Episode 36: HR’s Secret Weapon in Conflict Resolution: Mediation and Repair with Tania Waters
Reimagining HR with Trina Sunday explores how HR professionals deal with conflict
Trina Sunday: Conflict is inevitable in any workplace, but how we handle it makes all the difference. And I wanted to understand what Tania Waters sees as an external mediator and delve into the nuances of conflict resolution and discuss how HR professionals can better navigate and mediate workplace disputes. Welcome to Reimagining HR with Trina Sunday, the rule breaking podcast, where we challenge our thinking and our current people practises. This podcast is for time poor HR teams and business leaders who are feeling the burn, lacking laughs and not feeling the love. I’m Trini, your host and I’m here to cut through the bs, explore different ways of thinking and create high impact HR functions because happier, healthier organisations are better for our people and our, uh, bottom line. So if you are keen to flip traditional HR on its head, hit the follow or subscribe button so you’re the first to know when new episodes drop. I’m, um, here to help and also to shake things up. So let’s get started.
Tania Waters helps people resolve insurmountable conflicts through mediation and conflict coaching
Today I’m talking with mediator Tania Waters. After working in law firms in Singapore and Perth for over 20 years, including as a senior HR manager, she’s branched out to start her own consultancy, Tate Consulting, some years ago now, so she could focus on what she enjoyed the most and that’s helping people resolve insurmountable conflicts through mediation and conflict coaching. Welcome, Tania. And firstly, why?
Tania Waters: Why what, Trina, how don’t you get about that?
Trina Sunday: Are, uh, you a glutton for punishment? Tania, talk me through. What draws you to mediation and conflict coaching.
Tania Waters: Oh, uh, look, I find it absolutely fascinating, you know, sometimes I sit there and think, I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this. So, no, there’s no punishment at all. It’s something that keeps me interested, stimulated, curious, and it can also be enormously fulfilling. So, yeah, no, I think I’ve got the best job in the world.
Trina has been working in conflict resolution for a couple of decades
Trina Sunday: Trina, what led you to focus? Was there pivotal moments or. Obviously, you’ve come out of a long career. We’d been in the HR space and this is often how it happens because you do start to hone your craft and you’re dealing with conflicts, you know, all the time and you’re often mediating kind of difficulty or dysfunctional relationships. But how has your work evolved over the years for this to be the thing? What’s that career journey looked like for you?
Tania Waters: Well, it certainly. I was never sort of, you know, in the sandpit at school going, oh, one day I grow up, I want to be a mediator. And, you know, I never really knew it was a thing probably till about my mid-40s I guess. I was an only child growing up to two warring parents. So in fact, if I look back, I have been mediating or practising the skills of mediation since my earliest age, I guess. And from there I found myself working in law firm. So I went and did a management degree at uni, I went and did a grad programme in a large retail organisation, sort of learning how to be a, uh, manager. And then as my career evolved I ended up in law firm. So I’m not a lawyer, but I have worked in management of law firms for, as you mentioned earlier, you know, a couple of decades, sort of internationally and both sides of Australia. And so I had lots of experience with managing teams of people and I learned the hard way, as most people you, uh, know, I learned exactly how not to do it through trial and error and doing everything possibly wrong. And. And then I ended up in HR and sort of working in law firms. I always worked in very large commercial law firms and those firms all had big litigation practises. So, you know, more than 50% of the practise was litigation. So they’re quite adversarial workplaces to work in because the vast majority of people have been trained in an adversarial approach to problem solving, if you like. So as you can imagine, those sorts of organisations have a lot of internal conflict. You typically have, you know, high achieving type A personalities in a high pressured environment where people, you know, are billing, uh, in six minute increments. And so I, I naturally found myself, particularly when I was in hr, navigating the world of conflict and when I finished my sort of, I call it my corporate career. But I guess it was professional services when I stepped away and thought, I’m going to go and, you know, maybe set up a portfolio career. But I didn’t quite know what I wanted it to be. And some wise person said to me, Tania, when you look back over your career, what were the moments that mattered? And I always remember the question because that helped me unlock the answer and I instantly went back to those moments where they were intimate moments with people and it was helping them work through conflict. And it was something that I had had some success with, I think really by chance more than anything else. And it was something that I found hugely rewarding. So that’s sort of how I ended up in this space. Sorry, that was a long answer, wasn’t it, Trina?
