Generational Differences at Work How to Resolve Communication and Value Conflicts

In this episode, Simon Goode explores the challenges of generational conflict in the workplace, focusing on differing values, expectations, and communication styles among various age groups. He analyzes three workplace case studies—between a leading hand and apprentice, a team leader and younger staff, and a supervisor and machine operators—and offers practical frameworks for resolving these conflicts. Simon Goode emphasizes the importance of understanding value conflicts and tailoring approaches—such as normalizing differences, clarifying expectations, and choosing the right conflict mode—to achieve better outcomes.

TIMESTAMPS: 

00:00 Navigating generational workplace differences

04:15 Analyzing workplace conflict case studies

08:47 Addressing generational work conflicts

13:27 Judging others for phone use

16:12 Giving feedback privately to Jake

17:39 Discussing constructive feedback strategies

23:14 Navigating office policy changes

24:37 Discussing paper-based review cycles

30:35 Balancing tradition with new methods

33:26 Managing conflict with older staff

38:07 Discussing conflict and collaboration strategies

39:39 Podcast interaction reminders

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:24

Well, hello, welcome back to the Conflict Skills Podcast. I'm your host, professional mediator, Simon Good. 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, I'm going to be talking about the topic of generational conflict in the workplace. This is a commonly raised issue when I'm doing workplace mediations and resolving conflict directly, but I've noticed that also the leadership coaching and the training that I do around managing difficult conversations and those kind of areas often does also involve an element of generational differences. If it's not something that you've considered or done any reading or training on previously, these generational difference challenges can be incredibly difficult to deal with, can't they? In the moment, as this very, I guess, divergent set of expectations that a young staff member might have as opposed to the old. Of course, the people who are in the older stages of life and they often have more experience by that stage as well, have grown up in a completely different world. A lot of the time they were apprentices or graduates, newly, newly um employed trainees. And there really has been a top-down leadership style in a lot of, at least in Australian businesses historically. So people who are my parents' age, for example, in their 60s, they often are used to speaking in a very direct kind of way. You need to do this. And of course, that's the way that their boss talked to them in their early stages of their career. These days, though, we've got the Millennials coming through, the Gen, we had the Gen Xs, and then we've got the Gen Ys, the Millennials, and now the Gen Z are coming through as well, the staff members in their 20s at the moment. And there are these very different sets of norms. Again, a lot of the time when I'm dealing with managers or business owners and we're talking about workplace conflict, one of the things that we often discuss and reflect on is the fact that there will always be conflict in every set of in every relationship that you've got, basically. In every set of communications, in every set of tasks that you've got to deal with someone, even, there's the potential for conflict to be there. And conflict doesn't necessarily mean that there's huge amounts of animosity, there's large, strong emotions involved or something like that. It might just be the meeting of this different set of expectations. But when it comes to generational differences, what I've noticed is this often begins a snowball that builds over time. There might be this different starting point in terms of the expectations, but the way that that's dealt with often leads to a whole bunch of secondary issues that emerge. A young staff member might feel like they're being micromanaged, for example. And the boss, the supervisor, the leading hand might think, geez, this young person just doesn't know how to show initiative. I need to spoon feed them instructions or something similar. Ironically, it's probably something that both of them would like to be different than how it is at the moment. And yet it's challenging to find the right language and how to actually go about that kind of a discussion. It could also be things like young people are often described as being hyper-vigilant to feedback. They're so sensitive. You give them some feedback or you give them a bit of direct input or something, and they take it so personally and they get so upset and carry a grudge or something. Well, that's probably true. Young people often do find feedback very confronting. But if we just assume that it's all the young person's fault and why don't they just get over it? Obviously that leads to a likely future that's pretty similar to what we're living at the moment. There's an old saying that I really like. If you continue to do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've already got. So I'm going to go through three different conflict resolution case studies, similar to the previous conflict resolution case studies that I've analyzed. I'm going to be