In this episode of the Future of Team podcast, hosts James Giroux and Dee Teal explore the sensitive yet crucial topic of when private conflicts go public. They dive into how leaders can proactively manage such situations, especially within the WordPress community. From addressing internal communication breakdowns to fostering empathy and creating safe spaces for airing grievances, this discussion offers actionable insights for maintaining balance and deescalating tensions. Tune in to hear their thoughts on conflict resolution, the role of leadership, and the importance of creating a people-first culture.
Transcript
James: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Future of Team podcast. My name is James Giroux and I am joined by my wonderful, amazing, lovely From Down Under co host Dee Teal. We are excited to be here. And today we are talking about.
Something that comes up often in, I think, the realm of private to public discourse. It’s when conflict goes public or when the things that you think are happening behind closed doors all of a sudden get brought out into the open, whether that’s a private Slack channel to a public Slack channel, a company, you know Slack to a Twitter account, Or whatever.
And for many of us in WordPress, we know the hashtag, well, WP drama. And when things like that happen, what do we do? What is, how do we, what’s the best way to approach that? Cause you know, we talk about leadership here being something that is proactive, right. And as leaders and as, as folks who want to create people first environments or safe spaces.
It means being proactive about that Dee. We were just having a quick little chat ahead of time. And so I’m curious about your thoughts on this before we jump into all of the things around it. Just sort of like, what’s your general two cents on this whole topic of transcription? I guess WP drama, but, but not so much that specifically, but when conflict goes public.
Dee: So there’s, so, you know, if you kind of tap into that first initial response, there is that salacious element of, Ooh, it’s going to get exciting. But but I am also, Not someone who generally tends to dive in, I’ll kind of watch what’s going on, and I might converse about it privately, but I’m not generally willing or brave enough to put my head above the parapet and dive in and get involved.
Sometimes it’s disappointing, sometimes, but that’s in any kind of conflict situation, right? I’m just not naturally, I was going to say not naturally drawn to it, I don’t know that anybody is. Or if somebody is naturally drawn to it, then I would question why, but yeah, I find it uncomfortable. I don’t love it.
Even though I might still have that little friction of, you know, you know, what, you know, what’s going to play out. But I think what, as you know, as a people first leader, the thing that I keep coming back to is who are the people involved in this? How is this helping or hurting? And that’s probably when I go, Oh, I don’t want to get involved.
But also, yeah, it’s a tension, right? I mean, this is, this is internal conflict about what’s happened, obviously external conflict, but I don’t love it. I wish it didn’t happen. I don’t always have answers to improve it or how to make things better, which is, I guess why we’re talking about this today.
James: Yeah, it’s, I mean, obviously I think there’s, there’s two different types of conflict going public. There’s conflict going public inside a company where you have potentially leadership or hierarchy there that can nip it in the bud, right? That can shut it down if it goes, you know, in a direction that creates more tension, more chaos, or, you know, even an unsafe space, right?
Or discomfort. But it’s when it goes from a place where you have control. To a place where you have no control. Right. Is potentially where things get. Scary both for everyone involved, right? And, and I, I guess for me, I look at it in a couple of different ways. The, the first thing I look at is, well, why has it had to go from a Space of control to a space of no control, right?
Right. What’s happened? What what’s the breakdown in communication? Internally that’s gone on there that has caused the spillover So as an ally, right of folks I look at it and I go is there something here where somebody feels powerless or unheard or dismissed or whatever? in a situation and that’s why they’re bringing it out because they’re not able to get the resolution, the support, the attention that they need in order to feel safe and comfortable in the environment or the community that they’re participating in.
So that’s the first thing. I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that, but
Dee: no. Well, yeah, no, I, when that happens, I guess there’s a couple of ways of looking at it, right? Is that And I love that your, that your approach is always you going straight to empathy and straight to empathy for the person who might be kind of airing that grievance. Whereas I’m so judgmental that I might actually go to, are they really just wanting to burn the place down?
