The Modern CPA Success Show: Episode 107

In this episode, Tom is joined by Carol Bowser, JD, founder of Conflict Management Strategies. They discuss the impact of conflict in the workplace, the importance of creating a healthy environment, and the challenges of remote work on conflict resolution. Carol shares strategies for fostering a positive remote work culture and provides insights on navigating conflict and difficult conversations. She emphasizes the importance of effective communication, feedback, and clear expectations.

Intro (00:00:00) - Welcome to the Modern CPA Success Show, the podcast dedicated to helping accounting firms stay ahead of the curve. Our mission is to provide you with the latest and greatest insights on cutting edge tools, innovative marketing strategies, virtual CFO services and alternative billing methods. Join us as we change the way people think about accounting. 

Tom (00:00:25) - All right. We have got a really good episode for you today. Carol Bowser, and we're going to talk about conflict resolution. So it's a topic that I think a lot of people have interest in. Probably a lot of people think, I'm not good at this. And what you're going to hear from her is the impact that it can have on a workplace. Some things to look for, how to have a healthy environment. We'll talk about remote work that's in there. She'll give some tips. She does mention another one of our podcasts that somewhat relates to this. John Baldino is the founder and CEO of Humor. So that's a recent podcast that she'll mention. So when you hear her say you guys talk to an outsource HR rep, that's who she was talking about.

Tom (00:00:58) - So I really hope you enjoy this episode. Okay. Welcome to this episode of the Modern CPA Success Show. I'm Tom Wadelton. I'm with the Summit Virtual by Anders. I do the virtual CFO role and have about 15 clients or so where I act in the capacity of business consultant with them. Our topic today is something really important as we talk about conflict conflict resolution. Probably most people would say, I don't like it. I avoided everything. Yet it happens everywhere. And we've got a fantastic guest. Carol Bowser is a the founder of Conflict Management Strategies. She's a self-described recovering employment law attorney, also a mediator with US, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Carol, welcome today.

Carol (00:01:40) - Well, thank you so much. It's so exciting to be here.

Tom (00:01:43) - I would love to hear the story of how do you go from lawyer dealing with mediation and lawsuits and then say, okay, maybe there's a different way in starting your own company to to do something? It sounds like not not using all legal means to get everything resolved.

Carol (00:01:56) - Well, always using legal means to get started.

Tom (00:01:59) - Doing it legally, but not in court. That's how I'm thinking.

Carol (00:02:01) - Exactly. So it's like most origin stories, there's always a little bit of a winding path. And when before I went to law school, I had some employment experiences as an employee and I thought, well, had I known what my rights and responsibilities were in that circumstance, would I made the same decisions? Well, maybe, yeah, maybe no. Had I known what the employer's rights and responsibilities were in that relationship would have made the same decisions? Absolutely not. So thought about, well, where do you learn about rights and responsibilities? Well, you learn about life's responsibilities by going to law school and also being the daughter of a lawyer and growing up around family friends who are lawyers. It's almost kind of like going into the family business, even though there wasn't a family lawyer business. And so prior to making the jump to go to law school and really kind of interested in the employment area, I was thinking about, well, how much control did I want to have? How could I have had conversations? What choices did I want to make? And at that point in time, there was a movement kind of within the legal community talking more about mediation as an alternate way to be able to solve disputes.

Carol (00:03:15) - And what really spoke to me about that is having a voice in creating the solution and also recognizing that it's my life. And there are certain things that I did and I didn't do, how I reacted or how I didn't react. And that kind of created the circumstance. That was a pain point for me. And that lined with kind of the mediation of not taking a dispute to a judge or to an arbiter, but being actively involved in that. So before I went to law school, I took training from a community based mediation center, and it really resonated with me. And as a side note, from that time until this time, there are so many lawyers who take mediation training. I often joke where, you know, I live in Western Washington or like some of the major metropolitan areas you know, you could throw a dead cat and hit many lawyers who want to be mediators because I think the mediation profession is much more professionally fulfilling, at least for me it was. And it's less competitive, less stressful.

Carol (00:04:16) - And also think you have a higher degree of client satisfaction because I think like some of the work that you do, you know, with, with your clients and even like I think some CPAs, it's an investigative process of how do people work, you know, what's important to them, How do they want to be able to comply or not comply with some of the rules? And how do you help people be successful at work? And that's kind of the path that I took to eventually kind of create conflict management strategies where for a while I was a contract mediator for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and now I help organizations of all sizes and all ilks either prevent or address workplace conflict.