Trina Sunday: No, I love it. And I think moments that matter is language that I use as well, and I think it’s such a powerful reflection, you know, when you are looking back on what you’ve done or what’s important to you. And we both know, everybody knows, even everybody that’s listening knows that conflict is inevitable in a workplace. Right. Wherever you put people together, there’s going to be conflict. But one of the reasons I reached out to you is because what I know and what I’ve seen and done, if, uh, I’ve got to own it as well. It’s how you handle it, though, that makes all the difference. Right. And more recently, especially, I’m seeing so many people harmed by bad practises in conflict resolution or a lack of conflict resolution, and it’s just awful. And so part of why I reached out was wanting to understand, well, what are you seeing as an external mediator? And I guess, in part to delve into kind of, I guess, some of the nuances of conflict resolution, with a view of really trying to understand how HR professionals as well, can navigate this. And I think sometimes we don’t see what happens on the other side when a mediator, trained, skilled professional is in a room in those intimate moments that you talk about. HR’s not there. And whilst we have that role, sometimes it’s a different role that happens, in my experience, when you have an external mediator that’s in that space. How do you talk about conflict? Like, if you’re trying to understand conflict, what kind of different conflicts are there? Conflict’s a big word.
Tania Waters: Yeah. Look, I don’t know that I necessarily talk about conflict as a mediator. Mainly the thing that I do in my job, the biggest thing I do is actually to listen. So I don’t do much talking at all. And I’ve always had a real difficulty with the term expert. I don’t really like the term expert. I certainly don’t like it applied to me because I’m absolutely not an expert in anything.
Trina Sunday: Don’t tell anyone that, Daniel.
Tania Waters: Um, yeah, well, I mean that very genuinely. And I don’t really resonate with the term expert really in anything, unless perhaps it’s, you know, a scientist, maybe. I like specialist. I think specialists is a good thing, but I think we’re all learning and experts sort of assuming that you can put a container around the body of knowledge and you’re right at the top. Whereas, you know, I think what we think today and then listening to this conversation, maybe in 20 years I’ll probably m be mortified, or maybe in 5 years I’ll be mortified, certainly mortified. When I look back at, you know, other things in my life. So I’m interested in conflict. I’m, uh, specialised in helping people with conflict. But I don’t think that if I’ve got the parties in front of me, I don’t really talk about conflict. It’s more a, ah, conversation led by me listening but asking questions about, well, you know, what’s this about for you? And because I guess conflict is sort of the label. But what it’s about will be about, well, it can be about anything. It might be about their autonomy or it, uh, might be about their values or it might be about boundaries or do you know what I mean? So it’s not about conflict. So I don’t suppose I necessarily talk about that as such. Although whoever engages me, usually it’s a HR professional or employee relations professional, but sometimes it’s a lawyer, sometimes it’s a board member or a director of an organisation, they will use the term conflict and often they’ll call it an interpersonal conflict and they think it’s about personality. That’s usually how they frame it up and say, oh, there’s a personality clash between Bill and Bob or whoever it might be. And I will listen to that. But of course, personality is such a broad term and in organisations it’s typically. That’s not what it’s about. There’s something else that has occurred and often one of the precursors are, uh, things that we can do about it in an organisation like, you know, role clarity or the structure of the organisation or our hiring practises. So there are lots of ways that organisations contribute to these personality clashes between Trina and Tania or, you know, whoever it might be.
Trina Sunday: Yeah, I’m smiling if you’re not watching the video and you’re listening to this on audio, because I’ve heard that label used personality clash at least three times in the last, well, this week alone. And it is really interesting because somehow it allows you to dismiss all those other levers that you’re talking about that have contributed and you’re just putting all the onus on those two people who can’t get along in the office. And it’s so much more complex than that. Right.
Are you seeing patterns in terms of the kind of incidents or relationship challenges
Are you seeing patterns in terms of the kind of incidents or relationship challenges that you are mediating? What kind of things are you seeing? Are you being called in to help with?
Tania Waters: I am. That’s a good question, Trina. And I am. And I post about this sometimes on LinkedIn. I’ll do it every few months. I’ll do the sort of the common themes that I’m seeing at the moment.
So the whole working from home thing has been really interesting. I typically mediate in larger organisations
So the whole working from home thing has been really interesting. And what I’ve seen is people spend in the organisations where I mediate. So I typically mediate in larger organisations because usually they’re the people that have the budget to be able to afford someone like me to come in and help, uh, with this type of thing. And typically in those sorts of organisations, they’ve evolved to be quite flexible workplaces. And so people are working from home, you know, a couple of days a week, if not more. And so they don’t spend a lot of time together. And, you know, there’s been a lot of turnover in organisations over the last few years. And so a lot of relationships are fairly new and they don’t really know each other as people. They haven’t had a lot of time together in the same place to sort of connect as humans. And then something happens where they’re sort of pitted up against one another and there’s not a lot of benefit of the doubt or a lot of goodwill that exists in the relationship because they really just don’t know each other very well. And so it doesn’t take very much for them to hit rock bottom really quick. So when all their relationship is simply business, you know, I’m online, you’re online, you know, we’ve got meeting after meeting and we don’t get to talk about which footy team we follow or what sort of pets we have or, you know, what we like to do. There’s no other sort of form of connection then. It really doesn’t take much for it to be a catastrophe. And they don’t have the skills, they don’t know each other well enough to be able to instigate a conversation to talk about it. So I think the whole not spending a lot of time together hasn’t helped. And a lot of people I mediate between either seem to be. They’ve had a really long relationship and often a friendship and it’s gone bad and then it’s a catastrophe, or the other end where they really don’t know each other at all as people and something’s happened and it’s a catastrophe and they can’t figure it out, there’s not a lot there in the middle. Does that make sense?
