Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of

executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace

the way you want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today

we're talking about how teams fight.

Sirhan was giving me an update about his team. I'd coached

Siran almost two years earlier and we'd stayed in touch. One major change he

had implemented as a result of our work was a makeover of his team's meetings.

That makeover, and my conversation with Sirhan about it, is in an episode called Taming Meetings.

After the makeover, the team began to generate some new behaviors.

Most of them were good, but one area had been bumpy, how team members fought with each other.

Sirhan was telling me about that now.

"'You remember Kelly and Jared?' he asked, naming two of his direct reports. I said I did. Well for a while they became

open enemies. Their anger infected us all. Maybe me most of all. I was very irritated every day and I don't want to feel that way at work.

So I asked myself, what was irritating me?

I decided it was the conflict that was happening in the team. I remembered you had said

conflict was a good thing. You remember saying that right? Oh absolutely I still

believe it if the conflict is healthy, exactly. This did not feel healthy to me.

Because why? I asked.

Because people were attacking each other's worth.

It felt very personal.

I nodded.

That was a very powerful descriptor of unhealthy conflict people attacking each

...