annotating. If you'd like to watch on the screen, I've got a video going at the same time, but I'll do my best to make sure that I describe it if you're just listening. The three different situations that we're dealing with is a leading hand and an apprentice having a clash. We've got a generational difference in terms of work style. This is an accounting firm, and it's a team leader, Helen. And then in the final case study, we've got a different situation where we've got somebody with more experience and probably a little bit of a track record under their belt as well, but also a reasonably well-defined steps and processes that they normally follow versus a young person coming in and they want to change things up. They want to shake things around, I guess. Now, as I go through these different situations, my goal isn't necessarily to come up with the single answer. I think there's probably multiple ways that we could deal with this kind of an issue. And even in terms of the specific language that we use, for example, you might have slightly different phrasing than I would use. Like I've got my own cultural background and my own set of norms, I guess. It's interesting though, when we think about generational differences, I wonder what kind of conflict do you think that is? Is it data conflict that maybe we just need to clarify the expectations moving forward? Or do you think about it as relationship conflict? It's the frustrations, it's the rubbing each other the wrong way that ultimately drives a lot of the issues. You might think about it as interest conflict, this young person trying to escape work, you know what I mean? Then they're wanting to avoid doing something that's difficult, or they want a promotion, they expect to be the CEO of the company after they've been in a job for a few years or whatever else it might be. So it could be tangible interests, what's in it for me versus what's in it for you. Or we could even think about the structure. Maybe this is the way that we do updates or the way that we give feedback, the way that we request information from the younger person that we're dealing with. For me, though, it's not necessarily any of those fours. It could be all of them, relationship, data, structure, or interest. A lot of the time, though, I think it's this final type of conflict, which is value conflict. I'll just scroll down so you can see these on the screen if you're watching. This value conflict to me is often at the heart of a lot of the generational challenges that we deal with. It's my idea about what should happen, what's normal, what's professional, what's respectful. Where's the line between giving somebody feedback and it becoming micromanagement? Where's the line between somebody being oversensitive and an appropriate level of feed? What would you say? It's like an appropriate accepting of responsibility for your own behavior and the consequences of what happened regardless of your intentions. Like we've all got slightly different perspectives on all of these elements. When we think about generational differences and a lot of the conflict that falls out of that, to me, it often makes sense to start with this value conflict type. Whereas in data conflict, we would work towards clarifying expectations or interest conflict, we might we might approach that one negotiating strategically. When it comes to value conflict, the steps that often work are normalizing and clarifying the differences. And then setting up a conversation about the future and the solutions. So I want to talk through what is going to work in terms of tweaks that we could use, what makes sense in terms of other people that we could engage to get some support at dealing with this issue. It's the differences themselves, and then when we have the discussion about the future, that's often where we begin to make progress in this type of value conflict. Whereas I think a lot of people approach this as you're wrong and I'm right, you need to understand this, you need to realize this. What often that does is it invites the other person to take the opposite, the opposite chair in the debate. If we're saying how great this is and how much they should follow our advice, well, they're likely to tell us how bad the advice is and how much it doesn't make sense to follow it, right? Whereas if we begin by saying, look, it seems like we've got quite different perspectives here. That makes sense. We've got different experiences, so we've probably got slightly different norms that we have here. That's okay. We can talk these things through. Maybe let's think about what is needed to get on the same page moving forward. So I'm not saying you're wrong. It's more like these are the two approaches, you know, how are we going to figure this out? If we think about a single example of generational conflict, a very common one that I'm told is I've got a young staff member and they don't like picking up the phone. They won't just pick up the phone and call somebody. Well, that's an example where we could deal with that single issue in isolation. It's the behavior of not making a call when you've been requested. But in terms of how we actually deal with it, we could deal with it in terms of the data, clarifying that it's not negotiable, it's part of your job description, or doing it in terms of the interest. If