Tom (00:04:58) - That's a great story. I don't think I had really thought about if things are getting resolved in court, there's probably a high incidence of nobody's happy after that's done or he's not as happy as they thought as opposed to mediation, where your role is really trying to get to a good solution versus you're wanting to win. If you're on one side as a lawyer, right.

Tom (00:05:16) - You're just trying to win for your client.

Carol (00:05:18) - Correct. And you know, one little factoid about the legal system, the vast majority of lawsuits are resolved prior to going to trial. And most jurisdictions require parties to attempt mediation. And my focus was less on the litigated matter, more on the workplace, because we spend too much time of our life and energy at work for it to be a difficult place to be. So being able to help people build their conflict resolution skills to deploy at work and maybe even in their own life.

Tom (00:05:48) - Okay. What I'm curious, in workplaces, if you think of all workplaces, general themes of where the conflict is coming up, that isn't getting dealt with appropriately. Do you have categories or something? We were saying this is this happens everywhere and we don't address.

Carol (00:06:02) - It happens. It happens absolutely everywhere. And I think my big theme is that in some way, shape or form, people aren't feeling successful at work, that they feel a system or a process or a person or an approach or a tone of conversation is making them not feel successful.

Carol (00:06:20) - And because work is how we feed our family, how we keep a roof over our head. For the vast majority of Americans, it's how you get access to health care. And it we spend too much time of our life and maybe even our identity within work and in those working relationships. And we feel as though a system or process, but more likely a person or that person's approach is causing us detriment or stress or pain or frustration. That's where the conflict comes in.

Tom (00:06:52) - That makes a lot of sense. Do you think many people also think that it is not their responsibility to engage and resolve that as opposed to I just wish it wasn't here or somehow I can go talk to Carol and she'll hear me and make me feel better, but I'm not doing a thing to fix this.

Carol (00:07:07) - Well, I'm going to give you a great lawyer, mediator, Consultant answer. It depends. Okay. So in part, I think maybe people don't have the don't have a skill set or maybe they have a particular skill set that they overly rely on.

Carol (00:07:22) - And then sometimes I also find that maybe a manager or a directing partner or a supervisor that the they have tried to resolve it on their own, but maybe they don't have the decision making authority and people at a higher decision making authority will say, well, I hired smart, intelligent people. You know, you act like an adult and figure it out on their own. And I always ask, well, if they could figure it out on their own, don't you think they would have? And sometimes I think it's a conflict among like, well, whose actual responsibility is it to be able to do it? And I think that that's a lot of well, they need to stop acting like this. The manager needs to step up. Somebody is afraid of conflict. So they're, you know, continuing this to go in. Maybe they want to be liked. And so they're not having hard conversations. So I think it's a little bit of a combination of everything that well, maybe that the skill sets don't work and maybe we had the skill set that worked in person in the office where we could take a moment of like, Hey, can I talk to you in the hallway? And that's, you know, particularly on virtual and remote and distributed teams, that's not really happening anymore.

Carol (00:08:33) - So maybe the manager or maybe the conflict resolution skills were more in person dependent than we really realized. So it's a different skill set, a different muscle to develop.

Tom (00:08:46) - Interesting. So you mentioned the remote. What are you seeing is differences, And that seems like an obvious one that the in an office I might pass by you in the hallway and just get a nonverbal cue that something's wrong that I wouldn't see in a remote environment. But I'm curious kind of what you're seeing now that more people are remote and remote companies. What's what's different about conflict in that area?

Carol (00:09:08) - So a couple of different things. First, I've seen several different, you know, organizations and I've seen it enough to go like, okay, this is a theme where people were hired in the pandemic and maybe the systems or the processes were set up for in-office. So the onboarding of getting to know you and like not not just getting to know your name, but kind of getting to know how you work, being able to establish trust, being able to establish rapport that we relied on those in-person pieces and now everyone is distributed and we're only seeing them through a video.

Carol (00:09:44) - And then it might only be that we're meeting periodically and we're not really kind of getting an opportunity to get to know one another. And I've seen it where I will ask, Well, they said, Well, we're not gelling as a team. You know, we got this team conflict. And my go to question nowadays is, well, was the team ever cohesive? And they go, huh? And it's like, you know, No, I don't think it was. I think we were so busy surviving and triaging to be able to survive and get the work done that we really didn't develop, you know, any kind of processing or protocols. And I know, you know, that your company talks a lot about kind of like the onboarding process and how significant that is and how we bring people in and we get them to look around and we get them to talk about like, well, how do we solve conflict? How do we demonstrate teaming here? Kind of what's the culture, what's the expectations? And I think that that was just.

