Leadership Bridge President Deb Degner brought her executive coaching expertise to the 2025 Soirée Women’s Leadership Symposium, leading a packed session on navigating workplace conflict in a productive way.
According to Degner, it’s important to first recognize your relationship with conflict by asking three questions:
- How do you view conflict?
- How do you typically engage in it (or not engage in it)?
- Are you getting the results you want?
Conflict often has negative connotations, but Degner said it needs to be viewed through a different lens.
“Where we find the power is to move from that limitational belief of conflict into the possibilities it can provide,” Degner said. “We need to think about conflict as sometimes being relationship enhancing. Working through conflict can build stronger, better and more trusting relationships.”
Along with enhancing relationships, it can also highlight the importance of diversity.
“When we have diverse opinions, diverse faces and diverse people, we’re going to reach the best solution in every aspect,” she said.
Degner employed the Thomas Kilman conflict model to help attendees find their default conflict style, a model where styles are charted based on levels of assertiveness and cooperativeness. She noted there is no “correct” conflict style and that often, for true success, leaders must utilize different styles for different situations.
Credit: Sarah Oden
Competing, the high-assertive but low-cooperative style, is best used when on a tight deadline.
“Another time to be direct and competitive might be when you have an unpopular thing that just has to happen,” Degner said. “This is the boss who says, ‘I’ve listened, but this is what we have to do to reach our goals.’”
Collaborating is useful when time isn’t an issue.
“Collaborating is a great tool to use when you are working on team building,” Degner said. “It allows you to hear from everyone in a way that you can hear the different thoughts and perspectives.”
Degner said compromising is the style you go to when the competitive style has yielded no progress.
“It’s a good tool to use when you need to be fast and don’t have time to collaborate,” Degner explained. “You ask yourself, ‘What is it that he/she needs, and how can we meet in the middle so that we can find a resolution?’”
Avoiding and accommodating, the two lowest on the assertiveness scale, also have their roles in the workplace. According to Degner, avoiding conflict is the right move if you need to first strategize on how to reach a consensus or get emotions under control.
“Accommodating can be used when the issue is more important to them than it is to you,” Degner said. “It’s saying, ‘This person is really passionate about this, and I’m going to support them in this particular position.’”
Regardless of the style chosen, Degner encouraged having an end goal in mind before deciding which method to use.
“Goals are the beginning of intention,” Degner said, “but the power of being intentional is focusing on the impact that you want. Impact is the momentum you need to stay dedicated to implement the change and take action.”
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