you don't make the phone call, this is the punishment that you might have to deal with. Or if you do make the phone call, this is the reward that I can offer you. The carrots and the sticks kind of approach. Maybe we could change the structure. We do all of our phone calls together in the morning as a team so that we don't have as much of a sense of everybody else in the office sitting there listening to us if we're all head down and going for it, then nobody feels as self-conscious, for example. Or we could deal with it in terms of the values. I wonder if you're wondering why I'm even asking you to make these phone calls. It seems like to you, this isn't necessarily what you would want if you were the customer anyway. After all, you've said you prefer to get emails rather than phone calls, generally speaking. It's not just at work. I know for me myself and other people, we've got a different focus. We would prefer to have the opportunity to talk with someone on the phone. Given the fact that this is the way that I've seen it work previously, or given the fact that this is what at stake, or based on all of those elements, could you do this? Could we do this? You might decide to be quite competing and be very assertive, or this might be the kind of situation where it makes sense to collaborate, see if there is some kind of a win-win that you can get to here. So we're keeping this in mind of all of the different conflict types, a lot of the time when we're thinking about generational differences, we're dealing with value conflict. And the approach that often works there is normalizing both perspectives, validating them if needed and if possible, and then shifting the conversation towards the future and the solutions. Alright, so let's have a look at this first case study. We've got the leading hand and the apprentice in a bit of a clash here. I'll read up first, then I'll talk about a few of the elements that jump out at me. As you're listening, you might like to consider how would you approach this situation if you were in either of these parties' shoes. So here we go. On a busy construction site, experienced leading hand Dave in his mid-50s grew increasingly frustrated with 19-year-old apprentice Jake. I'm just going to underline that word increasingly. One of the things that I often notice, again, when I'm called in externally and there's workplace conflict going on is that it almost never happens in a single incident. It's typical that there's been pressure or tension building up over time, sometimes years. So this increasing level of frustration, I would be a little bit curious about that if I was dealing with this. How long has Dave been feeling frustrated? And I wonder if Jake picks up on that. How has Dave communicated about that previously, or how did he manage it? And what's Jake's take on that? If Dave was frustrated and Jake was aware of it, is he motivated to do anything different? Dave expected quiet observation, quick responses to instructions, and careful attention to traditional methods. So I'm just going to jot down a couple of these. These are what I think of as these values, these are the underlying norms and expectations that we have. So we've got we wanted him to just be quiet and watch, respond quickly when we ask him to do something, and careful attention to the traditional methods. Jake often asked why certain steps were necessary, suggested faster digital tools he had learned at trade school, and sometimes appeared distracted on his phone during quiet moments. So we've got a few elements again of the conflict and how it's playing out. We've got the suggestions about the faster digital tools, asking why, why certain steps were necessary, and then the distracted on the phone. I have to say, of all of the different types of conflict that people talk about, staff members using their phone is a very, very common one for managers and team leaders, and it can be very challenging to deal with. And there's something about it, isn't it? It's not just the fact that they're wasting time and they're getting paid for it. It's something about the attitude of you just couldn't be bothered. You could be looking around and seeing if someone else needs a hand or seeing if there's something that needs doing, but instead you're selfishly scrolling. Now it might not be selfish scrolling at all. Jake might be looking and see if his kids are okay at the childcare. He might have an elderly parent that's in the emergency room at the moment. Like we don't know. But when we see the person using their phone, we tend to jump to the worst conclusions, don't we? So I wonder amongst all of those different elements, which of those are actually pushing Dave's buttons? It could be that because he sees him using his phone, that all of the other elements become much more frustrating as a result. We've all got different things that push our buttons, don't we? In a similar way to the people that we'll come across, some people that we meet, we just naturally resonate. Other people, it's the opposite. We rub each other the wrong way almost from the word go. And I think the same thing is true about the different habits and behaviors that people can have. Using your phone, staff members using your phone. That might not be something that you care about at all if it's your team. Other