Carol (00:10:44) - Um, so stuffed down to be able to get people to fill the position because we're so desperate to do that or any of the systems were relying on in person. So I'm seeing that a lot that we really weren't cohesive and that maybe there are new people coming in and they haven't developed kind of trust with their teammates. And so it's really hard to develop rapport if there isn't trust. So how much of manager supervisors or organizations have been saying we need to carve time to start building, you know, the team cohesively and it's not just about doing the work. So I'm seeing those types of things. And also, as I said, we're not having those little in between moments. That's not to say that we can't create those in-between moments, but if we're doing meetings back to back to back to back to back, that it's really difficult one, to actually be able to do the work. If we're in meetings. All of the time. And the second thing, you know, I'll say, you know, particularly for, you know, CPAs and some lawyers, you know, past lawyers and stuff, the work is kind of heads down.

Carol (00:11:53) - You need time and quiet time to be able to focus on that. And for some people working remotely, this is the best thing ever. Ever. I have a friend who is a big introvert and when the pandemic just started working remotely, I'm like, You have been training for this your whole life. Now everybody gets to be in your world. But it's again, it's really kind of, you know, difficult if we are used to it. So, you know, maybe folks ask, were we what were we relying on that we're not getting now? And that's just one, you know, and if we were relying on, you know, face time in person to accomplish what and what's a different way that we can accomplish this now. So it's a little bit of feeling a little bit more isolated On the other piece, I think especially for professions that really need a lot of heads down time being, I have seen this as particularly with teams and someone wants to reach out to you. It's like, Carol, they're never available.

Carol (00:12:54) - They're constantly out of office. And before I would have been able to swing by or get in touch with them and now I can't. So no one is ever available. So it is really difficult to. All concerns then may pop up during Zoom meetings or people to say I'm not going to worry about it now. It'll get later and then all of a sudden the later plus the later plus the later. The small thing for small things, small things end up becoming bigger things. So those are kind of some trends that I'm seeing 

Tom (00:14:04) - I can tell you a couple of things that we do, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on things you think we could be doing more or better. So we often talk about so many companies, as you know, have gone remote as a result of the pandemic. Many then did not focus at all on how their culture might need to be different or be built differently. It's one of the things we talk about is, okay, you really do have to focus on that. We'll do things like every Monday morning we have an all team meeting, so 75 people or so that are part of our virtual CFO practice. It includes someone's got a joke of the day, Someone's got a fun fact. But there's also just an open question this week had to do with I think it was someone talking about travel that they had like places where you're going and travel and people can just chip in and give answers for that. But it's a chance for people to get to know each other. Another really big one for us is when we're in meetings, the cameras are on and if you're in a meeting without your camera, usually someone will say something about that.

Tom (00:14:56) - Because what we found is people are more engaged, but just seeing people as a different interaction then just being online and I've talked to several people, my kids are all remote workers and none of them do cameras on in meetings and said, that's just so different. And they'll acknowledge they'll sit and work and they'll listen to the meeting and participate if they need to. But I'll just say, you're not really engaged in that conversation. It's just sort of radio is what it sounds like on the side.

Carol (00:15:23) - Yeah, I would say that, you know, the idea of let's take a minute to be able to make those little connections that start treating people as kind of human beings and not just human doings, that those are great and recognize that this is an opportunity for us to be able to build culture. And we're taking some time at the meeting to be able to do that in a way that allows us to get to know each other as people. And I'll make a little kind of a caveat is some people who are like who are get stuff done, people, let's get it done.

Carol (00:15:55) - Let's focus. What's the objective? They might find that excruciating. However, just say no. As a culture, this is how we're reinforcing the culture, because some people really value this and we want to get to know each other as colleagues and not just through titles. I think that's really great. And it sounds like the being on camera as a way of supporting that. And there's lots of different opinions. And I'll tell you why. I think this camera versus no camera is an important discussion to have because there are some people who are neurodivergent and it just is kind of over overwhelming to have so many different pieces. There are some people who are like, Oh, I had a bad hair day or, you know, you know, whatever it is, and they feel a little bit more comfortable with that. However, I do think for a lot of people, if you're talking to a blank screen, it feels like, okay, the internal dialogue is, is anybody listening? Does anybody care? I'm not getting some of the signals that people are engaged at all.

