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Five Root Causes of Workplace Conflict and Tension

“The line between good and evil lies in the center of every human heart.”

—Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Before we dive into root causes, let's talk about exceptions. In my experience, 97 percent of escalated conflicts were not driven by personalities and people. In 3 percent of situations, we discovered that an employee did not have the capacity to do his or her job, and in those instances, we shift to the company's performance development system.

Once in a great while, mental health issues such as depression trigger conflict, and managers need to tap mental health centers or employee assistance programs. Sometimes, working with external resources organizations facilitate interventions for chemical use or drug dependency.

As we will see in Rick's story, on occasion the conflict is so debilitating that it is difficult to assess the competencies of an employee. During power struggles, an individual's “evil twin” emerges, and it can be impossible to discern an employee's potential separate from the stress and fear that is generated by escalated conflict.

If management is unclear about an employee's capacities during heightened conflict, it is prudent to: eliminate any system or policy problems that are interfering with productivity, lower fear, and end any power struggles. Then wait a reasonable period of time for the work environment to stabilize before assessing performance. If under improved conditions an employee cannot meet realistic performance measures, it's time to shift from a conflict resolution process to a performance management system.

There are rare cases in which clients are hiding illegal or unethical behaviors. When we suspect these possibilities are at the root of tension, we need to step out of the conflict resolution process and initiative an investigation.

The five root causes

With awareness of the exceptions, let's look at the reasons conflict escalates in the workplace. The good news is that the five root causes can be corrected. However, 100 percent of my clients were not able to fix the root cause because they were caught up in First Assumption and its fallout.

I began to see the reliability of these causes only because I had worked on hundreds of escalated conflicts. There are other recurring causes of tension, but in my experience these are the ones that repeatedly trip up employees and leaders.

I appreciate this list because it is simultaneously broad and concise: 1) a baby in the back seat—a constraint or pressure hidden from view; 2) poorly designed processes; 3) performance measures that pit employees against each other; 4) a mutual lack of skill, insight, or courage; and 5) negative reciprocity.

As you'll see, sometimes organizations unconsciously build barriers into the work, and it behooves us to take the focus off the people and put our attention where it can make a difference.

Before we dive into details, think about a situation you'd like to improve. You can use targets you identified in Chapter Seven. As we proceed, you can ask if the root cause we are discussing is the source of the problem you identified.

1. Is there a baby in the back seat?

I always assume that the other party has numerous hidden constraints or pressures shaping his or her behavior. In Chapter Five there were several workplace examples of hidden constraints. Recall the missing supervisor (sick from his hepatitis B medication but dragging himself to work because the boss was short-handed) and the brooding CEO (whose undisclosed vision to rebuild the factory was shattered when the workers went on strike). I've witnessed hundreds of similar stories.

When we make the assumption that hidden pressures are shaping behavior, it takes so little energy to sit down and ask individuals about barriers to productivity. I haven't always immediately discovered a hidden reason. Sometimes it takes time to build trust, or the fear of punishment or organizational retribution is too high. I don't always get the answer I expect or want. But I never regret making the attempt to open the dialogue because I always learn something.

In the next chapter, we'll discuss a proven but simple template for initiating these conversations in the spirit of humility and curiosity—a win-win.

However, before we move on to the next root cause, consider what personal or workplace “babies” might be hidden from view in the situation you are trying to improve.

Sometimes just by asking this question, the entire problem shifts. A police officer was drawing his Cycle of Contempt in class, and the situation he was tackling involved his sister-in-law who repeatedly asked him for loans. In the first round, he blamed her and said she was irresponsible and selfish. Annoying! He refused her requests.

In his Cycle of Courage, he wrote down her baby in the back seat. “She asks for money because her husband (my brother) is in prison for a felony, and she's trying to fill the void by purchasing things for her young son.” As he allowed himself to take in the reality of her situation, his behavior shifted and he wrote, “Help my sister-in-law create a budget and spend time with my nephew.”

What hidden constraints might shape the behavior of the party (person or group) with whom you are frustrated?

2. Poorly designed systems and processes

Poor or nonexistent process design is often a hidden cause of prolonged conflict. We behave differently depending on constraints, demands, peer pressure, anxiety levels, urgency, and so on. This notion is fairly well accepted in academic circles but is not widely recognized in the workplace. Most individuals think about others as static and one dimensional, such as good, selfish, crude, lazy, undependable, trustworthy, or ambitious. In reality, personality is not fixed. Each of us have a range of behaviors from which we choose. Even people who are deemed unsalvageable by the courts have the capacity to behave differently. For example, felons with no hope for parole volunteer to raise seeing-eye dogs and provide hospice care to aging inmates.