Sometimes it happens, but I, but you know, maybe they just want to burn the place down because. They are hurting and not getting what they need. So I really appreciate that there are people in the world that go, go first. I do in some situations, but again, I’m, when I, and again, this whole thing of when conflict is public and when, when you’re seeing, I will go to judgment first often.
Which is possibly why it’s very smart that I don’t dive in because I would be bringing my preconceptions to that conversation beforehand.
James: Yeah, no, I think That makes me sound like a horrible person. Well, and that’s human nature, right? We want to take a side. If it’s a conflict, there’s a right and a wrong.
Yeah. Right? And we make a judgment call about what’s right and what’s wrong. I don’t know if it’s just growing up in an You know, a French Irish Canadian household where the only volumes we had were loud and louder, right? And emotions were always at 11. And so that sense of you’ve got to, you’ve got to ignore the volume and listen to the words behind the volume is just something that Is like a natural thing, right?
From my, my upbringing. And that’s not everyone, right? My wife comes. Well,
Dee: we, for us, it was the complete opposite. It was, it was no yelling, no arguing. You just shut it down. wall it off and keep and keep moving. So yeah, it was just probably again, a big part of the reason why conflict makes me twitchy and I’ve had to learn.
Yeah. Had to learn a lot more about how to engage with it, particularly as a leader and as a manager.
James: I, I think to the position of power in a conflict is also something that is interesting. And you brought that up as a people leader, as a manager, cause I’ve, I found that my own emotional state, my own sense of rightness or balance can be thrown off by whether I’m in the management position, the leadership position, or if I’m in the team member, the, you know, sort of subservient position, right?
Like that, that can impact it. Yeah. So we’ve talked a little bit about empathy first, right? Like try to understand the person that’s, that’s crying out or that’s, that’s going public. And then the other side of it is probably knowing like maybe what do we do with that? And what’s the action for us to take as, as a proactive, you know, like if we say open people first, Leadership or open people first culture is about a proactive leader.
What do we do? You said something earlier that when conflict happens around us, are we contributing to the fire or are we trying to pull things out of the fire? Right. Are we trying to deescalate the situation?
Dee: Adding fuel or removing it. Yeah.
James: And I think that’s really relevant, whether it’s an internal private conflict or something that boils into the public arena where we don’t have control, like we can’t turn it off.
Right? When, when it’s in public, whether you’re a CEO or a leader or whatever, you can’t turn it off. It is just going to be what it is, but you can help that fire die faster by doing things to deescalate. Yeah. So I’m just curious about your thoughts are on that.
Dee: There’s a question that I asked myself and it’s not just in situational. In conflict my, I, I mean, I’m a project manager. So these things come back all the time. What is the outcome that we want? What’s the outcome that we want? How do we get to that? What’s the outcome. And at the outcome is we want to safely.
It’s just to resolve that conflict, then, and in a way that is caring for both parties, regardless of whether that’s two humans, whether that’s a department and a human or a company and a human, or two companies, I don’t even know, but the, is, is asking that question, what do we need here? What, what does this person need here?
Okay, this person needs to be heard. How can we provide the space for that hearing to happen that is safe and isn’t making You know, isn’t escalating it. So it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, but then it’s also, yeah, I mean, it keeps coming back to what, what do we need here? What, what needs to happen here? Because, you know, you can talk about putting the fire out, but if it’s like that, you know, my home situation where it was a case of shutting the doors and closing it, nothing got really resolved.
Right. And so it’s not just pour water on the fire and the fire goes out and nothing. that there are embers burning that can inflame up later. So yeah, I guess the, what does that person need? What does that company need? And how do we get to those questions and how do we ask those questions in a way that’s safe?
And even maybe it’s a case of taking somebody aside and say, Hey, I see what’s going on here and I hear what’s, you know, how can I help? What’s the, you know, I feel like taking some, some, you know, It’s very difficult to do that in public because then people will always be asking that question. Why are you getting involved?
What’s your motive in this? So again, I, I would be tending to take people aside and go, Hey, how can I help here without kind of being out there in the thick of it?
James: When I think of WordPress, and this is my context. So I work in the WordPress ecosystem. You do as well. For us, because of the distributed nature of WordPress and we’ve got people all over the world, the way we connect and, and converse is often in, you know, the Twitter sphere, you know, through a public Slack community, things like that.