Trina Sunday: That’s interesting. Yeah, it makes absolute sense. And I think.
I think in listening to you talk about the hybrid work arrangements or the work from home
I think in listening to you talk about the hybrid work arrangements or the work from home, you know, remote work, and because it’s part of the argument, right, or it’s been used as the argument, the mandate to return to the office by executive, where really a lot of it’s around fear based leadership and micromanagement and, you know, if we can’t see you, we don’t know you’re doing things. So this whole trust thing, but that’s for another day. But, um, it’s really interesting listening to you talk about that because there’s, what I’m thinking about is there’s just, there’s no grace. Right. Uh, like it’s like the goodwill element.
Tania Waters: Yeah, it’s a beautiful word.
Trina Sunday: You know, and so there’s no grace to kind of have those hiccups or, you know, because we just write people off really quickly because we haven’t kind of built that up.
Tania Waters: That’s right.
Trina Sunday: And then on the flip side, I can imagine. And um, I’ve seen this happen myself, you know, where the friendship turns. Then you’ve got a whole grieving process. I’d imagine that’s happening.
Tania Waters: You’re exactly right. Spot on. Part of that is grief. Yeah, that sense of loss.
Trina Sunday: Yeah, that’s incredible. And then in the middle, you’ve just got people cracking on and trying to do what they’re doing. Not always, you know, constructively, but, you know, it’s not showing up at those polars opposite.
Tania Waters: You know, if you’re having those, you know, you have those water cooler chats and you, you bump into each other while you’re both making a cuppa at 10:15 and you know, you pass one another’s office and you say, oh, you know, how’s your tippy tippy going? Or whatever. Those little incidental things, whilst they’re not big on their own, it just creates a bit of a buffer zone where all of a sudden you get this email and you’ve written to me and you’ve copied in the whole world and I all of a sudden, you know, think, oh, what’s she done that for? Trying to make me look bad in front of everyone. And then I go, oh, hang on, it’s Trina.
Trina Sunday: Ah.
Tania Waters: Uh, she’s not normally like that. M must have been a mistake or there’s more to it. But when you don’t know each other at all, you don’t spend much time together and workplaces are quite competitive places, you know, resources. It’s not like organisations are flush with people and everyone’s going, oh, I’ve got so much time on my hands to do my job. A lot of the people that I speak with in mediation are really under the pump. They typically are under resourced. They’re trying to do more with less. And again, doesn’t take much then to sort of ignite the flames.
Trina Sunday: Mm. It’s the pressure cooker, isn’t it? So we’ve got all those elements that are kind of contributing to putting people in a space where they don’t have the emotional bandwidth to breathe, I guess.
What are some misconceptions about workplace conflict and what do people think mediation is
In between those moments, what are some of the misconceptions about workplace conflict? What do people think mediation is? I’ve heard some really interesting things. How do people describe your job to you?
Tania Waters: Uh, look, I’m married to an airline pilot, right? I’ve been married for 31 years this year to an airline pilot. And so I have taken a backseat for most of my career. Career. They meet, you know, oh, here’s Tony and Tania, and they go, oh, Tony, what do you do? And, you know, they find out that he’s an airline pilot and I have been brushed aside. People would never even talk to me, you know, I just stand there with my glass of wine, you know, and I’d listen to my husband tell the same stories, you know, and they were all like, oh, it’s so amazing. It’s such an interesting job. And it is, right? So I think it’s amazing still. But, uh, since I’ve become a mediator, if they get past the airline bit, and they don’t always, but if they do, and they say to me, you know, and what do you do? And, you know, I like to say something, you know, I help people deal with conflict at work, or I’m a mediator, that line might come out. Or, uh, they get really interested and my husband’s having to take a back seat. Now. People are very interested in conflict and mediation and what it is. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of people now who have been divorced, unfortunately, and a lot of the courts will order mediation. And so family court ordered mediation is very different from the sort of mediation that I practise in a workplace setting. But people will often take that experience and superimpose it and assume that it’s the same thing, which is banging out a deal. Or they might say, oh, yes, so. And so is an ex judge, you know, retired judge, and is now a mediator. But how that person practises mediation, coming from the legal profession is quite different. So for me, my focus is about restoring relationships. That’s typically why someone would hire a mediator in a workplace to help two people who just are really stuck and can’t find a way out of this stagnation, I guess, to find a way forward and, you know, firstly to talk about it, then to negotiate a new way and restore the relationship so they can go on and continue working together. Whereas the other type of mediation, like a divorce mediation, is simply about finding a way to divvy up the assets and part way. So it’s about banging out that deal. Now, that’s not always the case and more and more mediators who work in that space now are actually going down the lines of going, well, hang on, these two people, whilst they might be getting divorced, uh, probably because of the children, going to have to have a constructive relationship for the next 20 plus years. So let’s actually help them do more than just divvy up the assets, but find a way about how they’re going to talk about sharing the children or the pets or navigating Christmases and birthdays. And so, you know, it is changing.