The other side of human nature is also true. “Ordinary” people are capable of malfeasance when trapped in corrupt systems. For example, individuals who value integrity and honesty will behave badly when their economic security is at risk. In the book The Cheating Culture, author David Callahan documents the decline of formerly trustworthy Sears auto mechanics in the 1990s.

The leadership at Sears headquarters unexpectedly decided to lower the base pay of both managers and mechanics, and announced that both groups could compensate for their drop in income by earning a percentage of every part they sold. Workers and managers alike found themselves in the uncomfortable position of choosing between integrity and economic security.

Within a few years, Sears's sterling customer service ratings plummeted, and eighteen class-action suits and scores of investigations for fraudulent practices were brought against the company. The company was fined $2,000,000,000 for fraud.

Processes and compensation are just two of the dynamics that shape behavior. Workplaces are constantly required to challenge, motivate, and mediate human behavior. At one level this insight means that by changing structure, rewards, and performance criteria, organizations can change behavior. Or when you look through the other side of the lens, if leadership isn't satisfied with current behavior, they can change the conditions that cause undesired outcomes.

Structure has a profound impact on behavior. In the workplace, competitive systems with harsh economic norms result in aggressive, and sometimes unethical, behavior. In contrast, systems that are seen as accessible, fair, rewarding, and cooperative bring out the best in people.

Elliot Aronson conducted experiments loaded with insight for workplaces. Aronson, a specialist in school shootings, analyzed dozens of student shooting perpetrators and eventually turned his attention away from “personality, attitudes, or demographics” to the environment in which this act occurs. His conclusions are chilling. “The root cause of the shootings is the poisonous social atmosphere that exists in almost every public school in this country—atmospheres permeated by daily incidents of exclusion, taunting, bullying, and humiliation.”

Of particular value to our purpose is Aronson's ability to improve relationships between elementary students by simply changing the structure in which they learn. Aronson coached teachers to shift from a competitive to a cooperative learning environment, known as the “jigsaw classroom,” where student's work was interdependent rather than competitive. Within two weeks, students had gone from taunting to encouraging each other. Lasting friendships were formed across cultural and language differences—differences that had been the basis of exclusion and taunting just days prior to the change.

Alfie Kohn's classic book (and recipient of the American Psychological Association National Psychology Award for Excellence in Media) No Contest: The Case Against Competition is a meta-analysis of the impact of competition on self-esteem, relationships, and productivity. Citing hundreds of studies, he concludes that in all three areas cooperation produces superior outcomes. I often see examples of his findings in workplaces.

Poorly designed systems trigger conflict

I had the good fortune of working for a process improvement company early in my career. Learning about system thinking and process mapping made me more effective in every aspect of my work.

First I began to see how much systems and processes drive the day-to-day activities of our world. If we take a quick glance at the ubiquity of systems in our society, it's quite sobering. Our lives are shaped by systems of transportation, weather, education, military, political, ecology, medical, family, agriculture, finance, and so on. Systems are everywhere, and it's useful to see them and understand a bit about how they work.

The key features of systems are interdependency, delicacy, and constant change. Systems are interdependent so change affects everything up and downstream. For a quick example of interdependency we can think about ecosystems and how changes in air temperature affect the westerly winds, which affect the movement of rain, which results in droughts or flooding, the salination of water, the contamination of aquifers, and compromised sea levels.

In the workplace, the hierarchical view places everyone in silos with direction coming from the top, with the expectation that the environment is relatively static.

In a system view, we can visualize handing off our work to other departments and internal customers. It is a more interdependent and collaborative view. A simplified systems perspective of manufacturing might begin with determining trends; completing feasibility studies, building prototypes, and gaining approval of final designs; procuring the necessary raw materials; transforming raw materials into outputs (finished products); transporting to dealers; overseeing leases and sales; tracking warranty, safety, and service data; and studying after-sales information to feed back into the system. Then the whole cycle starts anew as the organization gears up for the next generation of production.

Uncover hot spots by looking at your processes

There are many books and courses on system thinking and process improvement. These techniques are taught at universities, nonprofits, and consulting firms. The information falls under different names and formats, such as Total Quality, the Baldridge Award, Lean, and Process Improvement. You can tap a global network of members, books, and training at www.ASQ.org. Dan Madison's book Process Mapping, Process Improvement and Process Management is a worthy introductory text.

