resoblog

Important Topics on Harnessing the Power of Conflict

Featured Blog Posts
(scroll down or search for all posts)

Resoblog

Four Myths That Perpetuate Abrasive Behavior At Work

When we join a company, partnership or team, our expectation is that everyone involved will exhibit professional behavior toward us and each other. Instead, it’s highly possible that we may become one of the more than 60 million adults in the United States who are affected in some way by bullying behavior at work.

What kind of behaviors are we talking about? Our definition is any interpersonal behavior that causes emotional distress in others sufficient enough to impede their productivity or disrupt organizational functioning. It isn’t just a personality conflict — it’s a chronic pattern of disrespectful behavior.

When your business team starts spiraling down

A healthy business team is one with strong relationships and vibrant engagement. It’s a beautiful place to be, where people feel heard and creative ideas bump against each other in an open, constructive way. We call it the Creative Tension Zone and it’s the dream (or should be) of any organization with an aim toward consistent growth.

Teams fall out of this place for various reasons, and the spiral downward can devolve into destructive conflict. It is critical to know where you and your team are on the Conflict Curve in order to make good decisions in “real time” so you can recognize what’s happening and pull your team back from the Conflict Spiral abyss.

The Difference Between HR and Organizational Ombuds Functions

On average an ombuds will see 3-5% of an organization’s members in the course of a year. Our work as organizational ombuds has increased steadily over the last couple of years, where we’re initially called in because someone in leadership is being dogged by a “small” conflict that won’t go away but keeps festering and growing until they can’t sweep it under the rug any longer. (From there, we typically enter a contractual arrangement with clients where we serve as their ongoing go-to ombuds, mediator, and conflict adviser.)

10 Ways an Ombudsman Can Increase Your Workplace Productivity

He could have been sitting in the corner of the conference room where I was convening as Organizational Ombuds for a team that was stuck - there was (emotional) clutter, plenty of discord, and a really difficult situation. Tension was high, people were venting. At any moment (my experience told me) someone could explode with frustration. It was like a freight train approaching the room, about to crash!

Creative Tension in the Workplace: Who needs it? You do!

Creative Tension Zone is where huge ideas emerge, innovation thrives, and empires are built! The most successful workplace teams know how to manage constructive conflict to encourage creative tension. What every leader needs to know about leveraging the power of conflict in a team.

Workplace Conflict: How to Deal with Hot Buttons

Have you ever said: “That person just presses my buttons”? We call these 'conflict hooks', because your reaction to the button-pusher has the potential to feed conflict. Understanding what conflict hooks are can help you and your team make better response choices.

9 Early Warning Signs of Workplace Conflict

Conflict doesn't just appear out of nowhere. There are always signs warning that a conflict is developing. Managers who know what these signs are can be more effective leaders by confronting the problem before it rages out of hand. By resolving conflict in the early stages, the company will run much more smoothly and the overall productivity level will be increased considerably. What are these subtle signs of conflict to look for?...

March 28, 2025

Ghouls No More: Why Workplace Bullying Needs More Than Just Mediation

March 28, 2025/ Mark Batson Baril

By Mark Batson Baril Mediator | Team Coach | Conflict Guide | Founder, Resologics

Let’s talk about that ghost in the office. You know the one. The high performer everyone avoids. The one who leaves a trail of tension, fear, and exit interviews. Too valuable to lose, too toxic to ignore. It’s time we stop calling them "difficult personalities" or chalking it up to "just their style." Let’s call them what they are: abrasive workers. And let’s get clear—what they need isn’t another communication training. They need an intervention.

The Cost of Looking Away

(1)Research shows that workplace bullying costs organizations dearly:

66% of people report performance decline
78% say their commitment to the organization drops
12% leave entirely

When managers do nothing, they lose credibility. Employees interpret inaction as complicity. The message: “Bad behavior is okay if you bring in enough revenue.”

Two Broken Systems That Keep the Cycle Alive

At the heart of persistent abrasive behavior lie two broken systems.

System 1: The Organizational System

This is the structure and culture around the abrasive worker. Managers are often trained to track metrics—sales numbers, deliverables, deadlines—but not conduct. Conflict gets labeled a “personality clash” and swept aside.

The result? The high performer is protected, while others suffer or leave. Morale erodes. Turnover spikes. Leadership credibility tanks.

