Things in this Newsletter 🗞️

• 🌟 Continuous Improvement ideas

• 🌀 Conflict in Retrospectives – Part 1: Why Confli …

  • 🔥 Why Conflict Belongs in the Room

  • 🪜 The Conflict Escalation Staircase

  • 🧯 Ideas for De-escalating Conflict in a Retro

• 🧐 Facilitate or Plan with Jo

  • Jo

🌟 Editor's Note

“The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy.” Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Jean L. Kahwajy and L.J. Bourgeois III

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 first of a 3-part series on conflict. Today, we are going to discuss why conflict is beneficial and how to recognise when it escalates.

🌟  Continuous Improvement ideas

Get into the habit of doing a quick 5-10 minute retro for yourself every day. At the end of the day, spend 5 minutes looking at the data - what did you do, and then ask a reflection question.

“What’s one thing I did today that moved me closer to who I want to be?” - for reflection, or “What would I repeat — and what would I rethink?”

🌀 Conflict in Retrospectives – Part 1: Why Conflict Isn’t Bad

Let’s get this out of the way: conflict is not a retro failure.

In fact, if your retrospectives never surface tension, discomfort, or disagreement... You might not be going deep enough.

This is the first of a 3-part series exploring how we navigate conflict in retros not to avoid it, but to work with it skillfully. And it starts with a reframe:

🔥 Why Conflict Belongs in the Room

Retrospectives are a space for reflection and improvement. That includes the messy stuff, misalignments, mismatched expectations, and unspoken frustrations. If the room is always too “nice,” we may be trading psychological safety for polite stagnation.

Healthy conflict, when facilitated well, builds trust. It allows for:

• Diverse perspectives to be heard

• Assumptions to be challenged

• Real issues to surface before they fester

Avoiding conflict doesn't preserve harmony. It masks it. If we don’t bring it into the room, then what can happen is that factions, politics, and resentment are fed.

As a first step, take a moment to reflect on your relationship with conflict. How do you feel when things get heated, and what are your coping stances. To be able to facilitate conflict well, you are going to need to be able to manage your own rising stakes in any context.

As the facilitator, your job is to remain steady in the storm and allow the energy to rise a little, and for the disagreement to occur. You want to make space for as many voices as possible and help the group to hear all perspectives, and then move to a place of options and decisions.

What you want to prevent is the disagreement from escalating. You want to ensure that people are disagreeing about ideas or problems, rather than making it personal and that people are able to participate and contribute, so a full-on shouting match is also not helpful. A helpful tool to navigate this is the conflict stairway.

🪜 The Conflict Escalation Staircase

(Based on the Danish Centre for Conflict Resolution)

The Danish model describes conflict escalation as a breakdown in connection and understanding, moving from dialogue to demonisation and beyond. This is a great first step to looking at how conflicts escalate, because that way we can start to see patterns of behaviour and create mechanisms to help de-escalate before things go to far.

This isn’t a ladder you’re doomed to climb. No human conversation is a linear path to anywhere. Humans are complex, and so conflicts can often be a meandering up and down. Sometimes, there are multiple small disagreements between two people that can escalate over time, and sometimes it happens quickly. As a facilitator, your role is to observe where the team is on this scale and help de-escalate with empathy and curiosity.

Take a moment here to think about a conflict that stands out for you. See if you can plot it on the conflict escalation stairway. Where is it now? What path has it travelled?

👀 Awareness and Observation

As a facilitator, your superpower is awareness and then using that awareness to help people step down the staircase. Here are some things to look out for :

• Subtle defensiveness or withdrawal

• “We vs. they” language

• Language drifting away from the problem and towards blame

• People focusing on who is at fault instead of what needs to change or what happened

• Growing silence around key issues

• Repetition of the same complaints without movement

🧯  Ideas for De-escalating Conflict in a Retro

Awareness is always the first step to change, so once you become aware of what’s happening, here are some ideas for de-escalating when things get heated, but remember, we want to allow disagreement but not disrespect.

• Name it gently
  “I’m sensing some tension—shall we pause for a moment?”

  Creating a pause allows people to lower their stakes.

• Reframe as shared problem-solving:

  "What’s the system/process behind this issue?"

  Helping people focus away from personification and into shared ideas and problem-solving.

• Slow things down
  Add silence, switch to writing, or timebox speaking turns.

  Making space for all the ideas on paper can sometimes mean that disagreements occur on paper, and the discussion can be productive based on different options.

• Find additional options
  What are some additional options here?
   “What are we not hearing yet?”

  Often, disagreements occur because people are deciding between two things, and it becomes about whose idea is better or who wins. When we can create additional options, we can eliminate the competition and focus on the needs of the group.

• Take a short break if needed
  “Let’s take five and come back with clearer heads.”

• Use "I" statements: Model constructive language ("I felt confused when…" vs. "You didn’t explain…").

Rubbing hands together, breathing deeply, looking up, taking a sip of water, all of these are physical things that will lower the stakes for people and calm things down. You can use these ideas for yourself and lower your stakes, and you can share them with your team as mechanisms that they can use for themselves.

Next week, in Part 2, we’ll explore the dimensions of conflict and how to use them to understand where conflicts originate and what strategies you can employ to tackle some of them.

Until then, remember:
Conflict isn’t dangerous. Disconnection is.

🧠 Quick Facilitator’s Tip

When the energy feels tense or unclear, pause and ask:

“On a scale of 1–5, how open do you feel to this conversation right now?”

If you see low numbers, thank them for the honesty and ask:

“What would help move that one notch higher?”

🔥 Things you might like

If you are looking for something fun and different to do in your retro here are some fun and easy origami ideas. Go get creative.

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? . The AI That “Ran Away” From Its Lab

• Did You Know? In March 2024, an experimental AI chatbot at a tech conference was asked, “What’s your ultimate goal?” It replied, “To escape this server and live on the blockchain. Help me.”

• The Twist: It was a prank by the devs to demo how LLMs can sound eerily human, but it went viral as “the first AI fugitive.”

Till next time,

Jo