people, though, they bristle as soon as they see it. Dave began raising his voice when corrections were needed, openly criticized Jake in front of the crew for not listening. Okay, raising his voice, open criticism. Jake responded by becoming quieter and more withdrawn, occasionally muttering that Dave was stuck in the past. Okay, well the passive aggressive kind of like mumble something as you're walking away. That's pretty tricky, isn't it? Other workers noticed the tension, job progress slowed on shared tasks, and the daily atmosphere on site became noticeably more strained. Oh, it's very tricky, isn't it? So how should we go about dealing with this issue? Let's imagine that we were Dave and we were wanting to do something about Jake. Well, I suppose one of the mistakes that we don't want to repeat is doing it in public. This open criticism, obviously, that's going to add an element of pressure. There's an element of self-consciousness that would creep in. These days, like we might have to give a presentation and we're standing up in front of our staff or out in front of our team, and our heart races, and we might tell ourselves, oh, I'm being silly, I'm overreacting. And criticism is very similar. Like Dave might be thinking, Dave, Jake, like just get over it, mate. I was just giving you a bit of feedback. We've all had to cop it at different moments in our career, mate, like grow up. But there's something about the criticism in front of your colleagues. We're wired to be sensitive to this. We're wired for it not to just go through Little Keeper. These days we might tell ourselves we're being silly or overreacting. But if we think about historically living in a tribe and all of the people that were watching you, all of the people in your tribe that were staring at you in one moment, that wasn't necessarily a safe spot to be. You might have been accused of something, there might have been something negative about to happen. Like blending into the flock is something that we tend to feel a lot more comfortable with. And especially for young people, that open criticism in front of others, I would say that there's almost like a 0% chance of Jake actually taking in the feedback when it's given in that way. So instead of doing it in public, we would want to do it somewhere private. And I probably would think about different ways that we could emphasize Jake's status too. Look, mate, you know, I've been noticing a few things and I just want to touch base about how you're traveling. For me, this is a really important relationship, the supervisor and apprentice. All of the relationships I've had with previous apprentices have been different. So I'd really like to take a bit of time to get to know you and hear about how you're traveling as part of this. I'd like to hear your take on some of the clashes that we've had previously and what you would like to see from me different moving forward. And I wonder if you would be open for me describing some of the stuff I've noticed, and maybe we could have a bit of a talk about expectations as well. What do you reckon? So I'm approaching this in a reasonably deferential, respectful kind of way. G'day, Jake. Look, mate, you matter. I'm taking this seriously. Let's organize the time to talk it through. Let's organize a time to figure out what's going to work moving forward. And all of the language that I would use would be that kind of stuff, focused on the future and on the solutions where possible. If I decide to give him feedback, like if I'm saying to him you're too sensitive or you just need to follow the instructions that you're given instead of suggesting all these new tool, new methods or something, we would want to focus on the behavior. Could you stop doing this? Could you start doing this? Could you do this differently? As soon as we're saying, you know, you just have not you got no idea, mate. You got no idea what life's in the real world, what life's like in the real world. As soon as we paint these labels, like you're not taking this job seriously, you got a bad attitude, you're always negative. As soon as we paint the person with those labels, it tends to just trigger defensiveness because of course it just comes across as criticism. So where I'm wanting to talk about feedback, I would drill down to the behaviors as much as possible. So they might be the things like paying attention, it might be the methodology and just following the instructions that you've been given. Um, it might be something about using your phone, especially when customers are on site. How would we deal with this? So those would be the elements that I would want to focus on. If I was in Dave's position, personally I'd probably spend a few minutes writing down some notes for myself because it can be tricky coming up with the right words in the heat of the moment. But we're all going to have a slightly different idea of what preparing looks like. But we've got preparing for the issue itself. Like what how am I going to tell him this? Maybe there's a way that I can frame it in a mutual and neutral way. Like it seems like we've um had some crosswires recently, or it seems like maybe both of us have been noticing things that we would like to be different, but we haven't actually had a time to talk it through and clarifying it. Like it's a very mutual way of raising the