System 2: The Human System (The Abrasive Worker’s Inner World)

This system is personal and psychological. Abrasive individuals often lack emotional awareness and don’t understand their impact. They’re not always malicious—often they’re anxious, defensive, or unaware.

Trying to fix one system without the other is a recipe for failure.

The Broken Pipe Metaphor

Trying to solve abrasive behavior with a mediation or a one-off training is like slapping a Band-Aid on a busted pipe. Sure, it might stop the drip for a moment—but pressure keeps building underneath. Eventually, the pipe bursts. Everyone around gets soaked.

Good conflict resolution isn’t about quick fixes. It’s about permanent repairs. Diagnosing the system, understanding pressure points, and doing the courageous work of fixing the plumbing—not patching the leak.

Why Traditional Fixes Fail
We’ve tried:

Communication workshops
Mediation sessions
Facilitated team meetings
Coaching both parties
Avoiding the problem until retirement

These don’t address the real dysfunction.

The Fix That Works

Diagnose the system: Confirm behavior patterns through multiple data sources.
Empower management: Teach the difference between performance and conduct.
Coach the abrasive worker: 82% of abrasive leaders can change—but only with firm intervention and support.

What Courage Looks Like

Intervening isn’t punitive—it’s compassionate. You're giving someone the tools to grow. But if they can’t or won’t change, leadership must be ready to act. Because here's the truth: You can't build a people-first culture by excusing people-last behavior.

Final Thought

HR professionals, team leads, and managers—you’re the guardians of workplace safety and sanity. It’s not just your right to act. It’s your responsibility.

If your Spidey Sense is tingling? Listen to it. That’s the call to start fixing what’s broken—for everyone’s sake.

Need support diagnosing your workplace conflict? Reach out. www.resologics.com | mark@resologics.com or go directly to the industry’s diagnostic tool, https://s.abrasiveleaderdiagnostic.com/secure_public

(1) Pearson, C.M., & Porath, C.L. (2009). The Cost of Bad Behavior: How Incivility Is Damaging Your Business and What to do About It. New York: Portfolio/Penguin Group (USA).

December 21, 2023

Kick Off 2024 With Strong Team Agreements

December 21, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

As team lead, manager, or head of your organization, you want to ensure that your teams are cohesive, collaborative, high performing, and strong enough to weather any stormy seas of conflict, crisis, and disruptive behaviors.

This is the stuff of team agreements.

What I sometimes hear from folks is, "Sure, yeah, of course our teams have agreements. Everybody's on the same page." What turns out to be true is that their team agreements are unspoken, unwritten and un-negotiated—meaning, not designed in any thoughtful or clear manner that will set the team up for success.

December 05, 2023

When you find yourself on the receiving end of conflict at work

December 05, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

In the heat of a tough conversation that hooks us (or the other guy) emotionally, those emotions can get the better of us. Our egos get slapped around, our precious values are attacked, even our personal safety can feel threatened.

The truth is that conflict is natural. When two or more people, or groups of people, are not meeting each other’s needs, conflict can arise. When managed well, the conflict can become a productive, creative exchange that brings out something new, collaborative and wonderful—positive conflict.

November 15, 2023

7 benefits to building conflict resilience into your org culture

November 15, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

Why build conflict resilience into your company’s culture?

Fact: In any business environment, challenges and disagreements WILL happen. For a productive and happy workplace it’s crucial to have a plan in place to manage and de-escalate negative conflicts—with the intention to head them off before they begin.
The costs of conflict to your business are real and they are high.

September 26, 2023

Measuring the Unmeasurable: How to Assess Disruptive Behavior in Your Workplace

September 26, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

When it comes to human behavior (especially predicting and managing it), professionals in the field talk about "measuring the unmeasurable."

Most leadership assessments I've seen are based on important skills such as executing strategy, hiring, retention, succession, team and change management. However, when the rubber meets the road, it's an individual's personal characteristics and style that can make or break their success as a leader.

My work with teams and leaders has convinced me that it's a worthy effort to assess individual styles and behaviors and their impact on achieving outcomes. The cost to a leadership team that ignores—or accepts—abrasive behaviors is high.

September 21, 2023

Four Steps to Help De-Escalate a Conflict

September 21, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

Conflict De-Escalation is a slowing down (or stopping) of the escalation of conflict. In the mediation world, de-escalation techniques are used to reduce tension, hostility and emotional intensity during the mediation process.

