We often see conflict as a problem to solve—or worse, something to avoid. But what if conflict is actually a message? In this episode of Think Beyond Talks, we sit down with Iulia Socea, international peacebuilder and creator of the Conflict Ecosystem framework, to explore a different kind of leadership skill: the ability to diagnose conflict before reacting.
With over 15 years of experience mediating complex tensions in humanitarian and development contexts, Iulia now supports teams and leaders in understanding the underlying dynamics that drive conflict—from structural blind spots to psychological safety gaps.
This conversation goes beyond the usual conflict management advice. It’s a call for leaders to slow down, look deeper, and engage with tension in a way that strengthens their teams rather than fractures them.
Pick one recurring friction point in your team.
Ask: If we put personalities aside, what system conditions would still create this conflict?
Then tweak one of those conditions—and test it for two weeks.
If you're ready to explore the roots of conflict in your organization and turn tension into transformation, visit:
Let me know if you’d like this turned into a formatted PDF or Word doc — or added directly into your blog post file.
Leadership, development, growth. Scroll through LinkedIn and you'll see these words all the time. But do you connect them to yourself? At Think Beyond, we define a leader as someone who influences others, which means leadership might be closer to your own life than you think. In Think Beyond Talks, I speak with inspiring coaches and trainers from our global network about what it truly takes to lead well, support others and grow sustainably.
I'm Anne Barnea, join us and let's think beyond together.
Anne (:Last week, we explored why conflict is the solution, why it can't be avoided and why it's a core leadership task. Building on that conversation, today's guest brings together two worlds that rarely meet, international peace building and leadership development. Iulia Soja has spent over 15 years working in conflict transformation and humanitarian assistance, from Vienna to Ghana to Brussels. And in that time,
she's reached a powerful realization. The same patterns we see in war zones, miscommunication, power struggles, structural blind spots, also appear quietly in our offices, teams and leadership cultures. With that insight, she created the conflict ecosystem and developed her signature role as the conflict medic, focusing on the crucial step of diagnosing conflict before it escalates. Today,
we explore what it means to diagnose conflict rather than simply react to it. And why understanding the root causes of tension is one of the most important leadership skills of our time. Iulia , welcome to our podcast, Think Beyond Talks. It's great having you here. And as I said in the introduction, you call yourself the conflict medic. What's the idea behind that title?
Thank you very much, Anne, for having me on the show. It's a pleasure to join you and talk about this topic that I'm so passionate about. back to your question, conflict medic, what is it and why do I call myself that? Conflict medic really is just me. It's the way I like to show up for teams and organizations when tensions are high. I see conflict as something that requires
careful diagnosis and understanding, a signal that something in the system is out of balance. So as a conflict medic, my role is to slow things down and understand what's really driving the tension and help teams work through it in a way that's constructive and not destructive.
Anne (:And as I mentioned, your professional background is in humanitarian assistance and conflict transformation. So how did these experiences actually shape your thinking about conflict and how to deal with it?
In fact, everything that I stand for as or everything that I know and learned as conflict medic and I'm using as conflict medic is from this 15 years of work experience in peace building humanitarian and development projects across different continents and different countries. In this kind of work, I have seen a repeating pattern that the same dynamics that the real peace processes like miscommunication or power struggles.
hidden rules and structural blind spots. These are the exact same dynamics that show up in the workplaces. So the way I see it, our workplaces, our organizations are just small worlds, small communities, micro worlds where the same dynamics that we see in conflict areas show up. And that's where I think some of the tools that we use in peace building.
in dealing with international conflicts can be adapted, can be tailored, customized to help us better understand and deal with conflict in our workspaces.
And has there been some sort of moment in this work experience that actually led you to this insight?
Iulia (:There's been several experiences and several moments where I had this kind of aha moment, know, but there was a specific situation that really planted the seed for ConflictMedic, for what was going to become later on the ConflictMedic. And that was right at the start of my career, actually, my career in beast building. It was then...
already 15 years ago that I started to learn a lot about very powerful tools like the conflict, the violence triangle of Johan Galtung or Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent communication. We were using these tools in our day-to-day work to mediate conflicts between communities and in political dialogues. And that's when I saw something very ironic, which was the fact that two of the senior leaders in our organizations were in a
serious ongoing conflict and they weren't using the tools that we were teaching others. The conflict, the way it played out eventually created a significant ripple effect. People were taking sides, communication was breaking down, projects were stalling. And that's really when I thought, wow, the tools that we are using are just as relevant in the workplace as they are in the war zones.
when you say these tools were there, but they weren't used, what do you think what led to not using them? What holds people back that actually have the toolbox in front of them?
think what it really is normally, it comes down to being heavily involved in the conflict and the biggest blind spot is yourself. And perhaps you don't see yourself as being in a conflict or you don't see your role as a conflict party. There's this kind of, know, when people are heavily involved and heavily invested in the outcomes of a situation, of a conflict.
