Things in this Newsletter 🗞️

• 🌟 Continuous Improvement ideas

• 🔍 Conflict in Retrospectives – Part 2: The Five D …

  • 🧱 1. The Structural Dimension

  • 🛠️ 2. The Instrumental Dimension

  • 💰 3. The Interest Dimension

  • 🌱 4. The Value Dimension

  • 💬 5. The Personal Dimension

  • 🧠 Final Thought: Start with Curiosity

• 🧐 Facilitate or Plan with Jo

  • Jo

🌟 Editor's Note

"Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means." - Mahatma Gandhi 

Welcome to another Retro Newsletter. If this is your first time here, I highly recommend reading this newsletter first it will give you the basics. Today’s newsletter is the second of a 3-part series on conflict. Today, we are going to discuss conflict dimensions and how to work with them to enable constructive conflict.

🌟  Continuous Improvement ideas

We don’t always choose to work on all of the good ideas that come out of a retro. Keeping a backlog of improvement ideas that teams can pull on when they have gaps is a good way to store those ideas and create space for them to get done.

🔍 Conflict in Retrospectives – Part 2: The Five Dimensions of Conflict

Welcome back to our series on conflict in retrospectives. Last time, we challenged the idea that conflict is “bad.” In fact, it’s often a sign of growth, or at least a sign that something meaningful is happening.

This week, we are expanding on the Conflict escalation by adding the five dimensions of conflict. These five dimensions address the factors that can influence conflict or where it originates. For each of these, we will explore some ideas for how to tackle them.

Now, the dimensions are great, but humans are complex, not linear, and definitely not simple. Often, I find that even though these are helpful in identifying the source of a conflict, if I dig a little deeper, I see that any conflict may belong in multiple dimensions.

🧱 1. The Structural Dimension

What it is:
The external systems that shape how we work, like org charts, decision-making power, or policies. These are often the biggest contributors to conflict in organisations.

Examples of Structural conflicts

• Arguments about who makes a decision

• Conflicts caused by status or hierarchy

• Conflicts between teams or divisions or units influenced by the org structure

💡 Ideas for how to work with these. 

I like using Glenda Eoyang’s CDE model when I notice structural conflict surfacing in a retro. It stands for Containers, Differences, and Exchanges, and it gives you a way to make the structure visible. I’ll ask:

• What are the containers here? (e.g. teams, departments, reporting lines)

• What are the differences? (e.g. roles, responsibilities, goals)

• What are the exchanges? (e.g. communication flows, handoffs, shared tools)

Once we map those, I ask:
What might happen if we changed the container, improved the exchanges, or reduced the differences?
That’s often where the leverage is.

Here’s a real-world example. A platform team and an infrastructure team were constantly in conflict. The fights weren’t loud — they were bureaucratic. Jira tickets flying back and forth like angry pigeons. Issues getting bounced, reassigned, escalated. No one was talking — just reacting.

We zoomed out and saw two distinct containers (the teams), very poor exchanges (those Jira interactions), and sharp differences (skill sets, responsibilities, expectations). We weren’t looking at a communication issue — we were looking at a structural one.

So we worked to build bridges. We tested a joint support squad, improved visibility of shared work, and created simple agreements about how — and when — to talk to each other. That didn’t fix everything. But it changed the conditions. And that made space for better outcomes.

🛠️ 2. The Instrumental Dimension

What it is:
These are conflicts that often arise when people have different ideas about how to do things, such as processes, tools, timing, or tactics. I often see this play out in teams around tools, or preferences like spaces or tabs or how code needs to be laid out or how to do code comments.

Examples of instrumental conflict:

• This needs to be a module, no, we need to separate it out and make it a library

• Branching and merging strategies

• Any tool conflict

💡 Ideas for working with these. 

For these conflicts, I employ various strategies, depending on the context and the situation.

The first is the rule of 3’s. Often, people argue about your idea versus my idea, and that means they have a personal stake, which can quickly become both personal and competitive. There is a lot in there for people. So I want to expand the number of ideas on the table. If we have at least three different ideas, we really have a choice, it often broadens the potential for better ideas and can cool down a you vs me situation.

The second idea I like to draw on is the SPINE model. SPINE is particularly helpful in many contexts, but especially when we are debating the use of tools. It’s easy to start arguing about tools without clearly understanding the problem we are trying to solve, the needs of the organisation or the values and principles that are important. When we align on those, it is so much easier to identify the tools or ways of work that will work for us.

Three principles guide me here:

• Expand the range of options

• Make thinking visible

• Align on purpose before choosing the path

That almost always gets us further than continuing to bicker over the branches.

💰 3. The Interest Dimension

What it is:
These aren’t always dramatic conflicts, but they often brew under the surface. Who gets to spend the team’s budget? Who gets to demo in the sprint review? Who gets time with the product owner? These questions can bring up feelings of scarcity, inequity, and tension.

