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Megan Hunter
What if the most expensive conflict in your organization is the one that no one has properly assessed yet? By the time workplace conflict becomes a formal HR issue, a leadership headache, or a team-wide disruption, it’s usually been building for a while. So what got missed? What should someone have seen sooner? And when does conflict stop being about one difficult situation and start revealing a bigger organizational problem? That’s what we’re getting into today. Welcome to It’s All Your Fault on TruStory FM, the one and only podcast dedicated to helping you with the most challenging human interactions, those involving someone with a high conflict personality, perhaps. I’m Megan Hunter and I’m here with my co-host, Bill Eddy.

Bill Eddy
Hi, everybody.

Megan Hunter
We’re really pleased to be joined again today for this second episode in a four-part series. Michael Lomax, who’s one of our esteemed HCI speakers. And Michael, you’ve got all kinds of things going on.

Michael Lomax
I do. Hi, everybody. Great to see you. Yeah, I’ve been in the field of workplace conflict resolution for twenty-five years. And I also practiced law for twenty years. And I’ve been doing training around high conflict for over fifteen years now. So I love talking about this stuff.

Megan Hunter
Well, you’re good at it. You know what you’re talking about. So we’re really happy to have you on here today. Bill and I are the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute and ConflictInfluencer.com. Welcome, listeners. Thank you for joining us on your cruise. In episode two of this four-part workplace conflict series, we’re going to take the next step — how to assess workplace conflict early and accurately before it becomes disruptive, expensive, and entrenched. We’re focusing on a critical workplace question, especially for HR. How do you assess conflict before it gets bigger, more disruptive, and much more expensive? So we’ll talk a little bit about what to look for, why patterns matter, why personalities matter, how early intervention can change outcomes, and maybe some blind spots that we all have. And then we’ll talk about something bigger in the end — how to tell when conflict isn’t just a people issue anymore, and it’s more an organizational readiness issue. So first, Bill, how can a company, an HR department, tell when just a personality clash is actually the early stage of a much bigger conflict problem? Because we do hear this — that there’s just two people in this conflict and it’s just two people who can’t get along, just a personality clash, when oftentimes it can be just one person driving this.

Bill Eddy
To me, one of the biggest principles with high conflict situations is there’s always someone saying that someone else is acting very badly. And you’ve gotta have three theories when you hear that. First, it may be true. The second is the person saying that may actually be the difficult person. And the third is it could be both of them. I believe many companies get this backwards. They think it’s just Joe when it’s Joe and Jane, or they think it’s just Jane when it’s Joe and Jane, and they miss that both are equally contributing. Or — and I recently read about a case like this — two guys got fired. It really was one who was the instigator. And human resources and managers had several meetings telling both of them to behave. And when they looked back and really understood what was going on, it was one person driving this with a lot of high conflict behavior, and the other person was kind of meekly trying to alert the organization and saying, hey, I’m being bullied, I’m being picked on here, until that person blew up. They had a physical fight and they both got fired. And that could have easily been prevented if they’d paid more attention to the early concerns about this one person. So to me, it’s about recognizing these three possibilities. It’s one, it’s the other, or it’s both. You have to entertain those and look into what’s really going on, and accept that sometimes it really is one person, and sometimes it really is two.

Megan Hunter
And Michael, what’s the cost then of an organization that just thinks, well, two people are involved in the conflict, so it’s both of their faults? Is there a fallout? Is there a cost to this when it’s only one, perhaps?

Michael Lomax
Well, I think you can lose good people on both sides. Maybe the person who may have some traits is a high performer, really contributes to the work well, but it’s the way they engage with others or the wake that they leave, perhaps if they’re a leader, that does need to be managed and addressed. And yeah, when we don’t see the patterns, I can think of a couple of instances where I know organizations lost some good leaders and thought the leader was the problem. And they didn’t see how perhaps the other person who presented “I’m a victim, I’m being mistreated” — either people feel sorry for them or they bend over backwards to be impartial in their process, but end up in their impartiality kind of blaming both or blaming the leader. And then when they don’t deal with things early — see the signs, recognize the patterns — then things can get very big. I think with hybrid work, it’s easier for things to be hidden now. Right? It may not come to the forefront as quickly. Some level of dysfunction gets normalized, and then you get these huge, spectacular failures where people would be like, well, there’s nothing we could have done — we never could have seen that coming. And I would suggest, yeah, you could. And in fact, maybe within the first three months that you hired that person, the signs were there. All the time I talk with organizations and professionals, I tell them stories like, you know, here’s an interaction I had with this person the first few times. And with those couple of interactions, I now had all the information I needed to know what it was going to be like to work with this person for the next two years.

