S3E11: Rethinking Conflict: From Tension to Team Growth (feat. Erin Barry PhD and Beth Koltz EdM)

Brooke:

Welcome to Learning to Lead, a podcast about leadership, teamwork, and reimagining healthcare. This podcast is for learners, educators, and healthcare professionals interested in building leadership skills in a supportive community.

We are your hosts Rahul Anand, Maya Doyle, Peter Longley, and Brooklynn Weber.

Together we bring you conversations with emerging and established leaders, deep dives and hacks to help you become the best leader you can be.

Rahul:

Welcome listeners. I'm your host Rahul Anand. And with me today are Pete, our nursing faculty.

Pete:

Hello.

Rahul:

And Brooke, our medical student.

Brooke:

Hi everyone.

Rahul:

I'm delighted to welcome back Dr. Erin Barry PhD and Beth Koltz EdM. In the second of our recurring episodes on Evidence-Informed Leadership. In these, we share our platform with Erin and Beth who select an article or book every emerging leader can benefit from and translate that into tips you can use today. Erin is an associate professor in the Department of Health Professions Education at the Uniform Services University. She's a health professions education scholar, author, and ICF Certified Leadership Coach. Erin, welcome back.

Erin:

Thank you. Excited to chat again.

Rahul:

Beth is the Senior Director of Instructional and Curriculum Design and assistant professor at the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine. Beth, great to have you back.

Beth:

Thank you. It's great to be back.

Rahul:

We can't wait to hear what you both have for us today. Take it away.

Erin:

So we wanted to talk about conflict because conflict is inevitable, especially in healthcare where there's high stakes, people have differing values and emotions are going to collide and all come together. So before we jump in, I want to get one word that comes to mind when you hear the word conflict. What's that one word or feeling from you guys of what does that mean to you?

Pete:

Scary.

Rahul:

Pain.

Brooke:

Stressful.

Erin:

So, I love that we're picking up a lot of that kind negative connotation that conflict can really bring out. And a lot of times it's that visceral reaction to conflict. So we're picturing that tension and there's discomfort and possibly even failure is coming up in some of that feeling that we're having around it. And so the thought of rethinking different things, conflict doesn't always have to come from being bad and in many situations it's going to arise because of misaligned goals, power dynamics, or even simple communication errors that get made. And so we talked today because we want to talk about that conflict is normal, inevitable, and it's possibly, we could say even necessary to be a part of a high functioning team because when people really care deeply about their work and different things that are going on, disagreements going to happen. There's lots of things that people are going to talk about.

And the key is now how are we going to navigate that conflict? And so also bring in another episode that you guys did with Dr. Tracy Van Oss. She talked about it really nicely and how emotions show up in those professional settings. And the points I took away from her were that there's really a lot of importance around empathy, perspective taking and being able to stay calm in those different moments that we're all feeling, especially when we feel like it's a personal attack on us. And so if we can re-approach it and think of it as a shared problem solving, we might be able to have a better way to approach different conflicts. So we want to dive deeper today to talk about conflict as a vital part of leader development and how it shows up in healthcare teams, what's going to drive it, and most importantly, what can we learn from it. So to get us started, I wanted to pass it over to Beth to bring in some stories.

Beth:

So I'm really glad we're talking about this topic today because it is such an important topic for everyone. It's important because it's difficult and it emits a lot of kind of negative connotations. And so it's difficult, but it's really essential. Individually it's important, but also for leaders, it's essential both for one's own leadership health, for one's own leadership, guidance for others in the organization and as a role model and also to establish a culture. We have a culture of being able to deal with conflict. Wouldn't that be wonderful? It's a difficult thing to do. So I want to thank you, Erin for introducing your research study to us because it's a fantastic study. It has great rigor and it's very well done. And it will bring out, as you will all hear, these common areas that teams and teamwork have identified as conflicts in a healthcare setting and that we can look at these common areas and really relate them to other things that we're experiencing.

So I have several conflict stories that I've come up with while we looked at this topic, but one that I thought was important initially to talk about working with teams was when I was just starting out in medical education, I came from a corporate setting, a different setting. And so I came in and I started working with a small team and they all knew each other and worked well together. And I came in and I thought, I need to be very confident. I need to be and showing people how much I can demonstrate what I know and that they can have confidence in me. The leaders liked that. But I have to say that the teams, my peers didn't take it as well because it came across arrogant and they were expecting me to join them as a team member. And I was coming in more as an individual.

And so I didn't have that awareness, oh, I need to become part of this team. And so that actually ensued some conflict and even my boss had to say something to me, in order to get along with these people, you need to become a member of them and get to know them. And I realize that now that understanding the lay of the land, understanding how people work together, first stepping back and just understanding it first is really important. I also understood from this in examining it how important culture is and how you have to understand culture and that leaders have to understand culture and especially if you're going into a new area. So for medical students going into a new clerkship or residents going into a new place, they need to step back sometimes and just see and get the lay of the land to understand how to get in there.

So I just wanted to emphasize that if it's a team thing, you really need to come back, step back. And most of the time there are other people involved, so you need to do that. So that is what I was thinking about and it did remind me of your research, Aaron, and how there was one that came up about expectations. There's something in the research about expectations and understanding expectations. I think that that was my experience, that expectations weren't being met on either side, my side or the team member's sides. And you talk about this as one of those that came up. So I wondered if you could talk some more about your research and those things that came up as issues and conflicts for the team.

Erin:

Yeah, absolutely. So we had a very interesting group that we worked with. So we worked and ran a conflict and conflict management session with our third year medical students right after they finished their clerkship in clinical rotations. So during this session we were able to talk through different types of conflict, different conflict management modes for managing conflict. And then they were able to diagnose and discuss different conflicts that they were dealing with when they were out on their clinical rotations. And they were able to bring that together and recognize again, they're not alone in some of these conflict settings and be able to have those conversations with each other. So afterwards, we asked students to reflect on a specific conflict that they had experienced during their clerkship year and something that stood out to them. So whether it was something they were directly involved in or they just observed it and then they need to start diagnosing the conflict.

So we analyze those reflections and we found that most conflict students described happen during their surgery and internal medicine rotations, which are settings that are generally high pressure, they're fast paced, they're hierarchical in many settings, and the conflicts often involved residents or attendings. Most were task related. So things like differing opinions about patient care, unclear directions, disagreements about responsibilities. And then what was especially interesting was how students responded to those moments. They found that they were often defaulting to an avoiding conflict mode. So staying quiet, withdrawing while the residents are attending were perceived by the student as using a competing mode. So being more direct and assertive in those situations. And overall, students felt that most of the conflicts were not handled well. And so we started looking at the stories and the themes a little deeper and we found five common triggers that underlied a lot of what they were trying to tell us. And those were that there were unclear expectations going on within the team. There were hostile and false communication happening in different settings. They had unsafe environments where there was a lot of hierarchy and power that maybe made it risky to speak up. There was sometimes mistrust in the team relationships that were happening. And then there was a stress spillover from either the residents or attendings own stress starting to affect them. So while each story was very unique, there were a lot of various common patterns that were arising within each of the stories.

Beth:

Great. So I do want to talk a little bit. As you pointed out in the article, one of the results identified were that tasks in the clinical education experience were one of the highest types of conflicts, the types. So I guess this makes sense considering the work of the teams tasks have to be performed together all the time. And so what are some of the other types that came up?

Erin:

Yeah, absolutely. So in our research we looked at three. So we had the task conflicts with differences in ideas or approaches, process conflicts are disagreements about how the work gets done or who is responsible for the work. And then we have relationship conflict, so emotional tension or trust issues. And then another one that came up in our conversations the other day was status conflict. So when hierarchy or authority is coming into play. So we didn't talk about this in our study, but this came up in our results in a lot of those triggers that were coming about. And so I think that those are really important to recognize the different types of conflict. And there's sometimes an overlap between those conflicts. There may not just be one and it can get very messy, but being able to try to pick which one that is can make a difference, I think then we move into how do you manage those different conflicts?

And so those go under those conflict modes. So Thomas Kilman has his model of five different conflict management modes, and again, we saw that most students found that they were avoiding, so they're sidestepping that tension. So trying to keep the peace which can allow resentment to grow in some situations. So being aware, again, there's pros and cons to each of these conflict management styles. And then they perceived a lot of the residents and attendings as using competing. So they're being very assertive in their position. They have high drive and may be seen as low cooperation, which is very useful in an emergency situation, but in other situations it may risk silencing others. And then we have the collaborating mode where you're looking for a win-win outcome. So we're building trust, but this is going to take time and time is not always our friend, especially in certain healthcare situations that we need to take care of. And then we have compromising, so finding that middle ground. So each site is going to give a little bit, which can be efficient, but it may also miss some of the deeper issues. We may not quite get to the root of that conflict problem in certain situations. And then we have accommodating. So being able to prioritize relationships over being right, which can build a lot of goodwill, but it can also reinforce some of the imbalances that are happening on different teams.

Rahul:

This is Rahul. So when I read the article, I was reminded of my raise as a trainee, and so this goes back over 20 years ago. I remember a time, so this is when I'm a resident in medicine and a call goes overhead for a rapid response. So along with two of my team members rushed there to respond. It turns out it's a patient with bradycardia slow heart rate from a medication that was being given. So we order an EK, G, we look to see what can be done, and it turns out it's a patient on my service. I was on internal medicine at that time as a resident and I'm 30 minutes late to my outpatient clinic at this point managing this rapid response. So I do what needs to be done. The EKG comes out, everything's stable. And my attending, who was the chief resident at that time, serving as an attending walks into the room.

So I tell him what's going on, hand off the patient to him and say, Hey, I need to get to my clinic. Can you take over? And I had to my clinic and take care of it. A week later in my mailbox, an official letter shows up that I'm being reprimanded for not taking ownership of my patient and very specific information there about how I had walked away in the middle of a rapid response. So when I read your article about conflict between trainees and the residents or attendings above them, that is what came to mind, which is why I use the word pain in response to your question. So I was a transfer as a resident at that time in this program from a internship somewhere else. So this definitely shook me and I would put it everywhere. There was a conflict about the task, about the process, who is part of this team and not part of this team.

It was definitely about status and me being the conflict averse person I was at that time, probably Salaam didn't do anything. I just absorbed it. Whereas looking back, it was so inappropriate of that chief resident to be writing a letter. We never had a conversation. He never explored what was going on on my side. And I think you're right, it's the expectations quote that often will get us into this conflict. And while we cannot avoid it, I appreciate that there can be a timeout and hey, can we talk about this? Because this is not how I see this. So that's my story.

Erin:

Thank you for sharing that. I think that that brings in, again, so many of those different types and modes. And then like you mentioned, the perspective taking. Could that person have just taken a moment to hear like, Hey, what's going on? This happened, you disappeared. And if they had taken the moment to hear from you, they probably would've understood. And so maybe not always jumping to conclusions in those moments. So in trying to figure out what else is going on in someone else's life, it can just de-conflict a lot of people in these moments. So I say I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you.

Rahul:

When I was reading your article, there was mention of mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques, which resonated with me. And I was thinking about it, how do we make this practical for someone who's facing conflict? And I think the basic mindset is there a way to increase the space between stimulus and response, which is the whole concept of mindfulness. And so one of the things that can be done is to just take a deep breath, the stop mnemonic, stop, take a deep breath, observe what's happening with you or the situation, and then proceed with whatever's in line with your purpose. And so that's one technique, but if nothing else works, just taking a deep breath and saying, Hey, I need a timeout. Because if the amygdala is hijacked mine or theirs, then nothing productive is going to happen in the next 15, 20 minutes. And hey, I need a little timeout and we will have to come back to this.

Erin:

I love that

Beth:

Agree, and time is on your side there. You need to take that time. I think that is something that's pointed out quite a bit like pause. So just taking that pause I totally agree is important.

Erin:

And I think being able to have that moment of pause, pull your thoughts together, but then come back to it like you said, RO coming up and saying, Hey, I need a minute. Can we come back to this in 20 minutes? Can I come back to you tomorrow to discuss this? There are moments in these conflicts that that's going to not create more relationship conflict. And so if we can address it, work through it, things will be better because the number one predictor of conflict is unresolved conflict. So if we're not going to resolve it, it's going to keep on happening and it's only going to get worse, especially relationship conflicts

Brooke:

Going off that also, you mentioned it in your article about the time forming the relationships with other people because I have definitely noticed in the teams that I've worked in where there has been time, it's easier to trust them and how those people work. And I feel like it's less likely to have conflict like, oh, that's how that person works. Or if it's a bad day, you're like, oh, that person's not usually like that. So you're more willing to be accepting of that. So I'm just wondering what do you do when you don't have the time or you don't have that ability, especially in the hospitals where the teams are always changing, how do you quickly establish that trust in those relationships?

Erin:

I think that's such a good question and I think it's coming up a lot in the research now. A lot of people are starting to really look at those teams that are forming very quickly. And I think even in those settings where we don't have a bunch of time, we can still set those clear expectations. Hey, I am in charge of this. Come to me. If you're the person in charge of the floor that day or Hey, I'm doing this, can you do this? Can you do this? And being able to have those quick introductions at the start of a shift can make a big difference of who's who We know who everyone is. We can know what roles they're going to be playing on the team that day that can start to decrease some of that different conflict that may start kind of creeping in at different times. And that can be pretty quick to do just those quick introductions, who's doing what can resolve some of the conflicts that are going to come up throughout that shift or something.

Brooke:

That's great, thank you.

Erin:

Love to hear from others too on different, especially in medicine. How does that work when you don't have time? Have you seen anything work or not work?

Rahul:

I would say a lot of times we are so patient-centered that taking care of the patient takes precedence and people will just absorb the conflicts, but then there is time at the end of the day or in downtime to bring up these things. And a couple of things come to mind. One of them is where I worked, I've tried to build a forum where the team can actually discuss what's working and what's not working. And if something is brought to notice, then not to ignore it or let it fester, but just talk to the person in private and staying on your side of the net without making assumptions. Say, Hey, this is what came up. This is an issue that came up and this is the impact that it's having on me or on some other person. I'm really curious about what's going on on your end or how you see this. And then beginning to explore their perspectives and eventually having the conversation about what is the best path forward.

Beth:

I think you hit the nail on the head there when you talked about assumptions. I think a lot of conflict comes up with people making assumptions. And so that is probably, we're all guilty of it and we all do it, but to just clearly state what the facts are and the observations really can help with those assumptions and bringing it forward so that don't have those assumptions and you're not reacting to something that just may not be real.

Rahul:

So we're reclassifying conflict. One is conflict that we have artificially created with our assumptions, and the second is which is actually there and now we have to tease out why it's there and how we can find a better way forward.

Erin:

I love that. I think that's such a fun. Again, we're diagnosing it. We're trying to figure out what's happening here. Some of it's in my own head and I've made up some of it, but some of it's real and we should probably talk about it. So I love using the downtime on the different shifts and things that you have of being able to come back to that and have those discussions. Because again, I think that that's what's going to build team trust. It's going to build that psychological safety on those teams when we acknowledge we're building that culture of feedback and being able to have these discussions even when they're difficult to really have discussions and challenge each other on different ideas. Maybe not always in the public space, but in private having those challenges and coming up with better things. We can be more innovative if we challenge each other on different things. Not always the best in every moment, but it helps find innovation in some of the solutions that are needed within healthcare.

Rahul:

I'll add that personally when we do team reflections, it may feel a little awkward in the first minute or two beginning it, but then it is a natural conversation. On the other hand, and we've done some design thinking research in the field, dysfunctional teams remain dysfunctional for decades because they have no forum to figure out what's working and what can be better.

Beth:

Exactly. And I think that we've been working with teams that start out right first year with team dynamics and understanding for the team to understand about how you're going to behave with each other as a team and putting together ground rules and setting those ground rules up right away with how the team works. And so how you deal with conflict is one of those ground rules. What are we going to do? And so starting out early, hopefully in medical education with the first teams, when you're not even in the clinic, maybe you're in a PBL or maybe you're in another type of a team environment, setting those ground rules up right away and starting to practice how to do that because that's what this takes practice.

Erin:

I think too in Adam Grant's book, think again, he brings up the conflict part and he found that high performing teams had more task conflicts. They debated how to do different things. What we were doing coming up with new innovative approaches to different things, and the teams that did not perform well had a lot of relationship conflicts. So they were more focused on, I don't want to do that, so-and-so said to do that, so I'm not going to do it. And so they focus more on those negative things that just kept being unresolved and just festered versus the teams that it was more a conversation. We're trying to find a different idea and a different approach to something. And they're not seeing it as a negative thing, it's just we're debating different ideas and different approaches to what we should be doing next,

Beth:

Trying to create a norm, right?

Erin:

Yes.

Rahul:

Yeah. I want to build on what you're saying, Aaron, because I've heard from Josh Hartzel about one of the leaders he admires Luis Ro and how he would literally mind for conflict in a meeting. So one of the leaders' roles is to actually bring out the task or cognitive conflict so that we've actually looked at, if we're going to look at three different options for a way forward, then we have to bring out the differences amongst perspectives before we can make a good decision together. So I appreciated learning that a leader's role sometimes is to mine for this cognitive conflict and that can help the team make the best decision.

Erin:

Absolutely. And I think recognizing as that leader, that that's part of what you have to do to create that culture. And if the leader sees conflict as always negative and avoids conflict and won't approach anything, the team knows that and conflict's going to fester. So being able to approach it in a way to have those conversations and to really dig into what might be the underlying cause for some of these things or finding the better way forward. There's nothing wrong with that. We're being more innovative. And again, time is going to come into those different situations. Do we have the time to sit and have these debates and figure out what's best or do we need to make a quick decision now? But let's come back to this conversation later.

Pete:

Erin, you bring up a good point, which I think is one of my biggest hurdles is the approach I can identify and be like, all right, Rahul just broke one of our ground rules. How do I approach him without being too dictatorial or too, I don't know, a patsy too easy. And he kind of misses the message. So that's where I have a hard time with the approach. I don't mind having difficult discussions if I start off wrong. All of a sudden the whole conversation blows up and it's an argument and who's yelling and stuff. So I guess that's probably why I avoid,

Erin:

It's such a great point. And again, I think there's a lot of, there's people who can do this for a living. They have the conflict mitigation team that can come in and help with these things, not something that I have done. And I think it's fascinating and probably should learn more of these techniques and different things that people have. But I think in those moments, having that question of, do you have a minute? Just being able to open that door. If they don't, then we probably shouldn't have that conversation right now. So I think starting with a, Hey, do you have a second for something? And then be able to approach that conversation in the most calm way. And again, hopefully you've taken that pause to not come in everything all a blaze and yelling at people. We've got to approach it in a calm way and recognize that our emotions might be playing into things.

And I think it's a lot of the research from Apologies, I saw this. Keep it on yourself. I noticed this. This is how it made me feel. Can we chat about that for a sec and not put blame towards anyone else? I think as soon as we blame, people get defensive. And I think even in those situations where we do do that, people are still going to get defensive. And it may be, I wanted to bring this to your attention. Now. We do not have to discuss this now, but can we come back to it once you've had a time to think about it? Maybe again, giving that time between those spaces might be a way that we don't have to hash it out. Now I had my pause and bring my thoughts together. I've now thrown it at you. Maybe you can have your moment to pause and reflect and then we can come back together and have a better conversation.

Love to hear if anyone else has ideas. This is something happens all the time, I feel like in workplaces, and we come in all upset about different things. And if we can take those moments, I think especially with kids, let's say another great example of having kids and they come in guns a blazing. So we got to really think through, okay, is this the fight you want to fight today? And so recognizing, let's pause, let's take a moment. And I think that's something we try to do in our house of like, I hear you. I hear your points. Can I have a moment to really think and reflect? Or can mom and dad talk for a second so we're on the same page? I

Beth:

Think too, if there really are ground rules set and everyone agrees to them, you can kind of, not jokingly but lightly, like, oh, we have a ground rule around this. And just kind of giving them a little bit of a hard time. You went over the boundary here that we set, but that said, they still might not deal with that. And so you still have to take a different approach. And I think really thinking about language is so important and your tone and everything, it's just really important. So you kind of, like Aaron said, take yourself out of it. Think about the situation. And sometimes just putting yourself in their shoes, depending on the situation and trying to understand why they're responding the way they are or asking them why this was a ground rule, why would you behave that way? What's going on with you? Is everything okay? I use that a lot. Is everything okay? Are you okay today? Is there something going on that I'm not aware of or that kind of thing? So I don't know. It is a challenge, Peter. It's a challenge.

Pete:

Yeah, I try to use humor a lot, as you can tell to navigate through all this stuff because again, like Rahul, I wasn't able to directly have any talk back. Then you get the back of the hand or whatever. So you learn very early that you got to navigate this differently. So I do use humor a lot, which isn't always appreciated. Some people think, oh, you're not taking this serious, but I'm taking this serious. I'm bringing it up for you to respond to it. And then they kind of turn it around on me, but I'm still learning. And Rahul, stop coloring outside the lines. See how I did that?

Rahul:

I will not let that go. So I'll echo that. I think my journey in trying to build this muscle has been that the first three steps are exactly as Adam's pointed out. One is identify the conflict, which I would define as not just a difference, but a difference that's stirring up emotions. So when my emotions are stirred up, I'm trying to think why is that what is really bothering me? Second figure out is this worth it? So if it is worth it, then move to the third step and reach out and say whether it's by text or in person or whatever, Hey, there's something that's bothering me. If you have a few minutes, can we talk about it now? Or can we set up a time to talk about it? So bringing it up reasonably quickly within one day ideally. And then asking for a time so that I'm not letting it go completely, because if I do let it go completely, it doesn't actually let go. The story in my head builds up and then I can spin a whole story from that keeps building up with each little pinch that happens

Erin:

Or assumption.