Trina Sunday: That feels more like a negotiation than a mediation. Right?
Tania Waters: Mediation is actually a facilitated negotiation. The difference is if you’re getting people who are in conflict, they are not yet able to do the negotiation part because usually when I get them, they can’t even look at each other. They enter the room, they, they’re looking down or they’re looking at me, they can’t look at each other. Their whole fight or flight system is screaming, get out of this room. So they’re not yet ready to negotiate what it is that they need to negotiate. So the first part of them is getting them to actually talk about what it is that’s important to them. Contrary to what people think, mediation is actually about coming to a place of shared understanding. It’s not about agreement, it’s about coming to a place of, well, how did it get to this? And you sharing and me listening and understanding your perspective. I don’t have to agree with it, but at least I can hear it and try and make sense of it to go, oh, uh, right now I can see why you did X, Y and Z. I would never have done that Trina myself, but at least now it makes more sense to me now that I’ve heard you explain how it was for you and vice versa. And then when we come to that place of shared understanding, again, it’s not agreement. We don’t have to agree with one another, but we just have to go. Now I can see from my perspective, from your perspective, here we are, well, what do we want to do from here? And it’s when they get to that bit, then you can do the facilitated negotiation of where do they want to go from there? Does that make sense?
Trina Sunday: Yeah, it makes absolute sense. And I think because when people are not in the emotional space to be able to. Or the logical space more so, you know, they’re in an emotional space, not a logical space, it’s hard to get to a position that has any commonality. Right.
So what does a typical mediation look like? Is there such a thing
Like, so what does a typical mediation look like? Is there such a thing?
Tania Waters: Well, there is for me, so I’ll just answer, ah, one thing first before I tell you that. Because you just touched on something which is really important, which is just a little nugget of gold, really. And that is. You’re right. When people are really upset, they’re not ready to talk. Well, they’re not ready to talk full stop, usually, let alone talk about what’s important to them. And they don’t even know really what it’s about or what’s important to them and can’t articulate it. And there’s a beautiful saying which I always keep at the forefront of my mind, and I usually. I do a bit of training at the UWA Mediation Clinic, and I’m always telling the students this, and that is distress trumps interests. So if you go off and do a mediation accreditation, as part of the initial part, you learn about positions and interests. And so positions are, uh, the. I’m not going to sign that contract until you do X. So that’s a position and an interest would be Y. Why is it I’m not prepared to sign the contract until you do X. So that’s positions and interests. But distress trumps interests. So if I am really upset, I can’t begin to even talk about, well, what it is that’s really important to me until someone acknowledges my upset. And so as sometimes, usually the other party can’t do that. It’s the mediator who needs to be able to understand that point. And they need to be able to acknowledge the stress that they can see in that party. And soon as someone can acknowledge the distress. Trina, I can hear that you are really unhappy about dirt. Uh, it sounds like, yes, I am. And that’s what happened. And da, da, da, da. And when they feel like someone’s heard them and someone’s beginning to understand them, then they can sort of let go of it somewhat to be able to begin to listen and then begin to describe why it’s important to them and what it is that they want. So as part of that, then what is a mediation process look like? I follow the national mediation standard, and that is I Always conduct pre mediation sessions with each of the parties individually before I conduct a joint mediation session where both the, uh, people or multiple people are in the room. So it’s not always two parties. And so in the pre mediation session, I’m inquiring with interest, really, what’s this really all about for you? And so I hear a little bit about their story and their background and then leading into, you know, how they first met this person. And then perhaps when times were good initially, and then what happened and then what happened and then what happened? And slowly they start to unpack it. And it’s not for my benefit, although that’s probably what they’re thinking. It’s actually for their benefit to slowly unwind um, it all and put a bit more detail and figure out for themselves why has it turned into this big thing that they can’t otherwise resolve themselves. So usually when people are upset, it becomes very binary. It becomes very black and white. And I’m right and they’re wrong. And as they start to tell the story and as someone is listening to them with curiosity and asks for a bit more detail, and what were you thinking then? And how did that feel? How did. And then what did you do next? And why was it that you chose to do that instead of this? Then the story starts to become more nuanced, and they can see the different choices that they had and the different choices that they took. Then they perhaps start to see themselves and maybe some of their own contribution. And then after that, you can start to then explore, well, how might this end differently? What’s the art of the possibility here? So that’s what happens in pre mediation with each of them. And then when you put them together, you know, a lot of your work has already been done. Um, then they share those stories with each other, and then from there you do the negotiation part.