Megan Hunter
What were some of those signs?

Michael Lomax
Well, sometimes it’s amazing. Sometimes it can be — they start off very charming.

Bill Eddy
Mm-hmm. That’s a warning sign.

Michael Lomax
“The easiest to work with. I’m so flexible. Michael, I heard you are the best supervisor in this organization,” you know, or whatever. I’m like, wow, yeah, okay, that’s great. Yeah, if you’re making me feel good. And yet that’s a sign. If I’m perfect, how far do I have to fall? And charm is not a trait, it’s a skill. People can turn it on, they can turn it off. So it’s just about being aware. And then in the next interaction, something disappoints them and all of a sudden they go to the other extreme. “Maybe I’m going to file a complaint about you. Oh, I was just kidding.” Or they’re just making me feel really unsettled. Like, I remember I had a client once say, “Michael, if I throw myself off a balcony, you will know why.” And yet in the previous interaction I was the best, and now I’ve gone to this. And it was just because of some legal advice I gave them. And somehow, if we don’t understand these patterns, we might not realize — whoa, what am I dealing with here? So I think it’s about not recognizing the pattern, sometimes not recognizing the signs early, or either our impartiality or even our judgment of others in terms of their reaction. As Bill said, we get it wrong, and we don’t realize we got rid of the person we should have hung on to when we hung on to the person we should have let go.

Bill Eddy
Sometimes.

Michael Lomax
Yeah.

Megan Hunter
It can be very confusing. We’re going to talk about high conflict personalities here in a minute. When we are faced with very confusing behavior — behavior that we say, the dots aren’t connecting here, but no one would act this way, so I don’t believe what’s being said about this person — right? So it gets dismissed and discounted, often because we don’t want to believe that. And I think a lot of the clients we work with, that’s one of the first pieces that we have to focus on — is this acceptance that there are some people who do have a different operating system. And it’s very opposite to what you expect from ordinary behavior. So their patterns of behavior are very different. So let’s talk about those patterns of behavior. What should an organization, what should an HR department be looking for? What are those real red flags if a high conflict person is involved, Bill?

Bill Eddy
I like to think of our WEB method — W, E, B. W for words, their words; E for your emotions, how do you feel; and then B for their behavior. There are a lot of words that stand out that people don’t know to look for. If you hear a lot of all-or-nothing expressions — you know, always and never. If you hear a lot of blame — you know, “That last job I had, you wouldn’t believe, everybody there was a jerk, and the —”

Megan Hunter
And against me.

Bill Eddy
“And against me. I couldn’t believe it. They all turned against me. It’s just amazing. I haven’t had that happen for five years.” But you start hearing words that stand out. So blame, all or nothing, extreme positives. You know, like Michael mentioned — charm — and I’ve heard “You’re the best” and all of that. That’s a warning sign. You know, most people are kind of in the middle range of, you know, “That was a good thing you did.” But “You’re such an incredible person” often means “You’re a terrible person” coming down the road. And so watch out for that. And by the way, I don’t want to say charm is a bad thing all the time. It’s just a warning sign because high conflict people often start with charm. But there are also ordinary people with charm. So you just have to keep your eyes open and get to know people. Don’t allow yourself to be seduced in the first hour. There’s another important thing here, and it’s a principle that was taught to me by Georgi DiStefano, the co-author of It’s All Your Fault at Work, who’s one of our trainers and coaches. And she said something very simple. She said, “Bill, if someone’s telling you about a problem that they’re involved with, and they can go more than half an hour without saying anything about possible participation on their part — like, ‘I shouldn’t have hired that person’ or ‘I shouldn’t have said that thing’ — if they can go more than half an hour without saying something that they should have done differently, that’s a warning sign you’ve got a high conflict person who can’t accept responsibility and is going to blame other people.”

Megan Hunter
I think the way we started this episode — when you said that when someone’s telling you that something bad happened to them. Now, we’ve all done that. But I think that’s a big part of the words too, right? It doesn’t automatically mean this person has a high conflict personality, but it just means get your antenna up. Have your radar on. Be aware if someone’s coming up with, “Hey, I’ve got a problem.” Okay, well, let’s talk about it. And then they go into it — you know, it’s charming or very upset. And then it’s always the other person’s fault, right? In that thirty minutes, I would say fifteen minutes might even be enough. Yeah, so words — I think people tell you, you know, kind of what’s going on with them and what could possibly be coming down the road.

