Addressing The Elephant: And how teams can learn to dance with (often invisible) conflict

05/01/20 • 11 min

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Conflicts are fascinating. They are a natural part of working with other people and can drain significant amounts of energy way from our work together.
Yet, for something that is so natural, we're often pretty bad at recognizing conflicts when they happen. For most us, 'conflicts' are those moments when people throw with doors, raise their voices or openly express their disagreement. But more often than not, conflict happens entirely below the surface. These are the "Elephants" that need to be addressed.
In this episode, we explore different types of "elephants" and our beliefs about conflict in general. We also share some of our own experiences, as well as what scientific research tells us.
Read the blogpost here:
http://bit.ly/2LSD99g
Sign up for the next 'Addressing the Elephant'-workshop here:
http://bit.ly/2JVSHcg
Follow us on Medium:
https://medium.com/the-liberators
Donate to support our work
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We're building Columinity to help teams improve continuously based on scientific insights:
https://columinity.com
Check out our webshop for tons of powerful exercises and workshops to run with your team(s):
https://shop.theliberators.com
The music for episodes 91 and onward was written and produced for us by Basanite. The music for episodes 1-90 was acquired through Yummy Sounds. Post-production by Jasper Huiskamp.

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Previous Episode

Scrum: A Framework for Empirical Process Control

What is the Scrum Framework? How does it work? What is its purpose? And how do all these roles, events and artifacts work together?This episode of our podcast is for everyone who wants to learn what Scrum is, or wants to refresh their understanding.
Recently, we noticed that we don't have an episode dedicated to explaining the Scrum Framework itself. We often touch on elements or bust 'myths' about it, but we never talk about the whole. In part, this is because there is an excellent official Scrum Guide at scrumguides.org. But there is often value in hearing it explained in other words and with different metaphors. Plus, we often do this as part of our work as stewards and Professional Scrum Trainers for Scrum.org.
We created this content as part of our upcoming book, the Zombie Scrum Survival Guide. In it, we use the tongue-in-cheek metaphor of Zombie Scrum to understand Scrum from the perspective of what it absolutely shouldn't be (but often is): Zombie Scrum. It contains over 40 helpful experiments to make Scrum work and explains both Scrum, and why it sometimes turns into Zombie Scrum.
The official Scrum Guide:
https://scrumguides.org

Follow us on Medium:
https://medium.com/the-liberators
Donate to support our work
https://bit.ly/supportheliberators

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Next Episode

Conflict Styles: What Sciences Says & How Liberating Structures Can Help

When you work in a team or with others, you'll recognize that conflict is a natural part of our work with others. Where some conflicts are visible, most remain below the surface and manifest only as tension and frustration. They happen, regardless of our intentions and experience.
There are different ways to deal with conflict. The Dual Concern Model for Conflict is a helpful way to look at this. It distinguishes five distinct styles that people (can) use to navigate conflict. But not all styles are equally effective.
In this episode we explore the five styles as well as what scientific research says about their effectiveness. And as the cherry on top, we share how Liberating Structures can help.

You can read the original blogpost here:
http://bit.ly/2TLmdmZ

Sign up for our upcoming 'Addressing the Elephant'-workshop here:
http://bit.ly/2JVSHcg
Follow us on Medium:
https://medium.com/the-liberators
Donate to support our work
https://bit.ly/supportheliberators

Support the show