1. Agile 2012
Leading Conflict:
A Systems Intelligence Approach to
Conflict Facilitation for Leaders
Lyssa Adkins & Michael K. Spayd, Agile Coaching Institute
@lyssaadkins @mspayd
1. Take a Systems Leadership View of Conflict
What is the leader’s role with conflict? What would it mean to take a human systems
leadership orientation? If we can see our job as leader as one of building, nurturing, and
‘holding’ the container within which work (and conflict) occur, we make a strong move
towards human systems leadership.
Start with right view of conflict. From a human systems perspective, conflict is not
something to be managed or merely tolerated; it is a manifestation of the system’s
diversity (and therefore its intelligence) and is emblematic of a positive change urge
within the system (of something trying to happen).
Focus on the container. As leader, our most important job is to setup, nurture and
maintain the container. This includes helping create an environment of positivity resulting
in positive sentiment override, minimizing toxic conflict, and creating agreements
between team members about how to work with conflict.
Become a conflict facilitator, not an arbiter, to process conflict. In part, this means
realizing that conflict is a challenge for us and our egos (e.g., getting ‘triggered’), both as
leaders and as team members. Our job as leader is not to “resolve” conflict, nor arbitrate
between team members, but to facilitate and help the team navigate it. Conflict
facilitation involves helping the team apply their conflict protocols, using deep
democracy practices, helping the team separate individual interests from positions, and
generally seeing conflict as an urge to change something within the human system.
Source: copyright 2012 Michael Spayd, “Coaching the Agile Enterprise” (book in progress - do not
distribute)
©2012 Agile Coaching Institute Page 1 www.AgileCoachingInstitute.com

2. Agile 2012
2. Build the Container
Educate about Conflict & Build Positivity
Create an “emotional bank account” to strengthen
the team’s resiliency. When the balance in this bank
account is positive, the team has a “positive
sentiment override” that helps them work with
conflict.
“Deposits” into the account are appreciations/
shutouts, acknowledgements, and more inquiry/ less
advocacy.
“Withdrawals” from the account are toxic conflict
patterns of blaming, defensiveness, stonewalling,
contempt, and excessive advocacy.
The importance of positivity on team performance
has been strongly supported by research. Losada and
Heaphy looked at 60 teams and divided them into
high, medium and low performance. They found
that high performance teams had a positivity ratio of
5.6, medium performance teams 1.8 and low
performance teams a positivity ratio of .36.
A high-performance team’s bank account
“Balance” is 5:1.
This research has been independently verified by
other scientists, including Dr. Barbara Frederickson
and Dr. John Gottman.
Adapted from CRR Global, Organization & Relationship Systems Coaching Handbook
Original Sources: Marcial Losada And Emily Heaphy, “The Role Of Positivity And Connectivity In
Business Teams,” American Behavioral Scientist 2004: 47: 740; John Gottman, The Relationship Cure;
Barbara Frederickson, Positivity
©2012 Agile Coaching Institute Page 2 www.AgileCoachingInstitute.com

3. Agile 2012
Establish Conflict Protocol Agreements
An idea originally developed by Howard Guttman in his book Great Business Teams, and
expanded by CRRGlobal, a conflict protocol is a set of agreements teams make when
they are cool and rational for how to act when they are hot and emotional. They codify
key principles for helping conflict go well:
maximize team learning and diversity, while
limiting harm to team relationships. They need
to be agreed to by true consensus (think deep
democracy) and enforced by the team itself.
CONFLICT PROTOCOL
QUESTIONS
Think about your ideal team. How would that
team handle conflicts and disagreements?
What are some behaviors you want to have happen when conflict occurs? (For example:
speak to the person directly, get all parties together rather than triangulating.)
What are some things you do not want to happen when conflict occurs?
It takes 6-9 months to change a behavior:
How will you hold one another accountable for following these agreements?
What will you do if someone breaks an agreement?
Adapted from CRR Global, Organization & Relationship Systems Coaching Handbook
©2012 Agile Coaching Institute Page 3 www.AgileCoachingInstitute.com

4. Agile 2012
3. Become a Conflict Facilitator
Before you can help the team successfully process conflict, you must first develop (or
dust off) you facilitation skills and get into the Conflict Facilitator mindset. Practices for
personal mastery in this area are:
• Learn facilitation skills • Mind Training: Repeat the Right
• Get you facilitator hat on View beliefs until they become true
• Know your triggers: What “sets • Actively practice seeing everyone
you off”? as right (partially)
Source: copyright 2012 Michael Spayd, “Coaching the Agile Enterprise” (book in progress - do not
distribute).
4. “Process” the Conflict
The leaders job is to help the team process the change urge. Aligned with the Right View,
there are several ways to do this:
• Use conflict protocol agreements
• Use Deep Democracy practices
• Move from positions to interests
• Frame conflict as an urge to change; it’s natural and normal
©2012 Agile Coaching Institute Page 4 www.AgileCoachingInstitute.com

5. Agile 2012
Deep Democracy Practices
Deep democracy is a philosophy developed by Jungian psychologist and physicist Arnold
Mindell. He observed that human systems create dysfunctions when they only favored
the voices or perspectives they could tolerate well. We all know the experience of having
people on teams who we cannot stand. Mindell found, however, that when we examine
this phenomenon more deeply, we find that the annoying person often has important
information for the team. Groups or teams, which are naturally self-organizing, are not
able to effectively self organize unless all the information in the system is represented
amongst the group.
Source: Arnold Mindell, Deep Democracy Of Open Forums & Leader As Martial Artist
Deep democracy practices are:
• Constellations • Round Robin
• Fist of Five • Writing on stickies before talking
• Roman Vote • Making space for unpopular or minority voices
Move from Positions to Interests
When people are locked into different positions, conflict is unresolvable. “This is perfect
for Java!” says one developer. “No way, man, Ruby on Rails is what we need!” says
another. As long as the conversation stays on that level, we’ll just hear argument after
argument, going nowhere. When the leader helps the two developers recognize their
common interest; however, the conflict can
“unknot” and movement toward a better solution
occurs. Asking questions such as, “Why is it
important to resolve this?” and “What’s important
to you?” helps them see where there is already
common ground. In this case, the developers may
come to recognize that what they *really* want is a
flexible, yet robust technology. With this new
“frame” on the problem, they can have a richer
discussion and come up with the best solution
(which may or may not be Java or Ruby on Rails).
Source: Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to YES
Adapted from CRR Global, Organization & Relationship Systems Coaching Handbook
©2012 Agile Coaching Institute Page 5 www.AgileCoachingInstitute.com

6. Agile 2012
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