Trina Sunday: How successfully does this happen? Pre mediation happens. So you’re setting it up for success. How many times can you resolve it in a room? First go.
Tania Waters: Oh, the vast majority of times.
Trina Sunday: That’s incredible.
Tania Waters: Yeah.
Trina Sunday: I, uh, know that you’re reacting to the expert word, and that’s fine. Let’s go with specialist. I want to keep you comfortable.
Tania Waters: Yeah, thanks.
Trina Sunday: But there is an art in this.
Tania Waters: There’s an art and a science. So you’re right, there’s both. So there’s a science that I follow. Absolutely. Which is the national mediation standard, which is what everyone learns if they go and do a national mediation accreditation, which is the facilitated model. So I still follow that model. But yes. Within that, then there’s a sense of artistry. Uh, and I guess every mediator will be different and one’s not necessarily better than the other. But we all, I guess, bring ourselves and our approach, which has been influenced by our own experiences, to the standard model that we follow.
Trina: I did mediation early in my HR career
Trina Sunday: And I find that really intriguing because I think, and you shared and I thank you for that. You know, that you might have crafted some belief systems early around conflict and mediation and. But as someone that’s hired in lots of mediators, as a head of hr, there is an artistry in a craft and sometimes it’s about fit, but sometimes it is what that lived and learned experience is that sits behind the framework that then impacts how you sit across the table or how you hold the space. And I know that for me, sitting in a space and listening so acutely without interjecting with the World According to Trina is a challenge for me. I know where my limitations are. I always have a lot to say. And I did mediation early in my HR career and it was, you know, and you do it through hr, business partnering or as part of the roles that we have. But there is a specific space where we need to escalate, bring in specialists, um, and people that have a different way of approaching this, that can get better outcomes. And so I’ve seen mediators take it to multiple, multiple sessions and I think so I just wanted to kind of acknowledge that not everyone is as successful as that as you are.
Tania: My superpower over those people inside organisations is my independence
Tania, like, on reflecting on the skills that HR have versus perceived skill differences with what you have, like, I’m curious, the internal versus external parts, like, what are the benefits and how do you feel it sits if you’re looking between internal and external?
Tania Waters: Trina, that’s an excellent question and I’m glad that it’s come up. Just because I am an external mediator doesn’t mean that I am a better mediator than, say, you know, yourself or someone else, another HR practitioner, uh, inside the organisation or the managing director or anybody really. It’s not that I’m better, but my superpower over those people inside organisations is my independence. So my duties of care are very different from that of a HR practitioner. So those people in front of me, those employees can disclose and talk about things in front of me that they absolutely cannot or should not talk about in front of another employee or director of the organisation. Because if you do, that will trigger a whole different process. But for me, I’m looking for, you know, if they’ve got a risk of self harm. Or harming somebody else, I will break confidentiality and report it. And, you know, if they’re breaking the law, same thing, I’ll break confidentiality and report it. But otherwise they can tell me that they hate their job and they hate their boss and they’re actively interviewing for jobs, or they deliberately come to work 15 minutes late every day because it’s their only way that they can get their own back or whatever it might be. Or they can make allegations to the person sitting across the table in front of them saying, I’m sure at that Christmas party, I saw you take that bottle of wine and sit out the back and drink it with so and so. And all those things that if they said that in front of a HR practitioner or someone else in the organisation, as I said, it will trigger a whole different other, um, process or questioning or whatever. Whereas they can talk about that stuff in front of me and really get to the bottom of what it is that this is really about. I’m sure that you’re having an affair with so and so or, you know, all sorts of things come up or. When you talk to me like that, it reminds me of my ex husband and he’s the only one that would speak to me like that. And I swore that I would never, ever tolerate someone speaking to me like that. And so when you do it, that’s why I put in this bullying allegation and I can’t work with you and, you know, so they can really get it all out. So it’s not that I’m better, but I have the trump card, which is independence and that makes a huge difference and we can get down and dirty much quicker, whereas you’re unlikely to at all inside the organisation. And so that’s why you can really get to the bottom of it and get lasting results.
Trina Sunday: That’s, uh. So true.
Tania Waters: That was a long answer. Sorry.
Trina Sunday: It is so true. So true. I love it.