Carol (00:17:01) - And for some people, you know, talking in groups is, you know, is challenging and then feeling as though you're talking to a blank screen is weird. And also I have heard people when conflict arises is like, I'm trying to have a meeting with them and I don't know how they're reacting to this. It's just kind of silence or all I'm getting is words. And I've relied on seeing facial expressions to give me some clues that I relied on for kind of my emotional intelligence. You know, how am I reading the room? How am I reading people's emotions? How do I adapt to this? You know, are people uncomfortable? And that takes a data point away. However, when you were talking about your your kids, what I what I heard was, oh, they see their role in the meeting as very different, not like an active participant, but that the meeting is just, you know, for lack of a better term, an information dump, that I am there as a recipient of information.

Carol (00:18:04) - And my role isn't that of active participant or presenter or kind of collaborative team member. It's more like I'm only going to pop up if I feel the need to do it versus how are we structuring the meeting? So that way most people feel engaged because there are some people and I'm sure everyone can identify who they are and I might be one of them who like to take up a lot of airtime, you know, And so they might say, well, you know, I don't need to talk. I don't want to talk, and I'm just going to kind of retreat into the background that can be some problems.

Tom (00:18:42) - That's a great point. And think you're right for my kids. I think that is they're younger in their careers and it probably is feeling like it's information only and they might be right. It may also be that someone's wanting more participation than what they're getting from the audience they have.

Carol (00:18:56) - Yeah.

Tom (00:18:57) - So if you're with someone who's saying, okay, I want to improve these skills, I'd be in that.

Tom (00:19:02) -Generally like to avoid conflict. Luckily, I know it and I'm like, okay, you're avoiding this conversation. Having you need to get in there and do it as you train people. What are some of the key things that you talk to people about to try to get better and recognize they need to improve this? Excellent.

Carol (00:19:17) - So first and foremost, I want them to know that, you know, I do this for a living. It sounds like you do a fair amount of, you know, lean in conversations with maybe with staff, with clients, maybe with vendors is nobody ever gets 100% so comfortable like, yeah, let's go having this conversation session. Yes. It's like, no. And just because there's your there's a discomfort and maybe a nervousness about it, that's just kind of your nervous system saying, hey, there's this is important. And I'm kind of recognizing the importance of it in your body is telling you that it's important. That doesn't mean don't do it. It's probably an indication that you do need to do it.

Carol (00:19:57) - And don't let that I'm not completely comfortable stop you from doing it because no one's completely comfortable. The other thing that I will say is when you know, when in you know, in conflict, people are just really kind of nervous about how the other person is going to react to the news. So just, you know, recognize that part of it is appreciating that if people have a reaction to it, you can just say, you know, acknowledge the emotion in the room, even yours, like, hey, you know, I'm I want to be able to share something with you. It might be I'm feeling a little bit uncomfortable with it and I'm really interested in what you have, what you have to say and feel about it. So the other is kind of recognize and acknowledge the emotional climate in the room. So that way it's not just facts, it's not just data because conflict is emotion and. And being able to kind of recognize the emotion is there. But I also talk about.

Carol (00:21:02) - You know, when it's, you know, conflict, you know, that we have to address through a screen a couple of different things. One, how well do you know your people? You know, how well do you know kind of what their little peccadilloes are or what their preferences are? So, you know, as a manager or even, you know, if you're, you know, a CPA and having to work with the support staff or other CPAs, like, you know, how well do you know them, You know, how much do they really value autonomy? How much do they really want you to kind of get to the point? So there's little data, pieces of information that you can use that you can structure the conversation. And I always say like, you know, if you have a goal of the conversation, let people know what the goal of the conversation is. So that way they're not trying to figure it out in a vacuum.

Carol (00:21:54) - And then why you need to know the people is like, have they changed how they're approaching it? I mean, are they less accessible than they were before? Do they use to talk a lot and now they aren't talking? Is it that we're seeing, you know, lots of offline conversations or chat going on where we're really not talking to who we need to be talking to, you know, those types of things. But you need to have, you know, hopefully start having, you know, informal conversations to get to know people. And even on the team of like, you know, when you've had to have a difficult conversation, you know, how did you approach it So that way you can recognize when they are trying to approach you for a difficult conversation, you know, like, well, how many times? And so it's a little bit of a learning process. So that way you're recognizing how everybody approaches the conflict. Also, the little thing is how many times are people reaching out to you to talk to you If they want to talk to you about something once, twice, three times? How often are you rescheduling something? How often? Because if, um, if you can't make yourself available, then it's like, well, I tried and they never got back to me.