Bill Eddy
Well, the emotions piece — and I learned this as a therapist, but I think everyone can do this — is pay attention if you find yourself feeling like the way they’re talking, but what I’m feeling is out of sync. You know, someone’s saying, “Oh, you’re wonderful, Bill,” and there’s this angry expression, and you get the feeling that it’s the opposite of what they feel. Or, “Oh, I love this job,” you know, and you get this sense that they’re saying it, they’re performing it, that it’s not true.

Michael Lomax
Or, “I’m not angry,” when it’s like, oh yeah, you are.

Bill Eddy
Right. Well, that’s the projection. You know, it’s like, “I’m not angry.”

Michael Lomax
Yeah. Is it Gavin de Becker in his book The Gift of Fear? He talks about, you know, we all have the threat sensors, the danger sensors, but as humans we’re too intelligent, so then we override them and don’t pay attention to them.

Bill Eddy
Right. That’s such an important point — there are things that make us uncomfortable, and we override them. And I think that’s one thing we’ve all learned in this business: pay attention to those. See what are they telling you. What’s going on?

Megan Hunter
That’s what animals do in nature, right?

Bill Eddy
Oh, they read body language, facial expressions, tone of voice. That’s like 90% of human communication. And yet we tell ourselves to ignore that because of what we heard. And that’s where antisocial people are great at telling stories and making you feel relaxed and at ease while they’re stealing your wallet. And it’s like you’ve got to pick up on this other stuff. But one of my favorites — when I was driving home from my law office one day, I was going, “I’m not very good at what I do, and I’ve been doing it for ten years.” And I was saying, wait a minute, I’ve been doing this for ten years, why am I so self-critical right now? And I said, oh, I had a narcissist at 10 o’clock. He came in and he knew everything, and he insulted all of us, including me. Like, “How could I understand his kind of incredible high-tech business?” And so if you find yourself becoming really self-critical, that’s often a sign you’re dealing with someone that thinks they’re so incredible that they’re probably going to make other people feel uncomfortable too. And this may be a reason. So your emotions can be a warning sign for other people’s behavior. But the last is behavior. If they’ve done something really extraordinary — like, something negative that 90% of people would never do, but they have a quick excuse for it — pay attention to that. Because if 10% of people have high conflict personalities and 90% don’t, there are some things that high conflict people do that no one else does. You know, so you may think of violence in the workplace. “Well, this person knocked me down.” They were so upset when they said, “Oh, I was tired. You know, I just got off a plane, I’m tired, sorry I did that.” Well, that’s a big deal. That’s a problem. It’s not just “Sorry I did that.” It’s like 90% of people would never do that. That’s a problem.

Michael Lomax
And then in an organization, if someone filed a complaint like that, we focus on the incident and investigate the incident. And at the end, it may be that complaint was unfounded. Everybody go back to work. And instead of asking, okay, what just happened there? What led to that? So in human resources, we focus on those incidents. We don’t focus on the patterns. We don’t step back sometimes and look at — this is the third or fourth complaint this person’s filed. Or even when they know that, they still deal with one incident at a time and they don’t say, what are we going to do about this pattern? And we are so focused on fairness and neutrality and impartiality — we can’t assume intent, we can’t label someone, both sides may have contributed. And so it’s finding ways to be able to step back from that bias and still be able to look at the patterns. I would say in a lot of ways, high conflict people benefit from the neutrality, the unwillingness to assess the pattern that’s going on. And then we have evidence thresholds when we’re doing these investigations. So things just may not meet the threshold. The complaint may not meet the threshold, so it doesn’t go forward. But organizations are very reluctant to say that was a vexatious complaint — you know, that was designed for another reason, it wasn’t legit. And another thing I would say is organizations are fragmented in their visibility. So you have different people seeing different things, and they don’t put it together. So the manager might see one thing, colleagues might see another, someone else that this person used to report to has other information, but it doesn’t come together in a cohesive picture. And the last one is the high conflict person may be very skilled as a presenter. And AI is going to make it even more so now — they can have AI write the complaint for them. So it sounds great, it hits all the markers, and yet behind it, there may be nothing.

Bill Eddy
May not be true.

Megan Hunter
Whole new tool for filing complaints. And I’ve actually heard this — somebody told me just recently, not workplace related, but she’d received a photo radar ticket and had AI write a response to it, a letter explaining why she shouldn’t get the ticket, and they dismissed it immediately. It was so well written. We shouldn’t be giving anyone ideas, but —

Bill Eddy
Right, right.

