From Case-by-Case to Conflict-Smart: High Conflict at Work, Part 4 of 4

And Bill, I've seen you busy writing there, so-

[laughs]

...

I, I think you have a lot to say.

Yeah, a lot, a lot of notes here.

So let me start at the highest level is I think organizations need to have policies, and they do around sexual harassment, but they don't generally around bullying, and often that's what we see with high-conflict people.

And the, the solution really is developing policies and having participation from as many different groups as possible.

So you have from leadership, from HR, from, if there's a union, from union, if you have people, different parts of the, uh, organization, that you develop policies really engaging everybody to some extent so that people buy into the standards.

So policies are one thing.

A second is really training.

And training, and part of the training, I think, always has to address what Michael was just talking about, and that is learning the three theories of the high-conflict case.

It may be person A says person B is acting very badly, and it may be true.

Or person B may be doing just fine, and it's person A making the complaint who's acting very badly.

Or they're both acting very badly.

And there's no easy formula, but if you recognize patterns of behavior, especially high-conflict patterns, especially preoccupation with blaming others, that's kind of, uh, the hallmark feature of high-conflict personalities, and it confuses organizations because they're trying to be sensitive to complaints.

And yet the people that like to complain the most tend to be high-conflict people because that's kind of part of their life.

And so you have to be able to figure out, is it this person or is it this person? And I've talked to people in organizations, for example, in, in Australia, where they have more, uh, anti-bullying, uh, formal involvement and more investigations.

And I've talked to people saying...

You know, I remember this one woman said, "In my husband's, uh, workplace, he was accused by a high-conflict person, and for six months, people are, like, looking askance at him until it starts getting figured out.

Wait a minute.

It's not him." And so the sleepless nights, the stomach aches, all that stuff can be you're the target of a high-conflict person when the whole organization treats you that way.

You're, you're picking on the wrong person, and those are the good people that leave, and the high-conflict people stay because they're good at complaining.

So you have to be trained to be aware of that difference, that distinction.

Now, mentioning Australia, um, I know some of the people listening to our podcast are in Australia.

Tell a quick story there.