Carol (00:23:10) - I tried again and they never got back to me. So it's like you say, you've got, you know, an open door or an open screen or you're always, you know, you're always open, but you're never available. So I think you don't want to put up a barrier because the screen, again, can cause, you know, a little bit of a barrier for people to get access. Yeah, the flip side is maybe there's too much access. You know, maybe there maybe, people are just, you know, on the screen all of the time talking about stuff and not letting others get the work done. But it also kind of goes to, you know, what are people's expectations of, you know, how and when we can and should bring things up. And I think that that's kind of, you know, the leader's role. If you're the CPA, how you feel about conflict, how you feel about in person, how you feel about remote, you are setting the culture for that team and, you know, just kind of being aware of your own biases and how you're utilizing the screen.

Carol (00:24:05) - I think that self-awareness is really key.

Tom (00:24:11) - Yeah. I like your description of really thinking carefully about things and not taking just that one data point. I was in a client leadership team meeting recently and it was interesting. The one person is complaining and the woman's name was Tamika, and it started off that we should be firing Tamika because she is dumping all of her work on me. And she gave some really bad behaviors into a point that you had made, Carol, The owner of the company said, has she always been like that? And she said, no, this has been like in the last three weeks. He said, why don't you take her out to lunch and just say, hey, I'm noticing a difference. Is something going on? And even the person who was doing the accusing, her tone changed dramatically. That was you're right. I wonder if something's going on because she used to be so good and now she's not into your point. I just found it interesting. In the span of about five minutes, she pivoted from we should be firing this person to I should probably check in and see what's going on with her because of the change.

Carol (00:25:01) - Yeah, absolutely. And I want to highlight kind of two different points here. Notice the labeling and the blaming and the shaming that's going on. Yes. And so when you hear that, that's conflict and and what I also go back to kind of the first point of that is someone saying I feel Tamika is impeding my success at work. And so it's like, okay. And then so when I also hear about complaints about workloads or how stuff is done, um, I think that that's a really big piece too. And I've always said a complaint is nothing more than a request in disguise. So if we're hearing complaints, you know, kind of what's the underlying request that people are having? And isn't it interesting that this one person probably had a complaint about Tamika and then all of a sudden they went to solution jumping of I don't know, this is how I see my problem getting solved. Offer their head. Versus being able to say, you know, kind of what's changed? And we kind of go from a blaming and shaming to a curiosity mindset and just being able to say, okay, that's really.

Carol (00:26:14) - Hmm. And all of a sudden we have people going from treating their assumptions as facts and then making proposals on that to like, okay, well what's kind of changed, you know, has there and, and that's kind of a mediator tool of a curiosity question of was there a time where things are working more smoothly. And so yeah, so like, okay, great. Then we've got a little bit of a positive history to work on. What's changed? And who knows, there might have been a system or a process change that Tamika is struggling with. Or it might be that someone was talking with Tamika and she felt as though she had more autonomy to change what she did, how she did it, the timeline to do it or might be there's like, you know, a family issue that's going on or something where people are, you know, have, you know, maybe a right to, you know, or need to be having some discussion of I need to be able to take some time off or like family medical leave.

Carol (00:27:14) - And I'm just harkening back to a prior podcast that you had and you were talking with, I think, an HR outsourcing piece, which was a great episode. I really, really love that. And I'm and I'm harkening back to when he when you're talking about, well, maybe FMLA leave. And the person said that the client said, well, I only want to give him six leaves and like, well, that's nice. However, the law does require 12. So a little bit of that kind of situational awareness of being able to ask people questions about did it work at one point in time? What do you think is impeding it? Do you think it's a technology issue to our people switching how they have done work? Is there a communication issue like for example, where if this happened before, were you able to like, you know, pick up a phone and talk to Tamika? And now we don't have direct phone lines anymore. We're just relying on technology. And I'll give you another little fun, funny kind of example of how different generations might approach remote work.

Carol (00:28:21) - I would just worked with a state agency and they still call it teleworking. And the and the and one of the and one of the people said, you know what? I think that I'm still calling it teleworking. So I am assuming that if someone has a problem or it's something urgent that they are going to pick up the phone. And she's like, well, maybe even how I'm describing it is impacting my expectations of people. And that isn't that interesting because I don't think many people call it tele working anymore. We call it remote work. And it's and it is a little bit of a generational thing of and I think this also causes conflict of people now view telephone calls as interrupting their time of someone saying, okay, now I need you and I'm going to interrupt your time versus, you know, asynchronous work where I can get back to you when it's convenient for me. And I think that's more, uh, more prevalent on maybe global teams or teams that regularly work across many, many different time zones.