Megan Hunter
So I want to follow up a little bit on this. You were talking, Michael, about that HR may be looking at incidents. I think that’s the word you used. What about impact? Is there a way that impact can be documented, or how would it be if it can?

Michael Lomax
Impact can be measured, but in some ways — I don’t want to say every organization doesn’t do that. But a lot of the time you’re focused on the incident and the rule that was broken. The impact may feed into the consequence, right? But it is quite different. Organizations are not strong, I think, at supporting victims of this kind of behavior and really understanding the impact on them. We’re mostly focused on the incident and the rule that was broken, and then using certain guidelines or arbitration decisions to determine what the consequence should be so that it is in line with other transgressions of similar kinds of behavior. And I just don’t think leaders and HR professionals are trained in certain processes like investigations or applying policies and guidelines. They’re not trained in conflict pattern recognition. They’re not looking for it. And they’re not trained in high conflict behavior indicators. They’re not trained in it. Personality disorders — they know what that is, but it’s more in the area of how to accommodate somebody who may have a need than it is around what does that actually mean when somebody’s at work showing up this way.

Bill Eddy
Well, it’s interesting. Let me just add something in here about personality disorders, because there’s a tendency to think of them in terms of a mental illness and therefore needing accommodations or whatever. But personality disorders are different. They’re interpersonal disorders, and they have patterns of behavior that in many ways target other people. And I think of some of the lawsuits that I’ve read about for some of my books and teaching, and organizations go way too long when there’s a recognizable pattern of behavior. It doesn’t matter whether the person has a disorder or not — if they have this pattern of behavior, it needs to get addressed. And we’ve identified five basic high conflict personality patterns, and people tend towards these when they demonstrate high conflict behavior. And it’s not to be punitive or judgmental — it’s what do we do with that. That’s where coaching and things like that can be, you know, like you said, Michael, it doesn’t reach the level that it really triggers.

Michael Lomax
And sometimes we can be hopeful, but it’s just we need to come at it a different way. It isn’t about how do we get rid of this person. It’s about how do we help them be successful at work. One other thing I was thinking about — you’d asked me about impact, Megan. I can say from my experience with large organizations: when there is a huge impact, like they lose a big lawsuit or there’s a big public failure in the newspaper or in the news, it’s reactivity that drives the response. It’s very often not a proactive, forward-thinking, multi-year sort of thing — “What are we going to do to never get ourselves here again?” It’s someone high up in the organization saying, “I need to show that we’re doing stuff.” And everybody’s okay, and they’re pulling on all these levers to say, look at all the stuff we’re doing. We’re doing these twenty things. We have a twenty-five-item action plan of all the things we’re doing. And it looks great, but it’s actually very reactive in nature. And if you were to go back to that organization a couple of years later and kick the tires — “How much of that did you actually follow through on?” Not very much. And they just hope they don’t get themselves there again. And it’s not — I’m not here to criticize anyone for who’s overseeing those kinds of responses, but it’s just kind of how it works. And so getting intentional and anticipating these kinds of things, building up the skill, building up the policies, and training HR and leaders to understand there are these patterns and how to effectively respond — that will save the organization significant resources, time, energy, in terms of loss of people going on sick leave, unnecessary terminations, loss of productivity, all that stuff. I could go on and on. But the thing you’re talking about, Bill, is that they see it. They see it staring them in the face. It’s right there and you have probably 90% of the information. We just don’t realize what it is we’re facing.

Megan Hunter
You know, we all know people in our lives who wait until there’s a crisis — financially, with their health, with important things in life. And you hear people say, well, now I have to hit the panic button. Right? Now it’s a crisis, now I have to do something. And we don’t want organizations to have to be in that mode. You don’t have to be in that mode, because it’s the same thing. Like you’re saying, Michael — we wait till there’s a crisis and now there’s a big PR storm and we’ve got to get crisis management involved. We have to — oh, we’re going to do this training. And maybe they do bring in one training, big conflict resolution training. Well, how much do you remember from one training? I think the statistics are like 5 to 10% of people remember from a training. So how then do you get it baked into your system, into your organization, so it is a part of the culture — meaning, how to not just handle conflict, but how to prevent conflict? Because we’re not going to get rid of it entirely, but we don’t have to operate on a crisis basis.