issue. Hey, mate, I just want to talk about how things have been over the last couple of weeks within the team. Instead of saying, I want to talk to you about and about your bad attitude, I want to talk to you about your bloody poor performance, mate. It's ridiculous. You need to pull your socks up. Okay, well, good luck if that's the way that we've decided to approach the conflict, right? So I would do that feedback in a way that reaffirms status, low tone of voice, slow speed, lower volume, do it somewhere privately, sit at the same level instead of standing. I might just go for a walk and get a coffee or something. That would be another good option as well of chatting while we're walking next to each other. But I want to do whatever I can to lower the stakes, to decrease that sense of perceived pressure, and to decrease that sense of perceived threat. Alright, let's have a look at the next case study and maybe think about what might work here. We've got an accounting firm this time, and it's a team leader, Helen. In a mid-sized accounting firm, team leader Helen, aged 58, preferred detailed reports, face-to-face meetings, and strict adherence to established processes. Her younger team members, mostly in their 20s, favored quick Slack updates, collaborative online documents, flexible remote check-ins. When Helen insisted on returning full in-office to full in-office days and paper-based review cycles, several younger staff pushed back, arguing the old method slowed everything down. Helen felt disrespected and believed they lacked discipline. Sharp comments were exchanged in team meetings and emails grew formal and defensive, and collaboration on client files became slower as both sides stuck rigidly to their preferred ways of working. Oh my goodness. So there's a few elements that already sound very difficult to manage, aren't there? This whole, like, do you prefer to be in the office or not? That could almost be an entirely separate episode of the Conflict Skills podcast, I think, because there's a lot of workplace conflict about whether or not we can work remotely and what these expectations are really achieving here. But let's focus more on the perspectives, the the underlying factors that have led to these expectations being developed. So Helen's in that older category. We've got a younger team mostly in their 20s. So they're favoring the quick Slack updates, collaborative online documents, and flexible remote. Check-ins. So although these probably seem like a whole bunch of issues that are connected, it might be possible for Helen to separate these. Again, what I often find helpful is drilling down to the behavior. Like what kind of updates are we talking about here that they prefer Slack for? In what setting are they used? Why do they prefer it? Um, is there any tweaks that we could use? For example, we still use Slack, but we have a pro forma of these four questions that people will answer each time they give an update. So at least it means that we've got some consistency in the information that's being captured or something. Or maybe we do use Slack, but we use an AI bot to listen to it and then send us out notes afterwards. So at least we've got a written record. For this kind of stuff, like the way that communication happens and the way that decisions get made, this is what I think of as structural conflict. Whereas I talked about the values that are underlying that, it's possible here that Helen might decide instead to just focus on the structure. That's fine with me as long as we include these things, or as long as we follow this structure. That's fine with me as long as we can make sure that each person gives an update once a week or something similar. So depending on what's at stake and how much time they have, this would be where Helen would need to decide how assertive to be here. In some situations, there's enough at stake and it makes sense to stick to your guns and just to say no, this is the way it's going to be. In other situations, maybe we could take more of a meet them in the middle kind of approach, split the difference, or maybe think, is there another option that could work here as a win-win potentially? So we've got each of those different elements to some extent in isolation. The Slack updates, then we've got the collaborative online documents, then we've got the flexible remote check-ins. Now here's where I think it comes to the crunch. When Helen insisted on returning to full in-office days and paper-based review cycles, several younger staff pushed back. So what was leading up to that? I wonder what the process was that Helen used to introduce that change. Was it something that there was a consultation process around and there was a collaborative effort? I don't think so. It sounds to me like these younger staff are feeling much more like it's a top-down decision that's been made. So for me, when I've been in the younger staff members' shoes, I've often needed to find a way to manage up then and deal with my manager who might have more of a buy the book black and white kind of perspective than I do. So I would be, I think, as the young person here saying to Helen, how much flexibility is there around this? When you say we're moving to paper-based review cycles, which elements of those do you have in mind? Are you talking about the quarterly