Processes are the steps of a system. Examples of common processes are hiring, training, payroll, performance management, and so on. For instance, the first step in the hiring process might include determining the need for a new position, defining the job and qualifications, and setting a salary range. The second step might be advertising the position or selecting an employment agency. Next steps might include reviewing applications, and conducting interviews. Each of these acts is a step in the hiring process.

I became interested in process mapping when I realized how quickly and effectively process maps help individuals communicate the complexity of their work and pinpoint bottlenecks, rework, and waste. As you will see in the following story, it is common for process problems to be blamed on one or more employees who become the organization's scapegoat.

How well do most systems and processes work? It depends. How savvy are the leaders about system thinking? When problems occur, do individuals from other departments join together to solve them, or do they break into Cycles of Contempt? Do employees understand the delicate interdependency of their work and take other parts of the process into consideration when they make decisions? Does a university collect feedback from students and roll it into future course offerings and new faculty hiring?

Most workplace systems have a staggering number of processes. Some experts put the number at 2,000! In many organizations, the majority of their processes are poorly designed and inefficient. Most workplace processes were never consciously designed; they just evolved.

Imagine the improvements in efficiency and morale if organizations could improve key processes by even 5 percent! W. Edwards Deming, a statistician sent to Japan by the American government after World Word II, taught the Toyota and Honda families about system thinking and statistical variation at a time when Japan had no manufacturing capacity. His success in Japan created demand for his strategies in the United States. Some of his first clients in the United States were General Motors and Ford. Deming believed that 85 to 93 percent of workplace waste originates in systems, not people.

How do we uncover process problems? By engaging in one of the oldest human behaviors: talking to each other.

When I am doing team-building or conflict resolution, I often create a simple process map with clients. Working in small groups and hanging our work on the wall, we use oversized sticky notes for each step. Sticky notes are excellent for the first draft of a process map because they can be lifted and repositioned as many times as necessary. We create the process as it now exists and then look for areas that could be improved.

Even with the most basic process map, individuals can see how much of their conflict relates to dysfunctional processes, not people. The following story illustrates how millions of dollars can be saved once the key players shifted from blame to fixing a catastrophic process problem.

The outlier that dissed the president

Rick narrowly escaped termination after he “lipped off” to the company president. Most of the executive team viewed Rick as an unprofessional, undisciplined hothead who exploited the fact that he was central to one of their most important processes: the production of customized machines, which were the bread and butter of this company.

Rick's job was critical. If a salesperson wanted a custom machine, Rick was the person to see. However, Rick's turnaround on an estimate for customization was three months! The sales people were livid; they told me they were losing 25 percent of their orders and millions of dollars due to this delay.

The relationship between Rick and the sales group had deteriorated so badly that during the annual sales meeting, Virg, the vice president, announced, “Rick is our number-one barrier to sales.”

The company president told me that Rick would have been terminated months ago if anyone else in the company could have done his job. The president gave me carte blanche to do whatever it would take to “fix him.”

By the time I was done collecting background information, I half expected Rick to be a surly, arrogant sociopath. Instead, I found someone who cared so much about his work that we talked for four hours about his frustrations, resentments, attempts to resolve his huge backlog, efforts to speed up the process, his failure to obtain more resources, how he had fought and lost the battle to keep his assistant during a downturn, and how he lacked access to the internal expertise he needed to do his job.

Rick told me that after he heard about Virg's comment at the sales meeting, he lost all his motivation to overcome the backlog, quit working overtime, and fell further behind. It was a textbook example of negative reciprocity.

As Rick's story wound down, I made it very clear that we were about to turn in his resignation as the company scapegoat and take unprecedented steps to fix the problem at its source. I think Rick was shocked at my reaction. He had expected a pep talk about working harder.

During our first conversation, I consciously used the power of connectedness to bond. It's the fastest way to gain commitment to a hardheaded search for solutions. When Rick wrapped up his story, he knew I had truly listened and acknowledged the validity of his frustrations, respected his dedication, and was impressed by the creative ways he tried to resolve the backlog.

Not until this point could I give him the critical feedback he needed to hear. With copious amounts of warmth and humor, I told him the organization could take the lion's share of responsibility for the bottleneck, however, his defensiveness and “complete lack of social skills” with the president did not help.

The relationship we forged during our first meeting allowed me to speak to Rick bluntly. Even though I had only known him for a few hours, Rick laughed good-naturedly at my frank remarks. He knew he had to alter his approach to achieve the change he so desperately needed.