And so we don’t have that habit of connecting in person, looking people in the eye, Having having those conversations that can be, you know, healing or airing of grievances or things like that in a way that maybe a lot of us are probably accustomed to and how we would deescalate in our own workplace or our family life, right?
I think part of what we need to figure out when we are watching something like this happen is maybe asking a couple questions. One is, are both sides able to be protected here or represented well? Right. Yeah. So if one side is clearly dominating another side, how can we help restore balance to that or create, right, or create some security for the person who’s on maybe the unbalanced side so they feel supported enough to be able to navigate through that situation.
Whether they’ve created it or not, right? And oftentimes the unbalance is on the side of, you know, the one with less power, the one that’s, that’s being, you know, stuck. So that, that’s one side. And then I think another thing I go, I look at is you know, like if I have no like emotional connection to the issue, how much time effort and emotional energy Am I willing to commit to the resolution of this?
Because if you jump in right as a leader, somebody who’s trying to build culture, someone who’s trying to create open people, first culture, you’re not just jumping in to give your two cents and move on. That is not helpful. Yeah. Right. If you’re serious about jumping in, be intentional in that. And be prepared for at least an outcome.
And we have great tools to do that. You as a project manager probably know very well, we can retro a situation. We can bring the players together and we can do, you know, a PIR or post incident response or, or review. We, we have these tools, especially in tech. To help us navigate these kinds of conflicts to help us air these grievances in a systematic way that allow even if it doesn’t resolve at least deescalates the tension and gets us to an outcome of, hey, we at least gave everyone a chance to be heard right in a balanced way.
You know, setting where there was no power struggle where maybe there was no racial stuff going on or gender based things going on and we could create that safe space for it to happen. Those are, those are the two things that I think of.
Dee: You know, that makes, that makes good sense. I was thinking as you were talking, it’s like, this isn’t just when conflict goes public, like this was conflict in your Slack channel when you’re in your company, when, when somebody, you know, all of this is applicable in any conflict situation, actually.
Yeah. I should be taking notes.
James: Well, and again, too, like, like you always say, you start with trust. Right. Yeah. So if we start with trust and we assume positive intent, which is something I love to say, right. Then this conversation that’s happening in the Twitter sphere or wherever for us who have those places where we’re starting from of trust and positive intent, we look at what’s going on in a very different way.
That’s starting from low trust, no trust, right. Or no positive intent, right. And they’re automatically. Defensive. They’re automatically having their backup against the wall. And I think that that’s another thing for us is to bring that calming, safe space building. You know, sort of vibe and view to a situation.
Dee: So here’s a question. So when people, you know, we’re talking about, again, if we’re talking about a community like WordPress, I’m sure there are other communities out there that are similar, that have different personalities, that have people that are well known, that if people have made judgments about for good or ill.
about them. And that starts to get, become a part of a public conflict where people are going, well, you know, so and so is now involved and we know this about them, or we believe this about them. And therefore what they’re doing is, so you’re bringing your judgments about what somebody’s motives might be, or what somebody’s, you know contribution to that represents, how do you, how does that change things or how do you approach things when there is also that dynamic involved?
James: Oh,
I’d love to give you a perfect answer, right? I don’t think there is one, right? I don’t think there is one. I think we all own the personal brand we create. And so if somebody’s in a position where that reputation about them exists, it’s likely due to past experiences or past actions that they’ve taken.
And unfortunately, that’s reality and your past is something you have to own, even though you might not necessarily live in that now and you might’ve grown from it, you still have to deal with the consequences and the reality. Of having done those things or of having said those things, but I think if part, but part of it as well, I think, is for people like us, hopefully, who are not emotionally triggered or emotionally on edge in a situation to be able to step in and call it out on both sides.
No. Yeah. Right. Like so and so may have that reputation. They may have said these things in the past. They’ve got their reasons for doing what they do. I can’t control what they say or what they do. But in this situation here, I am not going to allow those past experiences and those past issues and challenges disrupt and cloud The real issue here.