Examples of instrumental conflict:

• How do we spend our team budget

• Server space or time

• Time with testers or key people

• Allocation of resources (not people but money, disc space, capacity)

💡 Ideas for working with these. 

Interest-based conflicts can be very tricky; it’s not easy to split some things. There’s a classic story about two sisters fighting over the last orange. Their mother steps in and asks what they each want it for. One says juice. The other wants the peel for baking. Turns out they could both get what they needed, but only by understanding why they wanted it.

Sometimes it’s helpful to start with the needs and problems to be solved - this approach works particularly well when a specific issue is at hand, such as budget constraints or similar concerns. The SPIne model can be helpful in deciding on values and principles, but that only works if the values align.

My go-to approach here is to create visibility of options and explore how we can expand the options pool. To understand the needs of everyone involved and what that means from a resources perspective, and then to negotiate. Keep things focused on the problem at hand so they don’t escalate and become personal, and make the tradeoffs for everyone clear.

Depending on the scenario and the constraints at play, there will probably be tradeoffs for everyone, making them visible and well understood can be helpful. Connecting people to the larger system and its priorities (Organisation, Unit, Community) can also be helpful in getting people to align and make decisions.

🌱 4. The Value Dimension

What it is:
We all have deeply rooted things we value, and these values are sometimes different or prioritised differently. Values-based conflicts arise from differences in values or in the prioritisation of values.

Examples of Values-based conflict:

• Everyone in the team values a good work ethic, but some team members value family time higher and so will prioritise their family over a work issue.

• Some people value perfection, and others are ok with good enough to learn from.

• Some people value hard work over fun

• Some people value relationships and want to invest in them, and some people want to just get stuff done

💡 Ideas for working with these. 

Here are some things I focus on.

What helps here is prevention and clarity. Team agreements go a long way. Done well, they surface what people value before we hit friction. If we’ve discussed what “healthy working hours” look like, we’re better prepared when someone flags work creeping into their evenings.

When values do clash, I try to focus on empathy and connection. Help people hear each other. Not to agree, but to understand. Viginia Saitir used to say:

Nonviolent Communication and the Satir Interaction Model are both helpful here, too, as tools for unpacking emotion, language, and deeper drivers with care.

💬 5. The Personal Dimension

What it is

This is where it gets tender. The personal dimension lives beneath the surface; it’s about identity, belonging, and self-worth. Conflicts here are driven by emotion, not logic.
And we often don’t know we’re in this territory until it’s too late.

Examples of personal conflict: 

You’ll hear it when people stop talking about issues and start talking about people.
“James always does this.”
“That’s just how she is.”
Or worse, “That’s a stupid idea.”

Sometimes, it starts as a misunderstanding, a poorly chosen word, a look, a tone. But if it goes unaddressed, it quickly becomes a story we tell ourselves about another person.

💡 Ideas for working with these. 

Here, I focus on dialogue. On creating space for people to be heard fully, without interruption. I use Nonviolent Communication and the Satir Interaction Model to help unpack any misunderstandings and to work through and understand another person's feelings and perspectives. I remind myself that this work is slow, sometimes messy, and deeply human. These are sometimes some of the most difficult conflicts to unravel and can take time; sometimes, separation is the best solution.

🧠 Final Thought: Start with Curiosity

Most conflicts don’t live in just one dimension. A disagreement over tooling (instrumental) might actually be about recognition (personal) or fairness (values).

Your job isn’t to diagnose, it’s to listen with curiosity, ask with kindness, and respond with tools that meet the moment.

In part 3, we’ll explore Conflict Styles.

Until then, remember that understanding your own reactions to conflict and your own triggers can go a long way to helping you stand steady and stay neutral as you facilitate for a team.

🧠 Quick Facilitator’s Tip

For any session longer than 90 minutes, make sure you incorporate regular breaks. People need to move and especially when there is conflict people can break the 

🔥 Things you might like

Here is a link to Icebreaker Bingo, which can be a super fun game for any in-person event where people can get to know each other. My one friend even did it at her wedding.

Beehive is a fantastic newsletter platform that is easy to use, making it fun and straightforward to engage an audience with your message. Why not think about starting your newsletter: https://www.beehiiv.com?via=Joanne-Perold

🧐 Facilitate or Plan with Jo

Did you know I can help plan your next retro or facilitate it for you? I have packages available for facilitation, planning, or being a sounding board. [email protected] is the email address to use for contact.

Did You Know? Toaster-style battery charger

Toaster-style battery charger
Forget USB hubs — Swippitt’s charger looks like a mini toaster: you insert your phone and it automatically swaps out the old battery for a fresh one. No cables, no fuss theverge.com.

Till next time,

Jo