Rick lacked the skill and positional power to address the real problem. The customization quote process that needed improvement spanned three divisions and required the involvement of management four levels above him.

Within a few days of our first meeting, Rick and I sat down with the vice presidents of engineering, operations, and sales. I asked Rick to share his perceptions of the root causes of the current backlog, and as a group, using the sticky notes and flip-chart paper method, we flow-charted the current process for procuring an estimate on customized machines.

In order to create a cost and time estimate, Rick needed the expertise of engineering, sales, software, and operations. However, Rick had no leverage with these internal experts, and no one got credit for helping him.

Rick explained that when he approached a colleague for his or her input on yet another quote, he or she ducked into offices to avoid him. As a result, every piece of information Rick needed to complete his quotes required multiple unreturned emails, phone calls, and walks through the building to strong arm his coworkers for information.

During our meeting, Virg learned that the salespeople (with his encouragement) were loading their requests for estimates with every conceivable feature, knowing full well the customer would never pay the premium dollars it took to include them.

However, customizations were the company's market niche, and complex orders were one of the ways the sales group played up the organization's capacities. Unfortunately, each one of these features added layers of complexity and delays to Rick's work. When Rick attempted to tell the salespeople that the extraneous features made the problem worse, they dismissed him as a slacker, especially after their vice president had personally christened him “the number-one barrier to sales.”

Virg dropped his eyes when he realized that someone had told Rick about his denigrating remark. Then Virg spontaneously—and with genuine remorse—apologized for the callous remark. A flash of relief crossed Rick's face.

Figure 9.1. Rick's original process, full of rework and delays.

The five of us turned our attention to the wasteful and haphazard process. Rick explained that in the current process, his efforts were linear. In other words, he'd start with mechanical engineering, get their advice, then go to the next group, and so on. However, more often than not the second, third, or fourth person in the process would explain why this version of a customized machine wasn't feasible. For instance, quality assurance might kibosh the dimensions the engineers had recommended because of the manufacturing equipment's limitations. Rick would have to make adjustments to the estimate and start over with the first group. As Rick explained the chaotic nature of the process, the VPs went from resentment to admiration for Rick's efforts.

Virg stepped up first and announced he was changing the process of submitting an order in sales. From here forward, all requests for customized machines had to pass through a gatekeeper who would eliminate extraneous features before they reached Rick's desk. If there were too many superfluous features, the request for a sales estimate was returned to the salesperson. The next change was the creation of a cross-functional team, with representatives from every department giving input, at the same time, on each order.

Figure 9.2. Rick's streamlined process saved $1.5 million in the first year.

The next morning, the VPs met with their teams and announced the modifications. Rick began chairing a daily meeting with all the expertise he needed seated at the table. With everyone in the room to review requests and rough out estimates, Rick's process to estimate a customized machine went from three months to a few days.

The sales team was ecstatic. This gave them a tremendous competitive advantage. After the changes were implemented, the president estimated they captured an additional $1.5 million in sales the first year!

Once the root cause was identified, everyone in the organization fell over themselves trying to make amends for their previously harsh treatment of Rick. A few months later, Rick, the former recipient of the organization's contempt, was the honored guest at the company's annual sales meeting. He took the podium to talk about the next generation of customized designs.

If system thinking and process mapping are new to you, then tap resources and start to understand this critical aspect of your work. You can start by listing some of your main processes in your work. Which ones are problematic? Could you pull together a group and start problem-solving?

Regardless, if you're at the introductory or mastery level you can ask yourself, “Is a process problem increasing tension between me and the person with whom I'm frustrated?”

3. Performance measures that conflict

Most performance measures, such as quality, speed, and growth, make sense within a department but can cause tension between departments. I witnessed this in a hospital setting where the employees in the nursing division were evaluated on multiple measures, including customer satisfaction, and employees in finance were appraised on how quickly patients were discharged. If these systemic conflicts are not verbalized, they can trigger factions and mistrust. If inherent tensions between groups cannot be changed, at least they can be acknowledged, so employees are not as likely to resent the behavior of their colleagues.

The story of the architects and project managers from the previous chapter is a textbook example of how seemingly reasonable performance measures can cause tension between groups. The architects were rewarded for being innovative and attracting the attention of the press. However, innovations take financial resources. Their immediate colleagues in construction received bonuses for finishing projects on time and under budget. They lacked an understanding of these differences and resorted to avoidance and name-calling.

More than once I found that the root cause of conflict between executives and their departments was rooted in the calculations upon which their bonuses were paid. Executives worked specific criteria to maximize his or her bonus, but at the expense of cross-functional collaboration.