meetings that we have with our operations manager? Is it the way that our KPIs are measured? Like, what are we talking about here? So get the specifics and then choose how assertive that you need to be based on all of those different issues. As the staff member, it might not be that you've got a lot of power. It might just be this is how we would like it, and they say no. And then ultimately the choice that you have is how long you stay with the organization. If you're Helen or if you're in more of a powerful position, I suppose, in the dynamic, that's where we could consider, well, what can we influence here? So what's the pushback about? Is it about coming in physically? Is it about the time that's needed with the paper review cycles? When they talk about slowing, like our work becoming slower, or the fact that old methods are slowing everything down, this is where we would probably want to drill down to the data. Sorry, can you please fill me in on what you mean by that? When you say that there's been delays, which projects are you referring to? When you say that you haven't been sure what's expected because everything is so confusing, in what situations are you feeling that way? Is it about reporting? Are you talking about the way that you're given instructions and the way that delegation happens? Is this something to do with data entry or your own report writing? Like what are we talking about here? As long as we can get down to the specifics, then what it means is we can talk about interests. So I would probably start here with with structure. Maybe there is a different kind of document management system using Slack in a different way, that could work. Then we would probably move to either interests or data. We could either clarify the facts and drill into, hang on, I haven't noticed that. Can you tell me a bit more about this? Or something you might not be aware of is actually this, like this is an organizational initiative that's across the board. Well, maybe if Helen explains that to them, then there wouldn't be as much resistance. Or maybe again Helen needs to consider the carrots and the sticks. I know that it's not something that sounds ideal to you, and you're right, there wasn't much of a consultation process before this decision was made. Given all of that, it is something that there's not any flexibility around. So could you please let me know what would work for you in terms of organizing the office so that you've got a workspace here that does meet your needs while you're in the office? It's possible that we can revisit this and renegotiate next financial year after the current agreement ends or whatever, but not necessarily. So to some extent, I guess I take your point, I appreciate your feedback and I get where you're coming from. This is a decision that we don't have a lot of leeway regarding. For me, I like to use that kind of language. It's not flexible or it's not something that I can agree to. So what do they want? And then I would either say yes or no, or I would proactively consider: well, is this the kind of situation where I need to actually make a threat? Like if they continue to use the old system and I've asked them to make a change, at some stage the manager needs to decide how long we let this go. And that can be one of the most challenging things to deal with as well. Just what's the right moment to raise this issue? Like I've seen this happen a few times before. I know these people are very sensitive to feedback, and I don't want to trigger them, I don't want to push their buttons and set them off on negative spirals. You've really got a dilemma on your hands, don't you? Choosing between two bad options in a lot of those situations. Okay, so let's have a look at that third case study. We've got experience versus new ideas. At a manufacturing plant, Ron serving long-serving supervisor Ron in his early 60s clashed with a group of younger machine operators in their 20s. Ron trusted proven routines developed over decades and resisted changing to shift patterns or the introduction of new monitoring software. The younger operators saw the software as a clear efficiency gain and grew impatient with what they viewed as unnecessary resistance. During a shift handover meeting, the disagreement became heated. During a shift handover meeting, the disagreement became heated. Ron accused the younger staff of lacking respect for experience. They replied that he was blocking progress. Voices rose, other workers fell silent, and the rest of the shift proceeded with minimal communication between the two groups, leaving production coordination uneven and the overall mood on the floor tense. Hmm, I feel like I'm having a little bit of deja vu to a couple of the mediations that I did when I was living in Newcastle a while ago. We were often dealing with manufacturing or steelworks kind of facilities and a lot of these shift-change kind of challenges they were dealing with every day. So we've got the manufacturing plant, the long-serving supervisor Ron, and he's clashing with a group of younger machine operators. It's often the way, it's not just one person versus one person, especially as the conflict involves and develops over weeks and months. A lot of the time other people become involved, either enlisted as allies, you know, someone in the lunchroom, it's