I find that there’s a lot of fear around grievances in HR
I guess one of the things that I sit with in this is what are organisations or what could they be doing for those that can’t afford to bring in mediators all the time? Where do you start? Like, we acknowledge the complexity of all the things. Lack of job clarity is always something in the transformation, where even with. I do a lot of HR transformation, right. So I’m looking at lots of HR teams and working on their clarity, their roles, their strategy, how they’re delineating, you know, breaking down their silos. You know, I’m trying to look at the. Get your house in order before you go out and Tell the world how to be. Yeah. But I’m curious to know, kind of, where would you start? Like, if you’re looking at it from an organisational perspective, to try and minimise dysfunctional relationships or deterioration, like, where would you put some energy first?
Tania Waters: I find that there’s a lot of fear around grievances and for HR teams, it’s sort of like their worst nightmare to get a grievance. And so when that grievance comes in, it’s, you know, oh, my God, oh, my God, we’ve got this grievance. It doesn’t mean that they handle it very quickly, mind you. So I don’t know whether it’s like deer in the headlights or what happens, but they. They. That’s not really fair. It’s a generalisation. What I am seeing is a, uh, lot of fear around grievances. And instead of encouraging people to talk to one another, there seems to be this thing of, oh, my God, we’ve got to separate these people because we can’t have any harm done to anyone. And there’s a pathologizing of workplaces now, which just seems to be paralysing people. And so the basics of humanity are just thrown out the window. Like, they would never handle their own lives in this way, but I don’t know what it is. They’re scared of this new legislation or scared of making a mistake. And so the ability to encourage people to just talk with one another about, oh, you know, I’ve received your grievance. Can you help me to understand, you know, where has this come from and what’s this been like for you and, you know, what are you hoping to achieve? How do you want things to be done differently? So not being scared of grievances and actually getting curious and digging down and finding out more. And the other part is the whole training of getting people to talk to each other and to talk about things that maybe might not be so comfortable and to talk about things early. That’s the biggest thing is I get so much work because either people are scared of the whole grievance process or because people just don’t know how to talk to each other in workplaces. I don’t know. It’s a weird time at the moment, it seems.
Trina Sunday: I m. Think it’s all of that.
Tania Waters: Yeah. What do you think?
Trina Sunday: I’m trying to decide what F word to use without being expletives, but I think it’s. I think it’s festering or fear, which ends up in the other cluster F that where probably you get engaged.
Tania Waters: Yeah.
Trina Sunday: I think I, uh, do think that we have some challenges around fear based leadership. So we’ve got leadership that’s not role modelling, having difficult conversations and avoiding them. We’ve got HR teams that are then, I feel not necessarily empowered and enabled then to push for hard conversations. Cause they know that they’re not gonna get backed in. Yeah. When it escalates or gets escalated. Cause I was always, especially as a head of hr, I was always keep the problem closest to where the problem is. Yeah, that’s always been my philosophy in life.
Tania Waters: Great line.
Trina Sunday: Absolutely. Uh, and even when I look at reclassifying jobs or if there’s restructuring or if we’re trying to solve problems and increase productivity, you gotta talk to the people that do the work. Or if there’s a challenge or dysfunction in a team. Well, we need to talk to the people closest to the problem because that most of the time they are the people that also know how to solve it.
Tania Waters: I would even say all of the time. Yeah, I know it’s very rare. I would say all, but really they do.
Trina Sunday: I think you’re right. But I think it’s the tools though to help do it in a way to navigate the emotional part. And I think that’s where we’re getting lost.
Tania Waters: So we have to normalise conflict and we need to train people on how to have conversations that are a little bit difficult. So you know how uh, to have conversations about things where we don’t agree. So I think that’s really important.
Most organisational cultures are driven by insecurity, Trina says
Trina Sunday: If we were to explore that, what are some of the things that come up for you? So having the tricky conversations, having the hard conversations, what are things that come into your mind?
Tania Waters: Avoidance is the biggest thing that comes to my mind. Like you don’t have to have a perfect conversation. It can be such a clunky conversation. You can even say, I’m feeling really uncomfortable about having this conversation because I really, I’m scared of making this situation worse. But I feel like if I don’t talk about it, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. So will you bear with me when I try and articulate what I’m trying to say? I’m probably not going to say it well, but please help me to do this as best I can and work with me. Just articulate it. Just say, I don’t know what I’m doing.
Tania Waters: It doesn’t have to be this, you know, a perfect. And I’ve got it down pat because I’m the HR person or I’m the director, or I’m the just be human about it. Because people are so kind and generous when you’re a little bit vulnerable with them.
Trina Sunday: And I find it’s more successful than.
Tania Waters: Yeah, absolutely, it is. People are very forgiving.
Trina Sunday: Yeah. But I think, and I don’t mean to say this with a degree of hopelessness, but it is where I feel like we’ve got a really interesting and slippery slope happening with the culture in our organisations, where we do have. The majority of our organisational cultures are driven by insecurity and it’s stopping people from showing up vulnerably either to raise an issue or solve an issue. And we’ve got to break the back of that. Which is why I really wanted to have this conversation with you, because I feel like these are tools and approaches that every single human can have that can change every single part of their life.