I worked with an executive team who decided that a significant barrier to collaboration was bonuses based on departmental goals. They agreed that the executive team's bonus should be set with the same measure—year-end profitability. Twenty-four hours after we agreed on this change, the VP of sales offered the VP of operations (his previous scapegoat) his unfilled employee position to help alleviate the staff shortage in operations. Why did the formerly self-oriented executive suddenly become so cooperative? Because we made it in his best interest to help his colleagues succeed.

When bonuses, systems, award programs, and performance measures are based on departmental goals, silo thinking dominates, despite hand-wringing and platitudes from upper management. When financial rewards are based on cooperation and interdependence, collaborative behavior is acknowledged and rewarded.

Return to the situation you would like to improve, and ask yourself, “Is there tension between me and the person with whom I'm frustrated because our performance measures aren't in alignment?”

4. Mutual lack of skill, insight, or courage

Of the five root causes, this is the one I witness most frequently. Whenever someone acts in a destructive or callous manner, I ask myself, “Is this person lacking skill, insight, or courage?” These questions can save many hours of useless fuming and negativity.

Personally, when I am the one who misses the mark, I analyze my behavior using the same set of questions. These six words—lack of skill, insight, or self-confidence—are a useful way to hold ourselves accountable without sliding into shame, which is debilitating.

The difference between lack of skill, insight, and courage, and the sense of dread that accompanies inflammatory thinking (“This is all your fault, you are totally worthless, and you will never change”) is that everyone can become more skillful, more insightful, and more courageous. Lack of skill, insight, and courage is not a fatal condition—it is an invitation to grow.

“All the managers are immature!”

The following story conveys a time I was caught off guard by the destructive behavior of a client, flooded, backed up, and approached the problem more effectively. Following a public seminar, the HR director from a large nonprofit agency approached me. Roxanne loved the class and asked me to come to her organization and conduct sessions for their managers. She said their organization was full of negativity and blame, and could definitely benefit from the insights and skills of the class.

On the first day at her organization, I was pleasantly surprised to see Roxanne sitting in the audience, ready to participate for the second time. “Wow, she must be a big fan of the material,” I thought naïvely. “It must have made a big impact!”

In the few minutes before the presentation began, people were chatting and enjoying coffee and pastries. A small group of managers sitting together near the front of the room started to discuss an organizational disaster that had occurred the previous year. Due to a new software program, paychecks for the organization had been delayed for more than two weeks. I learned later that the error, which occurred right before Christmas, caused significant problems for most of their employees, and it originated in Roxanne's office.

Roxanne, who was sitting in the back of the room, overheard their private conversation. From across the room, she said loudly, “Are you still talking about that? Do you know why this organization is so screwed up? Because all the managers are immature!”

The room became dead quiet. I was in an uncomfortable spot. My contract with the organization was to facilitate a seminar. I wasn't prepared to resolve this conflict; it was the wrong audience, and it's not what they had asked me to do. I did my best to smooth over her statement and alleviate the negative impact of her remarks, but when I left at the end of the day, I knew the group had not fully recovered from the sting of her insult.

Once I was on my way home, I found myself rerunning the “tape” of Roxanne's words. I thought, “What a jerk!” In an effort to justify my feelings of self-righteousness and anger, I went on a classic “search for stupidity.”

It wasn't difficult to find facts to support my negative thinking. Despite the fact that Roxanne seemed to value my message, she started the day by attacking everyone in the room—the very behaviors she had asked me to alleviate!

Suddenly I remembered I had to do two more seminars at her agency. Maybe she would be on vacation; I wanted to avoid her.

Then the arrow of blame turned inward. Maybe I was the problem! I hadn't exactly saved the day. Maybe I was a fraud! If I had been Nelson Mandela, the situation would have been a piece of cake. Why hadn't I fixed it? I was really on a roll. I felt angry and powerless, and I was starting to feel my stomach churn. I wondered if I was getting the flu.

I was making myself upset by my thinking! Fortunately, I knew I could alleviate my distress simply by changing what I was saying to myself.

Before I understood these principles, the thinking patterns of blame, self-criticism, and their accompanying physical reactions were daily experiences for me. However, for three years I had practiced the baby in the back seat technique and alternatives to blame. Now it was relatively easy to become aware of the change in my body chemistry and identify the cause.

I started laughing because I realized I blamed Roxanne because she had blamed the supervisors because the supervisors had blamed her department. I started my analysis over.