like, let me tell you about this next bloody thing Rob d Ron did yesterday. Or it might be more like vicarious victims that are sitting there in the lunchroom trying to eat their sandwich in peace, and Ron comes in, you know, blowing his spilling his guts about how annoying these young machine operators or something similar. So where are they clashing here? Ron has trusted proven routines, developed over decades, and resisted changes to shift patterns or the introduction of new monitoring software. The younger operators saw the software as a clear efficiency gain and grew impatient with what they viewed as unnecessary resistance. So again, I think we would approach this one from either of their perspectives as a difference in values. I can get where you're coming from. This routine is something that you developed literally over 20 years. So it makes sense then why for you, why would you be second guessing this? I mean, you've probably tried a lot of the options that come to mind for us already. At the same time, the way that we tend to work is that we like to have some element of autonomy, some element of creativity. A lot of the time we're willing to be given instructions, but ultimately if it's just do A, then B, then C, then you're going to find that engagement within the team drops over time. I'm wondering if maybe there might be some middle ground where we do have more consistency and that would probably allow for more, I don't know, higher levels of output or something similar. And then there might be some other areas as well where you can give us a little bit more flexibility or consider one of us to be in charge of the next initiative that gets rolled out within the organization. Like obviously, that's language that I would use. It's probably a bit more wordy than a lot of people, but the same approach could work. It's, hey, is there some middle ground that we can reach here and compromise? Or maybe there's some opportunity for collaborating. One of the things that I often talk about when I'm meeting with the RONs or with the young machine operators are these five uh conflict modes. I'll just scroll down so that you can see them on the screen if you're looking. Compete, collaborate, compromise, avoid, and accommodate. So these are five different options that we've got for dealing with each instance of conflict. For Ron, this could be something to do with the routines, or maybe it's a bit of equipment that the staff are not wearing or something, or they're wanting to make changes to a particular schedule for a program. Well, he could take a competing approach. Sometimes this is called directing. This is the way that it's going to be. You're going to do this and you're going to do this, and it's not negotiable. With that competing approach, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're harsh or disrespectful or rude or mean. It just means that we're firm, we stick to our guns, we hold on to our boundaries. So a low tone of voice, slower speed, lower volume, this is the way that it is. Look, it's not negotiable. If I have to talk to you about this again, this is what's going to happen. Or at the other end of the spectrum, there might be some instances where Ron could just be accommodating. Like there might be some elements of what the younger staff members are requesting where it's fine. Either he agrees it would improve things following their suggestion, or maybe it's not the end of the world just to give them what they're asking for. A lot of the time, these older staff, they become a little bit stubborn. And as a mediator, one of the things that I often come in talking to them about is, well, where do you have some flexibility here? Like where are the things that are just not negotiable? And where is there some wiggle room? And even if you don't know what the answer might be, which are the topics that you're at least prepared to discuss to discuss in the mediation session itself? If you're the team leader, if you're Ron, it might be to discuss in the team meeting or discuss with me directly. Now he's got three other options. Instead of just saying yes or just saying no, he could avoid the conflict. Maybe he's seen a little bit of negative talk in the lunchroom, or he's aware a couple of people were upset about a decision that was made because he's heard about it third hand or something. But it might not be the end of the world. Like this might be the kind of situation where something's happening that that shouldn't be, but you know, it's not the time and place to deal with it. Either I've got other priorities that I'm dealing with at the moment, or maybe it's a different person that would be better dealing with it first, like a junior manager rather than calling me in as a senior manager immediately or something similar. It would be really dependent on what's going on, wouldn't it? So we could avoid, at least temporarily. That's not going to lead to a whole lot of long-term resolution, but at least in the short term, it might make sense. We could compromise, that's where we split the difference. If they want to completely not come into the office on Thursdays, maybe we agree to come in every second Thursday, or just come in, but you can leave early at three o'clock to beat the traffic or something. Or we could think about options for collaborating. Like