And if we start moving into personal attacking somebody, right, or, or, or going in that direction, and it becomes about, well, so and so is, you know, always on a power trip or so and so, you know, never does this, or, you know, such and such always happens, right? Like, you can start to see how that happens. Right.
Absolutist language that emotional response becomes about the individual or the company and not necessarily about the situation and getting to that outcome we’re after which is at least a balanced safe space to air grievances and You know be heard if not, you know, and and that’s a thing too, right? I don’t assume resolution is possible in any of these conflicts because you’re always gonna have people who disagree Right and tension is actually okay You But and disagreements.
are Okay.
Dee: It’s uncomfortable, but it’s okay. I think we are also up against people’s perceptions and I think being able to separate. What the actual current issue is from people’s perceptions, because those can be wildly inaccurate and come with all of their own biases and, you know, concerns and experiences for good or ill.
That I think trying to, I think you’re onto something there when you’re trying to kind of separate all of the other external baggage and let’s just keep focused on what the current issue is and the outcome that we want to get to within this issue and being able to look after people within all of that.
Yeah, that’s very sound.
James: I think, you know, to, to say that as one thing when you’re not in the middle of it. Right. And it’s not something you’re emotionally connected to is good. And I wonder if that that’s an opportunity for us in our communities to think of almost like creating that kind of a role, like almost like an official mediator.
Right or somebody that you can call in who’s maybe done extra training on this or Who aligns with that to be able to to jump in and play that role? And that is that is the way they contribute that is the way They support the communities by actually jumping into the middle of conflict and Separating, you know, the, the issue from the rest of it and helping to at least get both sides heard because, you know, I had a situation this week where somebody said something to me about something that I had done that made them uncomfortable and then I was freaked out.
I freaked out. Right? Yeah. Because I’m, you know, like, Well, what did I do? And like my stomach’s in knots and I’m like, all my emotions are roiling. And it, it knocked me out for like three hours as I was trying to figure out what I could have possibly done to cause this specific thing to happen. And I’m like, okay, like, I am not in a place where I can deal with this conflict.
It wasn’t a conflict. There was, there was no conflict. It was somebody giving me feedback. It was somebody saying how they felt about something that I had done. It wasn’t about me, right? It was just the approach that I had taken. They were fine.
Dee: Yeah.
James: But I like so you can imagine if I had gone public or if that had been a public discourse or something Yeah, like I would just I would not have been able to respond in a way that was constructive I in that situation was going I need an ally.
I need somebody to come in and And I just need them to let me vent to them and freak out to them about what I’m experiencing and what I’m feeling and either help me calm down and come down from that, that fear hill, right? Or figure out a way to help me resolve this in a way that is safe and supportive for both sides.
Right? Right. So you can imagine how people who are going public with these things must feel. Yeah. Right. And the need. So I don’t know, that’s just a random thought I had about it all too.
Dee: No, I get it. I, I wonder what’s your experience been in companies, are there company policies around how conflict gets handled?
Do you have set processes in place? Is there a space for that in wider public community to go when something like this happens, here’s our checklist of things that we go through. To resolve it. Do we have that in WordPress? I don’t even know. I mean, I know that we have, you know, you know, reporting for some situations, but
James: we have a code of conduct,
Dee: that’s the word I was looking for.
James: I don’t know if our code of conduct, conduct includes conflict resolution process,
Dee: that’d be interesting to explore.
James: We have a incident report team, right. And we have sort of like the escalation of code of conduct violations. And we have a process for that. That’s different to disagreements over,
Dee: I mean a beef.
Yeah.
James: Yeah.
Dee: Yeah.
James: And interestingly, when I think back to my own work experience, that’s the traditional role of HR to come in and play that mediator role, right? Which,
Dee: which is fraught with its own conflicts, right? Because HR tradition, you know, you always think HR is my ally, but in actual fact, HR represents the company.
And so, yeah.
