The Problem Wasn't the Problem

1. THE SITUATION

During a workshop this past week, I was working with a group of employees who had been sent there by their CEO. Their goal was simple. Learn something about managing conflict that could be useful back at the company.

Early in the session, I asked participants to bring forward a real conflict.

One woman raised her hand and described a situation that several people at the company had witnessed firsthand.

The company was a construction business, and the CEO had been clashing regularly with one of her employees, a job site foreman responsible for supervising crews in the field. These were not quiet disagreements. They were loud, escalating arguments that others in the office could hear and feel throughout the day.

She offered a specific example.

The foreman was overseeing a project tied to a state contract. At one point during the day, the state project manager called for a lunch break and dismissed the crew. The foreman did not technically have the authority to approve that decision, but he could not reach the CEO in the moment. So he made the call and let everyone go to lunch.

Later, when the CEO found out, she was furious. From her perspective, employees were being paid while no revenue was coming in. The contract did not protect the company from that loss, and the decision felt both costly and outside the bounds of his authority.

She confronted him, and the situation escalated quickly into another argument.

As she described it, the dynamic felt quite familiar to me. Having run a business for fifteen years, I had seen versions of this kind of conflict play out many times. The details change, but the pattern often does not.

A decision gets made under pressure. It gets interpreted personally. The reaction escalates quickly. Voices rise, positions harden, and whatever the original issue was gets buried underneath it. Nothing really gets resolved, and the next situation picks up right where the last one left off.

As it was being described, the issue felt straightforward. A gap in the contract. A lack of clarity around authority. A mistake with financial consequences.

There were practical solutions available. The contract with the state could eventually be adjusted to better protect the company, even if that would take time. In the meantime, the company could develop clearer internal procedures so that foremen would know exactly how to handle situations like this when leadership was not immediately available.

It all felt logical and contained, and like something that could be worked through using the AGENT framework.

But we stayed with the situation a little longer.

2. THE TURN

As we continued to unpack what was happening, I began outlining the kinds of structural fixes that might help. Contract adjustments over time. Clearer operating procedures in the short term.

That was when the woman who had raised the example paused.

She hesitated for a moment, as if deciding whether to add something that might change how we were all thinking about the situation. Then she said, almost quietly, “Well… there’s one more thing.”

The room became still.

“The foreman is actually her son.”

No one spoke right away.

Up until that moment, we had been looking at a workplace conflict. A decision made under pressure. A contract that needed to be tightened. A breakdown in authority that could be addressed with clearer structure.

Now it was something else as well.

This was a mother and a son who also happened to be a CEO and an employee.

The argument about the lunch break was still real. The financial impact was still real. But it was no longer the whole story.

It raised a different set of questions.

How long had this pattern been in place?
What did each of them hear when the other raised their voice?
How much of this was about the decision, and how much had been building over time?

As the group sat with that, one of the participants offered a suggestion.

“Maybe they just need to separate family from business.”

At first, it sounded reasonable.

But the more we stayed with it, the more it began to feel incomplete. What we were seeing did not look like something that would change simply by drawing a boundary between home and work. The reactions seemed too familiar, too consistent, and too ingrained to be left behind at the door each morning.

As the conversation continued, more became visible. The escalation was not tied to one decision. It appeared to be part of an ongoing pattern that showed up again and again, regardless of the situation.

And beneath that pattern, it began to look less like a series of bad decisions and more like a relationship that neither of them quite knew how to navigate.

3. THE SHIFT

At that point, something in the conversation shifted. We were no longer trying to fix what had happened. We were trying to understand what we were actually seeing.

The contract still mattered. Clearer procedures would likely help. But neither of those would address the pattern that had become visible. The tension between them did not appear to be tied to a single decision. It seemed to reflect how each person was experiencing the relationship over time.

As we slowed things down, it became easier to see that several basic human needs might be under pressure. In the AGENT framework, we group these into an acronym: HEART.

H is for feeling heard.
E is for esteem, the experience of being respected.
A is for autonomy, having a real voice in decisions that affect you.
R is for role, understanding where you fit and what you are responsible for.
T is for trust, believing the other person is acting fairly and consistently.

When one or more of those needs are strained, even ordinary moments can take on more weight than they otherwise would. A simple decision can feel like a lack of respect. A question can feel like a challenge to authority. Silence can feel like being ignored.

Seen in that light, the reactions made more sense. The intensity was not just about what had happened that day. It reflected something that had likely been building for a while.

Another layer came into view as well. Neither person appeared to be operating with a clear sense of what they would do if the situation did not improve. Without that clarity, it becomes difficult to step back, stay grounded, and choose how to respond. Instead, each interaction is shaped by whatever is happening in the moment.

What had initially looked like a contained business problem now felt more like a pattern that would continue unless something deeper changed.

4. AGENT IN ACTION

There was no clear resolution to this story, at least not one we could see from the workshop. We did not speak directly with the CEO or the foreman, so everything we understood came through the perspective of those around them.

The situation itself may still be unfolding. I have not met the CEO, but I would welcome the opportunity to. From a distance, it is easy to form conclusions. Up close, the story is always more complete.

What the group experienced was not a solution, but a shift in understanding. What first appeared to be a problem to fix began to feel more like a signal. It wasn’t just a disagreement about a decision. It was a series of moments where HEART kept getting challenged.

The approach we were working with in the workshop is designed to help people move through situations like this more intentionally. It begins with recognizing that you are in a conflict and choosing how to respond, rather than reacting automatically. It then moves into clarifying what really matters to you, taking the time to understand what may matter to the other person, and creating space for a more collaborative conversation.

In this case, that process had not fully taken place yet. But something important had happened. The group had moved beyond the surface of the issue and begun to see the underlying dynamics more clearly.

If those dynamics remain unchanged, the conflict will likely continue to show up, even if the contract is rewritten or new procedures are put in place. But if the people involved begin to understand what is driving their reactions, there is a different path available to them.

5. PRACTICE FOR THE READER 🛠

Try This Before Your Next Conflict:

• Am I responding to the first version of the problem, or staying long enough to understand what sits beneath it?

• Which part of HEART might be under pressure right now?

• If nothing changes, what are my options?

6. CLOSING REFLECTION

The team had been sent to the workshop to learn something useful about managing conflict. I would like to think they did.

They saw how a situation that looked simple at first could reveal something much deeper when you stayed with it long enough. They saw how quickly we can move to solutions before fully understanding the problem. And they experienced what it feels like to slow down and look at a conflict from a different perspective.

What happens next, I do not know. I hope they are able to navigate this situation differently when they return. They will have access to the AI Coach and the online course, both of which can support them as they begin to apply what they learned.

At the same time, these are exactly the kinds of situations I am drawn to. Not because they are easy, but because they matter. A team can learn the principles of a framework, but real change often happens when those principles are applied in the middle of an actual conflict.

That is where I tend to step in. Sometimes it is teaching a team how to approach conflict more intentionally. Sometimes it is coaching individuals as they work through a difficult dynamic. And sometimes, when needed, it is sitting down with both parties and helping them work through a particularly challenging conversation together.

Because when the real problem becomes visible, a different kind of outcome becomes possible.