Michael Lomax
Preventing it from escalating into these destructive forms, right? Conflict is normal, it’s everywhere. And even with high conflict people, they’re part of our society. It doesn’t mean we’re trying to identify them to get rid of people. It is how to help everyone — professionals and leaders — just be more comfortable working in this space and feel confident and help everybody be successful.

Bill Eddy
I think of Steve Jobs with Apple, and that a lot of his success came from having a team around him who knew how to manage him. And they managed him well. And he was definitely known as someone who demonstrated high conflict behavior. And his rough edges, or sharp elbows — people knew how to redirect him, how to talk to him, how to go for a walk sometimes with him and come back, and he wouldn’t fire a 200-person division after all because they didn’t get something done the way he wanted it. I think it’s a classic example that there are a lot of really helpful, good, valuable employees with sharp elbows. And if they’re managed well, they can really contribute. I think of trainings in the high-tech companies that I’ve done, and they say, you know, we can’t just fire these people, we need them, but they have these behaviors. And that’s where coaching — again, I’ll put in a plug for that. I think it’s so much about redirecting people rather than judging them and not overreacting. And like you said, Michael, the reactivity — when problems are small, often you can deal with them and everybody can still be happy.

Michael Lomax
Right. I mean, the term “high conflict person” is a problematic term in that it might inadvertently contribute to us seeing them as bad or a problem. It’s how do you recognize that some of this may be coming from this person when they’re pointing at everyone else or everything else and they say, “This is what I’m upset about.” Okay, it may not be that. And we don’t want to inadvertently feed into, “Oh, my gosh, we’ve got to fix that for you.” It may be coming from the person. But at the same time, we’re not diagnosing someone and we’re not using labels to kind of say, “Well, they’re all bad, and somehow we’re all good. We’ve done nothing wrong here, and this person has no redeeming qualities, they have no good ideas.” It isn’t about that. It’s how to become more effective in working with everyone, prevent these things from escalating to these destructive forms. Some people shouldn’t be in an organization with rules, structures, and expectations, right? That’s just not the best place for them. But I think there are also a lot who we can help. So yeah, I just wanted to say that — don’t underestimate sometimes what you’re dealing with, but it doesn’t mean yeah.

Megan Hunter
Yeah, that’s true. And it’s okay. I think we need to normalize that there will be, of course, all kinds of operating systems that come to the workplace, and how can we help everyone succeed? And there is a point of diminishing returns, and it’s no longer a good fit anymore. And sometimes that does happen, and that’s okay. Not everyone is a good fit. And if the drain on the organization exceeds the benefit to the organization, then those decisions have to be made.

Michael Lomax
And then even if that’s the case, how you handle that? Because once that person’s outside the organization, if that’s done in a way that they decide to take — “I’m going to take this organization down and I’m going to manufacture stories” — it doesn’t mean it’s over.

Bill Eddy
Right, right.

Michael Lomax
It’s like — what do we say about high conflict divorce? After the divorce it just becomes a new phase or something?

Bill Eddy
Oh, well, with high conflict divorce, I say the actual divorce is a speed bump on the road of high conflict.

Michael Lomax
There you go.

Bill Eddy
And I think with employers too — I’ve read many cases where the lawsuit goes like four years and their employment was three years before they were fired. So you’ve got to be prepared for the long term, but also catch all this stuff early. There’s a saying that we might want to use, and that is: keep the conflict small.

Michael Lomax
One of my biggest favorites.

Megan Hunter
Right. Keep the conflict small. It is possible if you are prepared for it, and you have to really be prepared for it. And I think business owners, whether it’s a small business, medium, or large corporation, everyone needs to be prepared for this. Because even if — like we like to say 10% — it’s the possibility that 10% of people may be walking around with these high conflict patterns of behavior. But let’s say it’s only 5%. Right? That’s what we’re seeing on our website now — 5%. If it’s just 5%, think about the drain on resources, on time, and the risk that’s presented. And beyond that, it’s stress. The stress that high conflict has on those around that person and around that conflict is just immeasurable. It’s huge. People dread going to work when they have a high conflict situation to deal with.

Michael Lomax
And if that’s even 5% — if you have an organization of 30,000 employees, that means you’ve got 1,500.

Megan Hunter
Thank you for the math. I wasn’t going to be able to do that. That’s a lot of people.

Megan Hunter
And how many people does each individual impact? I mean, it’s going to vary depending on their role and position, but it’s a huge number. So if we’re trying to avoid handling conflict cases one at a time, what should be assessed first, do you think? The people involved, or the organization’s overall conflict readiness?