James: So they’re not necessarily the right person, which puts the onus, I think, on the leadership layer of companies to play that role right now, when it’s a conflict between a manager and a direct report. That’s dicey. That’s maybe where HR can come in as a bit more of a neutral because the company’s best interest is both sides Getting on right and yeah going well in this in in a wider community a broader community sense Yeah, I to be honest with you.
I do think companies should have conflict resolution Pathways and I think there should be sure You know ideas, thoughts, processes, and it depends on the company. Some might do it through their agile rituals, right? So you know, we’re, we’re in tech software delivery. Agile is generally what we use. A lot of us are using some kind of framework around that and have different Steps or processes in place to regularly connect and talk through challenges and issues and do reflections.
And we call them retrospectives and agile. And they’re just opportunities. Yeah. To air our beef for lack of a better term, right? Our grievances and get it all out in the open. Not everyone takes it a really good company and a really good PM will do a fantastic job of playing that role. Of a neutral third party who can create safety and who can create a culture where a team can and facilitate a team actually navigating through conflict.
So I think that can exist and probably does in that regard. But at a community level, that’s, that’s an interesting one. I don’t know that, that at least not WordPress that I’ve seen has stuff like that. Yeah.
Dee: Yeah. Bye. I think there are people that do have conversations and asides that do help defuse some of those.
You know, I know people, conversations around who, who will hesitate to jump in, but will then go and say, you know, talk to people as, as an aside. And I think I’ve done it at different times as well in the past, but. What if, what if we had a space? I don’t know. What would that look like? How would you even know when to apply that?
Is that even feasible to have a community framework for conflict resolution? I
James: think it’s a sign of maturity. I think it’s a sign of growth. I think it’s We talk a lot like in WordPress about wanting to bring people in and wanting to create a place where everyone can contribute. Well, I’m not a coder, so my contribution is never going to be a line of code dropped into core.
But if my role can be helping the You know, translation team get through a nasty dust up because, you know, there’s some conflict over, you know, accents and left to right or right to left. I don’t know what they would, would have conflicts. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? But like, but if I can jump in and I can play that critical role of supporting them.
And that helps the project move forward. Then. Yeah, I think that’s a great thing. And that’s, and to me, that’s an example of a maturing organization and a growing organization that’s identifying those roles as opportunities for people to get training, to do it, you know, like, and to be recognized for it.
Dee: Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think it’s also incumbent on all of us who have been around the traps for a while, who know the situations, who know the history, who know the personalities. And who, you know, like all of us, are intent on seeing this community grow and seeing this tool and product that we use continue to flourish.
I think there is a responsibility on all of us to be the kinds of contributors that facilitate and foster that maturity, part of which is being able to navigate and handle and take fuel out of the fires of this conflict rather than continue to perpetuate them.
James: If we want to grow and we want to get younger, we can’t be seen as a bunch of angry boomers fighting their way to the finish line.
Dee: No, no,
James: like, this is not going to fly.
Dee: No, exactly. Exactly.
James: Although it does paint a funny picture in my head.
Dee: But I can just see the, you know, the years going fast and having that, you know, it’s going to be, yeah, anyway, that’s a whole other conversation.
James: Well, why don’t we wrap it up here? I mean, what is the outcome?
I think. We look at this and we, we look at conflict. It’s never easy. There’s never going to be an a win when conflict exists. Maybe there is a win, but. I don’t know. I think the outcome for us here is empathy, right? Be the safe space for the ally, for, for the folks, create balance, right? Empathy, balance.
And I can’t remember what another one would be, but I think those are, those are good ones. I think those
Dee: are those. Well, yeah. And outcomes, right. And as actually, and outcomes that move things forward rather than take us backwards. That would be my hope.
James: Empathy, balance, and creating a place where everyone can be heard.
Both sides can be
Dee: heard. Exactly. Love it.
James: Cool. Well, thanks everyone. I hope you are enjoying listening to this as always. We’d love to hear from you, what you think about what we’re talking about. Share your stories. Subscribe, like all those things that people do on these kinds of things. We’d love that too.
Dee it’s always a pleasure to hang out with you and talk about this stuff. I’m constantly amazed by your insight and the stories that you bring. So thank you.
Dee: Likewise. Thanks James. Bye y’all.