Tania Waters: Yeah.
Trina Sunday: I truly believe that if you understand what it is to have a conflict or have an issue, figure out that it’s not the end of the world and then have some tools around how you can maybe approach that chat, like you just said, or how do you help two other people to do that? And there are some skills.
Tania Waters: Something just came to mind then. So I was talking to someone at the dog park yesterday. That’s actually the example that came to mind. So, you know, again, I’m being vulnerable. I’m not saying I’m sitting at the boardroom table and, you know, so. And so. So I’m at the dog park yesterday and I was talking to someone who I see up, uh, there most afternoons and we usually have a chat and solve the world’s problems. And she said that she was part of a group that she goes to a couple of times a week and, you know, they pay and they have an instructor for this thing that they do. And so she went along yesterday. And it’s an hour of instruction and they pay for an hour. And that had been the previous day as well. So she does it two consecutive days in the week and has been doing it for some time anyway. So she went one day this week, paid for the hour, had the hour, went the next day, and halfway through the session, the person said, oh, I’m now off to a funeral. So a couple of students here, if you guys just want to take over and just take the group through something you’ve all done in the past, and left. And so the person came to the dog park and she was like, I’m not happy. I really feel like that was a really inappropriate thing. To do. She knew the day before that the next day she was only going to do half an hour. It took me, uh, you know, 45 minutes to get there. I wouldn’t have gone if it was only for the half an hour. I don’t want to be led by another student and I’m really upset. And I’ve said to her, oh, so you can talk about it? And she’s like, yes, I think I might, you know, come on mediator, what am I going to, what am I going to say? And look, the reality is none of us like to be told, right? I don’t want to be told anything. I’m sure you, Trina, if you’re like the rest of the humanity, we don’t like being told anything. So I said to her, well, perhaps if you’re asking, you might like to ask her a question of might there be another way to have handled that situation. I said, and then you’ve asked her the question. It’ll prompt a line of thinking, you know, with the instructor, you don’t have the responsibility of solving it. You don’t need to tell her what the answer is because that’s really only your opinion and your judgement. But if you wanted to know that you’re not very happy about it, then ask a question. So I think questioning is very underrated and also very powerful.
Did your dog park friend, curious rolling with this, did they dismiss having the conversation
Trina Sunday: Did your dog park friend, curious rolling with this, did they dismiss having the conversation because of the funeral being the context?
Tania Waters: Yes, she talked about that. She said, uh, I feel a bit bad because it’s a funeral. She said. But on the flip side, regardless, she said she knew that it was going to happen the next day. It wasn’t a close family that enough that she stepped away from work, it was to attend this particular thing. But I think she didn’t say anything in the moment because she couldn’t. She was in a class full of people and it happened. But she felt upset afterwards. She spoke to. I’m sure there was one other person, there might have been more who also said, you know, they weren’t happy either and wouldn’t have come had they known what was going to occur. So I think she was thinking about next week, letting the person know that.
Trina Sunday: She was upset because I could just see the complete parallels with workplaces, right. Like I feel like we discount and use ah, our perception of what the environment is or the timing or the whatever. Um, so the funeral in this case, to potentially not have a conversation in a moment. I mean she’s going to have the chat. So I’m not saying this is about, you know.
Tania Waters: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Trina Sunday: That person anymore, but I think there’s always that element where I feel like sometimes we discount. We just make a whole range of assumptions, basically.
Tania Waters: And we can always talk ourselves out of.
Trina Sunday: And then it’s convenient. Right. Because then we get to avoid having the difficult conversation because of the funeral. Right.
Tania Waters: But I’m still going to resent you.
Trina Sunday: For it, still going to hate on you, still going to let it affect us, and I’m not going to show up in the right headspace for learning next time. But I think that that’s one of the things where if you’re feeling aggrieved, if you’re feeling upset, and if you’re going to have the thing that’s going to fester, you’ve got to have the chat. You do. And yes, you want to be respectful of the timing. Yes, you want to have empathy in terms of where that’s at. But even on a pragmatic level, if you don’t have the conversation, nothing’s gonna change. And then in my mind, that’s on you. But sometimes we need some tools to help us do that.
Tania Waters: Yeah. So we can make it about ourselves. So that’s the other thing. We can use I statements rather than new statements, so we can say, look, you know, I didn’t feel great about the way the situation happened last week, and I know that you were going to a funeral. And let me state first and foremost, I’m really sorry about that and, you know, that’s not a very nice thing for you, but from my perspective, it’s left me feeling a bit resentful that I paid for an hour and I only got half an hour of your time and that another student is then leading the class. I wouldn’t have bothered driving the 45 minutes to come for the half an hour to be led by the, um, other student. Perhaps there’s a part of me that’s a bit upset that I wasn’t the student that was chosen to lead the class either. But the second part, I don’t know, but I’m curious as to, you know, were there any other options that you looked at in your own mind before you chose that one? Because that’s just what it was like for me.
