terms of the way that you actually fix or deal with the conflict, but that's the approach of let's think about what we can tweak, what we can implement, what we can change to maybe manage this moving forward. So none of these are right and wrong. You might just think starting with the apology and the empathy is the thing that's going to really work here. So that's the initial approach that we take. Maybe you just agree not to talk it in front of other stuff for now. And so the structure is something that's a priority, at least in the short term. Maybe you talk about, you know, we've got different ideas about what being a business partner looks like. It seems like you're looking for a lot more autonomy than I was expecting. Or we could talk about it in terms of interests. Do what you want, as long as I get to leave the office at 4 p.m. Or maybe it's going back to the facts and the underlying data. Does that make sense? Does that resonate with you? I mean, I might be a little bit more theoretical, I think, than a lot of people when it comes to conflict, of course, because it's the thing that I have my speciality in. But does it make sense? Does it resonate? I'd love to know, especially if it does end up working for you and you end up trying some of the approach that I've talked about today. Um, if it's useful, I'd love to know. Please leave a comment or write me an email, podcast at SimonGood.com. If you found this useful, please consider pressing like. And if you'd like more resources for dealing with conflict, hit subscribe. But otherwise, thank you very much for listening. I'm quite enjoying going through these in the new format. I'd love to know what you think as well. But if you're dealing with conflict with a business partner, or maybe it's a different kind of conflict that's on your plate right now, I wish you all the best with it. Thank you very much for listening, and hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast.