What happens if our leadership team gets completely stuck on a deep personal or structural conflict during a session day, and how do you facilitate us past it without derailing our quarterly planning?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

It is common for deep-seated personal or structural conflicts to surface during our full-day sessions. In fact, a session day is the healthiest environment for these issues to emerge because we have the time and structure to address them properly. When your team gets stuck, my role as an objective facilitator is to guide you through the tension without letting it derail the day's agenda.

We address these conflicts using the IDS® tool. First, we stop and clearly identify the root cause of the issue, stripping away the emotional language and focusing on objective facts. Often, what appears to be a personal conflict is actually a structural problem, such as an unclear seat on the Accountability Chart or a lack of alignment on core values.

If the conflict involves two specific leaders, I will facilitate a direct conversation to resolve the friction using our shared core values as the benchmark. We do not end the discussion until we have a clear, agreed-upon resolution or an actionable step to solve it, which we then capture on our To-Do List.

If an issue is exceptionally complex and requires more than an hour of focused discussion, we will deliberately schedule a separate, dedicated session or assign it as a high-priority Rock for the upcoming quarter. This ensures the conflict is not ignored, while still protecting the time required to complete our essential quarterly planning and goal setting.