Rahul:

And then I think when we do have the conversation just focusing on what actually happened and trying to explore their side of the net as to what's going on on their side of the net before piling on with my interpretation of it.

Erin:

I love that. I think that that's a great way to calmly approach it. And I love the step of pause with yourself. Is this a me thing? Dig deep of why is this bothering me? Having that self-awareness I think is huge because we have to have self-awareness. We to be able to be aware and we have to be able to adapt because if it's maybe more of a me problem, I might need to change my approach. Maybe I need to fix something that I'm doing that might be causing some T within the team or something.

Beth:

And I think going back to the tasks, processes, relationships, looking at what is this about? Is it really about the relationship that usually involves so much more emotion, right? Or is it just a disagreement? Just is it a disagreement about a task or a process might be easier to have that discussion. So sometimes categorizing it too is helpful.

Erin:

I love that. And I think also thinking too, again, as a leader, as an educator in the field, we have to set those clear expectations from the start. Have what do we expect from the different people? Clarity around different roles that are happening. Use effective communication, use closed loop communication if something is really needed. Did you hear what I said? Cite back to me. So we know and you have to build that psychological safety within teams so that people can bring up the issues when there are issues. Because if that's not there and the trust isn't there within the team, they're not coming to you. And so realizing that if people aren't bringing you problems when you're the leader, there's issues going on within your team. They're not. I'm sure people can always be happy on different teams, but there's always got to be something going on and what can we do better as a team?

And so if they're not coming to you with problems or if they have been and then they stop completely, there's a leader problem, something that you need to take care of that's probably coming up within how you're working with a team, your approach to different things. And maybe that's a point where we need to dig in as a leader and recognize we need to do that, but we have to be able to empower our learners to be able to have that space. And I love the pause for a minute. Don't come in hot right after a situation has happened unless it's an emergency and patient safety's at hand right there. Take a moment, pause before you really go at someone else and come in with a very argumentative approach. Recognize that we need to have different situations. We need to be able to have that conversation calmly, and it's not going to happen if you come in very defensive or attacking.

So I think conflict, as we've kind of seen through the conversation and all the different examples that everyone has shared, conflict is everywhere it is going to happen. Finding ways to again, pause, have those moments of reflection for ourself, become self-aware that is this a me problem or is this a bigger problem that we should be addressing? And then being able to approach people and have those conversations when they're needed because sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are, I think is going to really help people move forward within these different teams and different relationships that we all have. And so I think that that's been my biggest takeaway from the conversation today, and I've loved hearing all the stories and hearing from everybody, but would love to hear your takeaways.

Brooke:

My takeaway is kind of going off what you're saying, that conflict is inevitable to happen. So trying not to avoid it because it's not going to go away. Even if you avoid it, it's just going to create other conflicts.

Pete:

I got the same thing, so I need to learn how to approach it better and do a pause before if the emotions are coming up being like, all right, what's going on? Is it me? Is it the contacts? And try to diagnose it as quick as I can. I guess my competing thing is I don't want to come across weak, but then you don't want to come across too strong either. So it's finding that middle ground. But yeah, taking a pause and trying to learn how to just communicate better.

Rahul:

I'm going to change the word I associate with conflict from pain to just appreciating it when it's visiting me and treating it as data and signals and seeing how it can help us get to a better place.

Beth:

My takeaway is similar. Conflict can be opportunity.

Rahul:

Beth and Erin, thank you so much for a great episode. You've been wonderful co-hosts today, Pete and Brooke. Thanks for making it a great conversation. And listeners, we'd love to keep hearing from you. How are you seeing conflict now? Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, take care and keep learning and leading.

Brooke:

Thank you for listening to our show. Learning to Lead is a production of the Quinnipiac University podcast studio, in partnership with the Schools of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences. 

Creators of this show are Rahul Anand, Maya Doyle, Peter Longley, and Brooklynn Weber.

The student producer is Brooklynn Weber, and the executive producer is David DesRoches.

Connect with us on social media @LearningToLeadPod or email us at LearningToLeadPod@quinnipiac.edu.