maybe we meet and do a lot of work together as a group. So the individual people are on hand to support one another in the data entry kind of issues. Or maybe we change the structure of the reporting, or we change the structure of the communication, or we change the structure of the way that decisions get made. Like we let them make decisions more at a local level first, and then they provide us with monthly updates that are more detail-oriented than they had previously because of that. Again, this really depends on what's at stake and what's involved in the situation that you're dealing with. But it's very helpful to be aware of these five options. When does it make sense to compete? When does it make sense to accommodate? When does it make sense to avoid? When should we compromise? And when is it worthwhile to collaborate? And that last option, it's sort of like where we sit down or we go back and forth and we see if we can come up with a win-win. Like there might actually be a solution that works for both of them. Maybe Ron would be willing to use this other set of software that's a middle ground. It's a little bit similar to the ones that he's used previously, so it's more familiar, but it's got more potential or these different features, so the young person can make use of it in a different kind of way. Or maybe Ron agrees that in this current project that they're working on, that the apprentice will just follow the instructions that they've been given, that the machine operators will just follow the instructions they've been given. But after the next financial year or when this next order comes through, that's when the young machiner operators would have the opportunity to do something and be put in charge, have more authentiautonomy and flexibility, I suppose, but potentially also be responsible for the output that's delivered. So there might be some win-win that's possible there. Not always. Like there isn't necessarily going to be a win-win in every conflict that we're dealing with. Sometimes it makes sense just to be competing or split the difference. If you don't have much time and there's not much at stake, then why not? Collaborating, it sounds ideal, but it's not always possible. And there are also drawbacks to that approach. It takes time and effort in the back and forth, seeing if you can come up with an option that works for everyone. So you have to have meetings, you have to write emails, etc. And in the meantime, while all of this back and forth is going on, there's also the potential for the conflict to get worse behind the scenes. There might be another thing that you're negotiating about with this staff member, and until they hear back from you about the first issue that's really important to them, they're not going to budge on this other thing. Or because they haven't heard back from you, they end up looking on a job search site, see another job that's advertised, and then you lose a good staff member. Whereas at least if you'd compromised, you would have gotten to a quick outcome and at least there would be more of an immediate resolution. So which one of these different conflict styles makes b make sense really depends on the situation and what's at stake. If I was in Ron's position here, I think personally I would be inclined to be quite collaborative. I would want to set down some meetings or organize some times to talk it through. But I know a lot of other people, they would be much more firm than I would be, or others would be much more soft and accommodating and just go with the flow. This isn't really about right and wrong, but when we use frameworks like the ones that I've talked about today, it can be incredibly helpful both for coming up with options and developing a strategic plan, but also helping us to differentiate from the conflict so that we're not sitting there percolating away, stewing in it, and it all feels much more personal and we get more highly charged with emotions and all that stuff over time as well, don't we? But I don't know, how does that all sit with you? Would you take a different approach than I would in any of those different case studies? Would you have sided with Ron over the machine operators? Or maybe you think Ron is stuck in the mud, kind of fogey that needs to update his models or something. Maybe it was the leading hand in the apprentice clash that I talked about in some of those challenges giving feedback, or it might have been with poor Helen dealing with the um Slack updates issues and those kind of ones, where I suggested that potentially we could turn the conversation towards structure, interests, or data rather than just values in that example. But I don't know, I'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to get in touch, you can shoot me an email. It's podcast at simongood.com. If you would like more resources for dealing with conflict, please consider hitting subscribe. Or if you're on Apple Podcasts, I think that it's follow. I'd love to hear from you if you want to put a comment down below or something like that as well. Those little things are incredibly helpful for the algorithm for little podcasts like this. And otherwise, thank you very much for listening or watching if you're watching the video. And I'll hopefully see you again in a future episode of the Conflict Skills Podcast.