A more useful way to think about human imperfections

Let's return to Roxanne and look at her behavior first. Then I will look at my own. Might her actions reflect a lack of skill? Could she have accomplished her goal by talking to the group privately and saying something similar to, “Are you talking about the mistake we made last year in payroll? I know it caused hardship, but when managers keep circulating the story a year later, it is demoralizing for my team. As you know, we were coping with some very unusual circumstances, and it won't happen again. I'd appreciate it if you could move on.”

Roxanne did not have the skill and self-control to deliver this message quietly—at least not that day, not in that moment.

How about lack of self-confidence or courage? Roxanne's group had not formally apologized to those affected by the error. The managers were discussing the incident nearly a year later because they were still angry, and the extent of the mistake had not been acknowledged. Sometimes it takes tremendous courage to apologize, especially when others are harmed by our behaviors. At the time, Roxanne and her staff had withdrawn. They became defensive as a means of deflecting attention away from their department's behavior.

Then I considered the possibility that Roxanne's behavior was the result of lack of insight. I don't think Roxanne understood how deeply her outburst offended the managers or fully comprehended the steps necessary to put the incident to bed. Instead, she continued to feed the controversy by blaming and withdrawing.

Once I looked at her behavior with a less inflammatory eye, I was also able to look at my own behavior more objectively. I too lacked skill, insight, and courage in that moment.

After her outburst, I did not know what to do. I had hit my growing edge and missed the mark. That's what we do—over and over. If we receive warm, competent feedback about errors, we learn and try again. If we make an error and the other person attacks, we reciprocate by retreating or countering his or her accusations.

After a few minutes of looking at the situation with different assumptions, I realized my queasiness was gone. When I thought about returning to Roxanne's agency for the remaining presentations, I no longer wanted to avoid her.

I learned a visceral lesson that day about the power of the subtle choices we make every time we are frustrated. Do we search for stupidity? Or do we analyze the situation in a more reflective light?

Lack of skill, insight, or courage. Use those half-dozen words for the next few days every time you see someone who behaves rudely, defensively, or destructively. See if you can't view their behavior as a lack of one of these three qualities. Then ask yourself, “How about me?”

Use the same words to analyze your own behavior when you make an error. Rather than disparaging ourselves for being a bad person, an idiot, or a complete bungler, we can analyze how we could approach the situation with more skill, insight, or confidence. Once thinking becomes more objective, the mood lifts, we are more motivated to change, and we are more confident that improvement is possible. Self-induced bouts of depression will become a thing of the past, as will the need to escape them by targeting someone else.

Return to the situation you would like to improve. Is there a mutual lack of skill, insight, or courage that increases the tension between you and the person with whom you're frustrated? See if you can't find a way to reframe this common human condition, help each other learn, and work toward mutual goals.

5. Negative reciprocity

Sometimes, as in the story of the president's son and the president's best friend at the print shop, the trigger for escalated conflict is simply negative reciprocity. Their mistrust for each other and their attempts to influence the president toward their faction were enough to eliminate any chance of collaboration.

While working at a hospital, “Dr. Schmitz” told me how he alienated some of his colleagues by acting on his First Assumption thinking. Dr. Schmitz worked in pediatric palliative care, which provides pain relief for children in chronic pain or near the end of their lives. The situation that troubled him the most was watching primary physicians continue treatment beyond any possibility of remission.

Prior to the class, Dr. Schmitz always assumed that the doctors were selfish and continuing treatment only because of the revenue stream. He shared this feeling with some of the nurses, and his judgments of his colleagues were, of course, passed on to the primary physicians. The primary care physicians stopped using Dr. Schmitz's services, which confirmed his belief that they were self-centered.

But during the seminar, he revisited his assumption and wondered if they were continuing treatment not because they didn't care enough, but because they cared too much and could not let go. Dr. Schmitz made a commitment: the next time he saw prolonged and unrealistic treatment, instead of talking about his colleagues behind their backs, he would reach out to them and ask what he could do to help. Up until that moment he didn't realize he had created a cycle of negative reciprocity that he could repair.

Ask yourself, “Am I and the person with whom I'm frustrated locked in negative reciprocity?” If that's a possibility, you will learn how to open the dialogue and break the cycle in the next chapter.

Summary: Five Root Causes of Workplace Tension

1. A baby in the backseat—a constraint or pressure hidden from view.
2. Poorly designed systems, work flow, or processes.
3. Performance measures that conflict.
4. Lack of skill, insight, or courage—theirs and/or yours.
5. Negative reciprocity or fear.