Trina Sunday: Yeah.
Tania Waters: You know, and then it’s. It’s far less judgmental and the person can say, look, you know, I did think about this and I did think about that, and in fact, I actually didn’t know the day before. I got a phone call last night to Find out that this person had passed away. You know, because my dog park friend is assuming that the day before she knew she was going and deliberately didn’t say anything. But if, as you mentioned earlier, that’s an assumption.
Trina Sunday: Yeah.
Tania Waters: You know, so in hearing that, you go, oh, you only heard last night. And it was too late to make. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. I completely understand why you do it that way. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s all fun.
Trina Sunday: And then you’ve often got the other person. Again, same thing. In a workplace that comes up and does half the thing that they wanted to do because they didn’t want to let you down. And even in the moments where people try and turn up to do the best that they can do in the moment that they’ve got to do it, it’s not received as being enough. And that then creates a divide. And I think this is part of the challenge that people have where it’s like, I’m damned if I do, and I’m damned if I don’t train. I like, if I do this and it doesn’t work if I do this and it’s like, let’s just stop for a sec. Like, what’s showing up for you here? You know, like, what’s. And I do have a good space where I’m in a pocket there from a sounding board and a rapport perspective, and people kind of share lots, and then it’s, huh, tell me more about that. Um, but in terms of sitting across the table, it’s not the space I’m often in.
Tania says conflict resolution and mediation can strengthen relationships and workplaces
But I’m curious, as we close out our chat, Tania, what does reimagining HR look like to you with your conflict resolution and mediation lens? What would be different for reimagining HR to mend more broken relationships and workplaces? What would we be doing?
Tania Waters: Look, I think if we could build workplaces where, you know, conflict is surfaced early. So not. Not as I was talking before, just left and left and left and left and left. I mean, I’ve got a mediation next week. They’ve been talking to me about this mediation for, I would say, six weeks.
Trina Sunday: Oh, wow.
Tania Waters: And often when I get the parties there, they’ll say, like, we wish we’d had this conversation six months ago, a year ago, 18 months ago. And unfortunately, I mean, people do play a bit of silly buggers, you know, because they don’t often skip along to mediation. But the whole HR or grievance process, it can be so slow, and it just inflicts more damage the longer you leave it. So if Conflict can be surfaced early if it can be met with curiosity rather than defensiveness. Oh, we’ve got a grievance. Oh, uh, you know, call the lawyers. And if it can be resolved in ways that strengthen communication, strengthen relationships. So, you know, if people can work their way through a situation of conflict, more often than not the relationship is far stronger and their skills coming through it are far more enhanced than if they had never gone through it in the first place. So if you can say, okay, it’s not something to be scared about, but it’s something for us to get curious with and it’s something for us to handle well and it’s worth the investment, because on the flip side, if you do handle it really well, not only are those people empowered and have new skills to be able to handle situations where they don’t necessarily agree or they’re under pressure or whatever it might be, but also the culture around it goes, oh, okay, so it’s okay if this happens, you know, we will be supported and we can find ways to deal with it. And our only options are not to quit or to say nothing and suppress it.
Trina Sunday: Um, I love it. There’s a theme around compassion over compliance in there, and I think it’s a great way to go. So thank you so much, Tania.
Tania Waters: Oh, wait, quick, Trina, thanks for having me.
Sometimes HR policies get in the way of people fixing their own relationship problems
Trina Sunday: Before you go, I think there’s a real opportunity for hr, people, teams to reflect here. We know that sometimes our grievance policy, our, uh, processes or our practises get in the way of people fixing their own relationship problems. What do I mean by that? Tania would tell you if we had another hour. And I would tell you that we know people that have often said to us, if only HR would have let us talk to each other, we could have resolved this weeks ago. And, uh, whether that’s true or not, the fact that we have an approach sometimes where we say, you can’t talk to this person, or this person can’t physically be in the workplace, if this person is there. Yet the people themselves are saying, I just want to talk to them, I think we can nut this out. I think there’s a real opportunity for us to reflect on how we’re showing up in the grievance space. Are we scared? What does it mean? And how is our organisation weaponizing grievance numbers in a way that’s making us too scared to react? Love to know your thoughts. Thanks for tuning in and leaning in to this week’s episode. As we look to reimagine how we show up for our people, organisations and community. Reach out to us via our website at www.reimaginehr.com.au with your HR horror stories or suggestions of people you’d love to hear from or topics you want to explore. It’s all about people, purpose and impact and we are here for all of it.
Until next time, take care team.