We de-escalate conflict so we can check in with everyone’s needs and take action that will satisfy enough interests to end the conflict or at least restart the negotiation.

If you are in any type of management for your organization, it’s very likely that at some point you’ll encounter negative conflict that needs to be de-escalated. These same mediation techniques can help you diffuse a situation before it gets out of hand.

The best solution is for an organization to do their best to head off negative conflict in the first place, but that’s another story you can read about here. In the meantime…

August 10, 2023

Here’s a simple, powerful exercise to boost trust within your hybrid work team

August 10, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

What factor in high-performing teams is even more important in a hybrid work environment than it ever was in the office setup? In one word, Trust.

Here are just a few key reasons why:

Trust bridges the gap caused by people working from different locations and time zones. Separation can cause misunderstanding, wrong assumptions and, well, mistrust. When trust is embedded in the org culture, teams are more apt to believe in each other’s commitment, intentions, professionalism and work ethic. Trust engenders collaboration which is connected to strong performance.

August 02, 2023

Bad behavior at work: when do you step in?

August 02, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

If you are a CEO, manager, HR professional, or business coach, please read on….

According to the Society of Resource Management (SHRM), 87% of employees say that workplace incivility has negatively affected their performance.

So, at this moment you can safely assume that one or more employees in your organization are on the receiving end of bad behavior — not only negatively affecting their performance, but also their morale and emotional and physical health.

June 29, 2023

5 Steps to De-Escalate Conflict

June 29, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

As we move at an ever faster pace in this complex world of AI, political division, environmental change, ever shifting ways of working together and resolving differences, and dare I say it – general incivility – I want to try to simplify one of the most common things I see, and get questions about, in my everyday work. People ask:

How do I de-escalate conflict?

First let’s talk a little theory…

Conflict Escalation is when two or more people, or groups of people, are not meeting each others’ needs and head toward a less communicative side of the Conflict Curve (see the chart below). The escalation of conflict can happen quickly or slowly. Over the course of seconds, all the way to years. It can look like a child throwing a tantrum over a toy, to members of political parties losing trust in one another, or worse.

June 15, 2023

What to Do When Abrasive Behavior Enters your Organization

June 15, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

[Excerpted from International Ombudsman Association (IOA) article by Mark Batson Baril, Dec. 21, 2020. Read the full article here: “What to Do When Abrasive Behavior Enters Your Organization,”]

In my work as a Conflict Resolver, Mediator and Ombuds, I have encountered 17 situations to date that have involved a leader with an abrasive leadership style. It’s been hard for me to admit, but it took eight of those cases over several years before I really understood what was going on — and what to do about it.

In most of those cases the teams and organizations worked toward agreements that more or less stuck and the team’s performance improved. Yet, lurking beneath those changes was the abrasive behavior of the leader/individual that had not changed, so had not been addressed in a substantial way.

May 25, 2023

Can This Partnership Be Saved?

May 25, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

The cofounder team of six people were all best friends. They threw in all their money and joined together to start this coffee/bakery business in Nevada. They had a really good go in the first couple of years – customer base growing steadily, lots of popularity and people coming into the business interested in what they were doing because of their unique products.

At some point a few years in, they started having disagreements about how things were getting done, who was working the hardest, who was being paid fairly, and who was accountable for which responsibilities. All while the business was in the middle of growing pains.

They called me in as a coach and we did some team coaching. In my process we did interviews and surveys with everyone at the bakery as well as outside stakeholders.

May 09, 2023

Ted Lasso's tips on handling tough conversations

May 09, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

In the heat of a tough conversation (or person) that hooks us emotionally, those emotions can get the better of us and our tender egos can feel slapped around.

Tough conversations are inevitable in the workplace and particularly sticky when they involve a superior or, even stickier, a boss who’s chronically difficult.

These are the very moments when you want to keep your emotions and ego in check if you have any hope of achieving the outcomes you’re looking for in the conversation.

So, how do you do that? We look to America's favorite lovable leader, Ted Lasso, for advice…

April 17, 2023

What's behind the leader who behaves badly at work

April 17, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

For professionals responsible for a productive, engaged, harmonious workplace, it’s crucial to know what will be disruptive to that environment. Especially when the culprit could likely be a leader in the company.