Carol (00:29:26) - And also I'll point out that maybe some of the issues might be more people who are kind of salaried salary based or, you know, kind of have those exceptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act where like, hey, you know, we work until the job gets done versus like maybe are you working with folks who are more hourly employees and subject to more regulated working environments? Well, how does the virtual environment then work for them? You know, are we having the same expectations on them, which, by the way, a former employment lawyer here, you know, are you setting yourself up for some risk management issues? Because you're thinking that because people have the potential to be accessible all the time for virtual things, that they are accessible all the time and then we have the problem of people can never unplug. 

Tom (00:30:16) - Okay. I'd love to tell you a couple of things that we have done to, I think, make people more comfortable with conflict and also giving constructive feedback. And I'd love to hear if you think that those are good practices, maybe more that we should be doing things like that.

Tom (00:30:29) - So I'll tell you two quick stories that to me showed the need for this, that when I first started with the company, I started in January and the leadership team, someone said, Hey, we had a problem over Christmas because there were a couple people who were not available because they were on vacation. We had some client problems. HR Director Would you please announce to the whole team that when you're out on vacation, you need to make everyone aware? And that was accepted. Okay. So a little bit later it came back that that kind of request within a few months was, you know what you're talking about. Two people go talk to those people because at the staff meeting, they may have heard that. Yep, that's a great idea. They're not talking to me. The other ones, we had a couple of employees who we had to let go, and the employee said, this is really the first time I heard about these performance problems. And so now there's a general feeling of we need to be telling people, you may remember from when we onboard employees every two weeks we're getting updates and I've been with some of our younger team members where I've said, you know, behind the scenes you were telling me that Carol was struggling a little bit.

Tom (00:31:25) - And then I was in the meeting with you where you told her she was doing a great job. Oh, you're not helping her out. She needs to know that that's where this is. And so those are two things. And then from a training standpoint, we took the leadership team through the radical Candor book and some exercises where people kind of put themselves on the grid and things like that. But I think the two expectations around have the conversation and the constructive feedback have been helpful to make it a little better. And I would say our owners and leaders think demonstrate a really good job of they'll jump in and have that conflict constructive conversation comfortably.

Carol (00:31:56) - So yeah, a couple of things that I think are doing really good. One for the vacation, you know, aspect, it's like if that is an expectation, you know, because of customer service, because of the nature of the industry that are going on, being able to say the expectation, and it's like, well, you know, we want you to be able to take time off.

Carol (00:32:15) - But sometimes there are critical times where, you know where we need to get in touch with you because we aren't equipped to be able to have like, you know, a triage team jump in and that you might be that you'd be the connection. So one being able to establish the guideline there, that's really good. However, if you are managing by suggestion, you know, kind of like that, all of a sudden we're making a rule because we're not giving feedback to two people. That's not great. And it starts coming across as really kind of autocratic. But it's a subtle way. If we want to say this is the expectation for everyone and reminding people of what the expectation is, great. Everybody needs a refresher. However, there does need to be the one on one conversation then, because I have heard it over and over again, Carol, like if you're doing a training or whatever, that the person who needs to hear it isn't there or they're not getting it, or they think that there is a rational, completely logical explanation of why that rule didn't apply to them at that point in time.

Carol (00:33:24) - Um, and that's not good. So being able to say this is what the expectation was, you know, you're not meeting the expectation and regardless of what the completely rational and there are two different things, was there a completely rational way? You're like, Oh yeah, that really made sense. We need to kind of bring that back to the team to kind of understand more context or it's like, you know, no, that's really, you know, a non-negotiable piece. And in the future we need to that not happen again. One of the other items is that yeah you can't necessarily mean it's good praise in public great you know and whether you do that virtually or whatever that is a fantastic thing. Council in private however are you giving inconsistent messages and so people will tend and I also say like if someone's doing something wrong, don't pull back every single thing, you know, any type of acknowledgement of something that you're in. Right? Because then it's a cycle of the only feedback I'm getting is negative, negative, negative.

Carol (00:34:26) - I don't I can't please them. I don't seem to be doing anything right. So what we can say is, you know, this needs work. This is a deficit. This expectation of how it's being done is not being met. We do see that you're doing other things well. However, this is what you're not doing well is undermining the other pieces. So I need for you to I need for you to continue doing those things well. And I really need for you to focus on this and know that this is a concern. You know, you don't want to do it in, you know, in public. And I think that's one of the disadvantages. If you're only getting people together in group settings in front of a camera or not a camera, people want to be efficient with the time. So they may take the opportunity to say, hey, I didn't really like the way that this went. You need to be doing better, or let's talk about this in front of this entire audience not being good.