Bill Eddy
Yeah, I think it’s really both. In other words, if there is a conflict that you have to respond to, you want to assess what’s really going on by interviewing the individuals involved without a presumption that it’s all equal or that it’s all one. You’ve got to have all these possibilities — one, the other, both, etcetera. But I think really, in light of what we’ve been saying, you also have to step back and say, is there an organizational culture issue here? Is there something that allowed this to go? Is there something that encouraged this to grow into a conflict? And I think that should always be looked at, because with high conflict personalities, it’s a lot about a repetitive pattern of dysfunctional behavior, and it doesn’t go away. This is repetitive. We all have personalities, but high conflict people have a narrower range. And it’s not a judgment — in many cases, they’re born that way, or early childhood makes them that way. And it’s just recognizing this: this problem may come up again and again.

Megan Hunter
Because it’s predictable that it will. It’s not optional.

Michael Lomax
I agree with that. And I think, you know, when things are driven from the center or from the top down, then people take it seriously — “This is what we’ve got to do, this is the expectation.” And now more than ever, you’ll see HR organizations that are working together in multidisciplinary ways. So it’s not just one person going, “Well, I had the training and this is what I see.” You’re talking with others, and you need a common language to be able to say, “Let’s assess not just the incident, let’s look at the pattern of behavior here,” and let’s bring that in. And again, it isn’t to say we’re not going to deal with this person’s complaint properly — we’re still going to have to do that. But we are mindful of that as we enter into this. And I can think of, as a lawyer — when a group of lawyers and psychologists and financial planners had Bill come up and train all of us. And it wasn’t just the one-off training. We took it on as the way we wanted to operate. And we used it on files to assess, to discuss with each other, and we were so much more effective in the way that we responded, and then we were helping our clients to be successful. So I think it is the organization’s responsibility to look at this across the board — “How do we want to handle these kinds of things and create expectations?” And then, as you say, Bill, it does still come down to the people in the situation and responding appropriately in each situation.

Bill Eddy
I just want to mention — I think the largest in-person training I did was 1,100 people for a government department. And they had to rent a theater to do it in. And I gave them three hours of the BIFF technique, the EAR technique, making proposals. And it was great because I heard later — a couple of weeks later — from the department head saying, “Now, you know, everybody’s BIFFing each other now. They’re going, ‘I’ve got a problem. What should I do? I got this terrible letter.’ ‘You need to write a BIFF response.'” And this common language, I think, simplifies it. That’s one thing I’m excited about. What we do is we use these really simple techniques that are really powerful — BIFF and EAR and SLIC and SWIPE now. SWIPE first — so what’s your proposal? We were talking — Megan and I were talking about when we decided that was the term, SWIPE. And we were driving somewhere and I said, “Well, I think we should try such and such.” She says, “Well, SWIPE me.” And I wrote something up and I sent my proposal to her. So it can be fun, and that’s part of all of this — it’s human relations, and that’s what we’re all about.

Megan Hunter
It’s possible to keep the conflict small. So we covered a lot in this episode — you know, what HR and leaders should be looking for, why early intervention matters, or just being aware of this and knowing what your blind spots are and keeping conflict front of mind, which sounds kind of ridiculous, but I think it’s a good idea to keep it front of mind. So conflict does cost organizations. There is a large cost. According to the article we mentioned in the first episode of the series, the workplace conflict crisis of $359 billion per year. That’s a lot of money. Think about how much more competitive organizations could be, or effective and impactful organizations could be, if they were conflict ready, conflict smart, or conflict proof. So look, if these sound relevant for your workplace, we have a link in the show notes to our website where you can read a lot more about these things. If you find this stuff useful, subscribe, rate, and review our show, and share it with colleagues, HR colleagues, leaders, or business owners, or an executive team member who’s tired of dealing with conflict only after the damage is done. So next time we’re going to move from this assessment talk we had today to action — like, once HR and leaders recognize the warning signs and patterns of high conflict behavior, what should they actually do? So some practical tools. If you’re looking for training or consultation about a high conflict situation for your organization, contact us at HighConflictInstitute.com. If it’s for your personal life, go to ConflictInfluencer.com. Keep learning and practicing the skills. Be kind to yourself and to others while we all try to keep the conflict small and find the missing peace. It’s All Your Fault is a production of TruStory FM. Engineering by Andy Nelson. Music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes, and transcripts at TruStory.fm or HighConflictInstitute.com/podcasts. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.