What do we need to know, and do, about leaders who are regularly behaving badly and harming everyone in their orbit?

Let's get to know these folks, and what may be behind that behavior...

“Abrasive leaders become winners…”

First off, we know that abrasive leaders aren’t lacking in ability. Often it's their technical competence that led to their rise to management. It's this competence that often has management, fellow leaders, and stakeholders choosing to ignore the behavior—even as it continues to poison the workplace.

April 04, 2023

When the abrasive leader is THE leader (If I knew then what I know now)

April 04, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

As a conflict advisor I worked with a large nonprofit organization over several years with mediation and consulting work around conflict within their various departments.

I began hearing through the grapevine that this particular person we’ll call Marie was a very, very difficult person to work for.

At first I thought they had to be talking about someone else! I’d met Marie, and heard a lot of folks in that community talk about how brilliant she was and one of the most likable and charismatic people you’d ever want to meet.

March 21, 2023

When to Get Help for Workplace Disputes or Conflict

March 21, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

An organization, no matter what size, can find itself facing a conflict so entrenched, so ugly, that a key person is paralyzing the productivity of an entire group, a department is chronically unable to come up with a new idea, or leadership is in such disarray that partners aren’t speaking to each other and some are ready to walk.

Underneath almost every negative conflict are interpersonal relationships that are rubbing each other the wrong way. When emotions run high (especially fueled by fear or anxiety) people can dig their heels into their position and block their ears to anyone who tries to reason logically with them.

Mediators are specially trained to work with teams in these situations. They understand relationship dynamics in play and how emotions can run amok.

February 28, 2023

Bad Behavior at Work: You know you should do something

February 28, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

“You know you should do something about Chris, but you’re not sure what. You just received another complaint about his abrasive behavior. This isn’t the only complaint—they’ve been adding up. You haven’t done anything yet—you’ve been busy…You’ve been waiting to see if things would improve on their own. They haven’t.”(1)

If you’re wondering when to cross that line and do something, please consider this: Employees rarely report the suffering they experience from bosses or managers who bully them. Read this to learn why this is true. If it has gone so far that you're receiving more than one complaint, err on the side of believing that the effect of the behavior is more damaging than you think, to have brought these people forward to report it.

February 23, 2023

What if your employees are afraid to speak out?

February 23, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

"See something, say something" or "Snitches get stitches?" headlines the 2023 Ethical Culture Report, recently released by Ethisphere Institute. The standout for me from this analysis of global trends in org culture was about unethical behavior in the workplace and how, or if, employees are reporting it.

What struck me is that even though employees responded that they were willing to report misconduct when they saw it, only about half of them actually did so.

Why do they make the choice not to report misconduct?

February 07, 2023

Call out unnecessary roughness in your workplace

February 07, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

At some point in your work life you may have witnessed an employee who had an overly aggressive management style that caused friction and conflict with everyone around them.

More often than not, this kind of behavior is swept under the rug, tolerated, or “forgiven” because the person is in a leadership position or they’re perceived to have so much value to the company that it’s “worth” the behavior.

Let’s throw a flag on this play and call it what it really is: Bullying — no matter who does it, no matter how it’s done. It’s unnecessary and unacceptable as a leadership style.

January 30, 2023

With 10 million open jobs in the USA, please tell me again - why are you still working for that abrasive boss?

January 30, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

If you are a Matrix fan, take it from Tank, who would say, “oh no… it’s a trap! get out!” I'm not here to convince people to leave their jobs without trying for a change, but if you have tried to get change to happen and the organization has not been able to move things to a better point, it is definitely time for you to move on! BTW – see the end of this post to make sure you have really exhausted your options for change.

January 26, 2023

The Day I Quit My Job: The story of a bully boss

January 26, 2023/ Mark Batson Baril

When I was in my mid-20s, I moved to New England to work as a shop manager for a construction company. A family business of about 40 employees, I worked directly for the owner, Jack.

I remember like it was yesterday the very first day I arrived at work. Parking my truck and turning the corner toward the building, I heard before seeing my new boss screaming at the top of his lungs at a woman, who I learned later was a sister who worked for him. I really thought they were going to come to blows, but she seemed to be beaming right back at him, so I made myself as invisible as possible and continued on my way into the office.