Carol (00:35:23) - It could be, Hey, there's something I want to talk to about it. Let's set up a private meeting so we can spend a little bit more time talking about it. But I do think a lot of people take advantage of group settings, particularly if you're higher, higher up in an organization where your time is, you know, an organizational asset and it's hard to get time with you, people are going to try to take advantage of that and they may start criticizing in public forums, which is not good.

Tom (00:35:53) - Yeah, that is not good. It is interesting when you think remote, though, because my guess is for some of those examples in office environment, it may have been walking down the. Hall with people and you could bump into them and give that same kind of feedback in a private setting that felt less formal and remote. Think can feel more formal, especially if, say, Hey, Carol, can I set up sometime? I've got some feedback for you for something. that can make it seem more formal. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it and aren't shouldn't be prepared to do it. But it isn't quite the just bump into someone and have that conversation.

Carol (00:36:22) - Correct and I think, I really love it when I hear leaders and people saying, you know, I have a weekly one on one or a biweekly one on one with people. So that way you have kind of developed a process of we have time to be able to talk about these things and it can be good things, it can be bad things, but it's not like a dun dun dun, I need to talk to you. Come to the principal's office because that's not good. And I have found that if people feel defensive, they may either be really, really, you know, assertive, going to aggressive or they're going to completely withdraw and it's easy to withdraw. Yeah, that's right. Okay. All right. Yeah, I'll do that. You know, particularly in a screen and you know, if they. Shut down that camera, then it's really hard for people giving the feedback to engage in a conversation, because all feedback should be a conversation because you may be having some assumptions or you maybe have bought into the label of what's going on or one person's version of it.

Carol (00:37:22) - And I think that's really hard. I hear a lot of people complain. It's like, you know, they only talk to one person and took that person's version as fact and then confronted me with it, which isn't good. If we if we approach it from a curiosity and try to look at, you know, how if you think about it, how could a decent, reasonable person who we screened and invited into this organization, you know, conduct themselves that way, maybe that's a little bit more of a curiosity question that kind of opens you up to to hear what they have to say. And that feeling heard, feeling seen, starting to have the conversation. That's where the conflict resolution comes and that's where the trust comes. Because sometimes it's like you have to work through things and the relationship to get stronger. It's like working out a muscle. If you learn about muscles, how we get them stronger is we work them past their kind of current comfort level. It creates little micro tears in the muscle, and then in healing, it makes the muscle stronger.

Carol (00:38:21) - It's a little bit through like how are we working through things? And so maybe even for the team asking the question of we work in a virtual environment, how do we want to be able to work through these if we have a concern, if we have a conflict? What has worked well in the past and we focus on what was working well and so how do we replicate that?

Tom (00:38:40) - Yeah. You've mentioned a couple of times really looking beneath the surface and understanding things, which looks very much like this is really an investment in the relationship to do it well because it's going to be stronger after you've done it versus this can be just a really quick that my job is just to get these three sentences out about here is where you could have done better and then run off after that. And you can see how the former is so much better to to say, my goal is that you're going to improve and deploy our relationships better. This conflicts behind us. So it spent some time doing it.

Carol (00:39:09) - Exactly. And you find that most people would have conflict.

Carol (00:39:13) - They want someone to start doing something or stop doing something. And it's usually all about the other person needs to do that. So it's kind of like abdicating their power and control, but being able to say, okay, help me understand how this is an impediment to you. Help me understand how this make you feel successful at work. Is it a system? Is it a process? Is it approach? And if it comes from help me understand what the impact is, then people can kind of tell their story. And from that you can, you know, say, okay, do we need to involve more people in this? Do I need to have other conversations? And then again, it's all about developing the relationship.

Tom (00:39:52) - So if we turn attention a little bit toward your company, what's the typical engagement, if there is one? When you engage with a company, I'm guessing our listeners are thinking, okay, yes, I'm getting influenced that I should be better at this and I've gotten a few tips, but if someone's singing about their own company and saying, I want some big improvements in this, what what helped you usually give to companies?

Carol (00:40:10) - So a couple of different things.

Carol (00:40:12) - I say that I help organizations either address or prevent workplace conflict, or sometimes I say the sucking vortex of pissed off. So I do it in a variety of ways. So when there can be, you know, professional development training, you know, retreats all about kind of skill building and gathering people. Sometimes it is coaching, sometimes facilitating work among a particular team or sometimes it's mediating. You know, if there's a particular relationship that goes difficult. So and sometimes it's like, Hey, Carol, we've got a person who we really value in in the company, but there are some conflict resolution skills, how they're treating people, how they need to go from, you know, a peer to a supervisor or, you know, start looking at a director level because to quote, you know, a friend of mine, it's you know, as you go up the chain, you get to a certain point. Unless you can inspire people, you'll be nothing less than mediocre. And if you're, you know, owning a company and, you know, developing the company, you know, how are you then empowering and leading not just the business, but the people.

Carol (00:41:24) - So sometimes, as I said, and sometimes it's a repeated engagements of training around communication and conflict resolution skills and maybe a little bit of subtle things about getting them to talk to one another. And so it's a lot of different it's a lot of different fun because we talked about conflict resolution and it's about work, it's about values, it's about people's approach to conflict. It's about their relationship with conflict. Isn't that interesting? They're all in some type of relationship with conflict and kind of uncovering and discovering that. 

Tom (00:41:59) - Sure. I would guess in many cases you're coming in with the I hired you to help fix this. And in the discussion I have to deal with, I'm not doing things very well also. I was hoping you'd come in and just get them in line.

Carol (00:42:09) - Well, yes. And I also because the employment relationship, even if it's just one single person they're in, I kind of call it an environment or a climate. So there is something in that culture, that environment and that climate that allowed whatever the concern was to grow and not be addressed.

Carol (00:42:26) - So it's not just one person, it's also what are the supervisory skills, what are the leadership skills, How, how does the team deal with conflict or not deal with conflict? And sometimes it's like, fix this. And I often say, you know, I'm a little bit like a midwife, meaning that I kind of know about the process. I know about what happens. I do this with a lot of different organizations, public, private, you know, medical education, professional firms. And so I can bring a value to folks because I can say, you're not alone in this. And I see this in a variety of places. But as a midwife, I can help. But I'm not the one doing the pushing. You know, it's that it's, you know, it's not my business. It's not my life. It's not my conflict. And that's kind of what my mediator training taught me, is that, you know, I am a neutral. I'm invested in trying to help people find success and develop a path.

Carol (00:43:25) - I help them define what success looks like and then bring tools to be able to help them address the presenting issue, but then also develop those relationships, deploy skills as after I leave because it's as I said, I'm the short term relationship, the employees and the and the vendors and those who you want to invite in. That's the long term relationship and how you handle conflict or don't how you how your people feel they are treated, that creates it's not just your brand, it's actually your reputation. So that's what would like to help businesses do is develop internally reputation for this is how we do things here and we do it appropriately and we help everybody develop their conflict resolution skills because their life skills.

Tom (00:44:15) - Yeah, that sounds like a great place for us to come to conclusion. Let me ask one last question. Anything that you would like to have covered or thought I should have asked that I didn't get to?

Carol (00:44:26) - Oh, you took my question. Always ask that question for, you know, for other, you know, for other people.

Carol (00:44:33) - So I, I do want to say that as leaders, again, you set the tone and people want to see you have a comfort for addressing issues. And even if you don't think, quote unquote, it's not your job, they should be able to do it. They want to feel as though you are interested in it and not avoiding it. I think that's a really big message, especially for owners and particularly for owners, you know, in the who are supervising CPAs. It's like, you know, people may go to get that professional credential, but it's how you work with the support staff, it's how you work with the other professionals that is really crucial. And they and everybody wants to feel valued. So I think that developing those types of skills that it's like, well, I'm just hired here to be a CPA And at some magic moment, if you want to, you know, become, you know, a senior partner or develop a practice of your own, it's about people as well, not just the technical proficiencies.

Tom (00:45:43) - Yeah, I think that's an excellent point to make, that for the people listening, I know a lot of people are leading their firms or being leaders in their firms to know that you're not doing this as well as you should and think that maybe it's not having an impact. Think is is foolhardy. People are watching what you're doing. And I think that we do it well internally. If none of the leaders around are going to deal with conflict, how would you expect the people under them to to care at all about how that's being done? They're going to see that.

Carol (00:46:09) - Yeah. And I would think the other piece, if I didn't highlight it before, it's if you have, you know, well-meaning, intelligent people who you have invited into the organization and they can't figure it out, it's not just will they need to be adults, it's that you have caring adults who have different professional backgrounds, different metrics and different best practices based on their particular professional backgrounds that are telling them to go one go one particular way versus another.

Carol (00:46:42) - So that's when you as a leader can step in and say, I love your ability to be autonomous. I love your ability to be able to advocate for your position, but this is how I want it done here. This is my sandbox. This is how this is the decision that I am making because it's. How the work is getting done. So this is where I need to step in and make a decision. So, yeah, don't be afraid to make decisions.