Iulia (:Some of these things that, that are common sense kind of escape you. think that's one of the major pitfalls I would say.
Yeah. If you would come in as the conflict medic into this situation that you described, how would you go about it?
There's a number of steps that you can take and it really depends on the size of the organization, the willingness of the people that are involved to even sit down and start exploring where this might be coming from. But normally you would start with an assessment of the situation and that's where I think the conflict ecosystem framework that I've put together, that I've designed.
would, would help people look at the conflict in a very structured way, rather than this very chaotic, chaotic way that it appears to, to have at the first look. So you would look at the different, the different elements in the environment where the, these two individuals or more normally where these two individuals are interacting and see what is it in that environment that may be causing this tension.
I mean, beyond, beyond the personalities at the center of the tool is always the individuals. Of course, we cannot ignore the fact that people have certain personalities. People have a certain historical background, certain cultural background that impacts the way they respond to various tensions in their, in their day to day life. But there is also the environment in which this happens. And oftentimes this environment has a major role and oftentimes the environment is ignored.
Iulia (:When, when we're trying to deal with conflict, everyone is like, these people, they're, you know, they have a bad personality. They can't just get along, you know, they don't know how to communicate. Yes, there is that, but there is a lot more to a conflict than this component.
I see. And when you say the individuals and their cultural background cannot be ignored, would you say dealing with conflict can be done in a universal way or it has to be culturally sensitive?
Again, this is another element that I take from my work in peace building and humanitarian response. Nothing is a universal solution. So the approach to conflict very heavily depends on the setting that it takes place in. In some cultures, sitting down and discussing directly what the problem is requires a lot of trust building.
You can't just directly barge in and say, okay, you two sit down and talk this out. Especially if the trust has been broken and trust is very important in that community. Relationship building in some African cultures or in some Asian cultures, it's very important before you start talking about the problem at hand to have a bit of, you know, how is your family?
This kind of, which perhaps in the Western world are not as important. So these are, these are subtle nuances that, that you have to be aware of, especially when you're working in multicultural organizations or.
Anne (:So would you say that when you deal with conflict at the workplace and it is an international setting where people from different backgrounds work with, that you also need to apply this kind of culturally sensitive lens?
Yeah, absolutely. mean, honestly, I would think that this is common sense for most of us working in leadership, conflict transformation, organizational development. I think by now we are all pretty well aware that you cannot ignore the cultural dimensions of a conflict, but I wouldn't focus too much on it. think conflict sensitivity is something that is very important. You have to be aware.
that not everything is perceived and interpreted in the same way and not everything that works in a certain setting works in another setting. But beyond that, I wouldn't focus heavily on, this is a cultural conflict. You know, I wouldn't be quick as to label and focus on that as much, but rather look at all the different elements that come into play.
Okay. And you said you would look at a conflict in a very structural way. Can you run us through what elements you would look at?
I think this is where we are going into directly into the sort of the elements of the conflict ecosystem framework, which is a practical framework that I developed to help leaders and teams see conflict, not as an isolated event, but as something that exists in the living system. So just like in nature, every ecosystem has different elements. No, you have soil, water, air that interact. And in a conflict.
Iulia (:The way I see it in my interpretation, these elements are the structural, cognitive and emotional dimension of a conflict. As I said before, you have the individuals at the middle with their histories, with their personalities, with their different triggers and so on. And you see this, this is what you see when you look at the surface, two people arguing, right? But if you only look at that, you miss the deeper factors that shape the conflict.
That's where I think looking at it in this structured way, where you look at the structural, the cognitive and the emotional damage to the conflict gives you a more comprehensive picture. So it helps organizations and people to slow down a little bit to diagnose what is actually going on and then choose the intervention for the right layer of the conflict. So when you map things out like this, you start seeing patterns. see, for example, that these two individuals that are arguing,
They're arguing in a team where people have been coming and going quite a lot. So is it really the two individuals or is there something in the setup of that team that maybe, you know, their roles and responsibilities are not clear or maybe there isn't psychological safety and people don't feel free to speak up and bring up issues and then things bottle up and then they explode in a very destructive way.
I assume it's very hard to address that because it is connected to resources, also to authority. So how can you actually bring this dimension to the surface to actually look at it?
What I would say first of all, that leaders in general tend to overlook the structural level of conflict. That is an observation that I've had along the years because it's less visible, first of all, and it's less personal. So when you have emotional flare ups and interpersonal tensions, they grab attention because they feel urgent, not.
Iulia (:If you, if you see your people shouting at each other in a meeting and that happens more often than we'd like to. You think, my God, these two individuals, they have a problem. But structural issues like unclear processes or side load communication, they're slower burning and often get filed under operations or HR issues, you know, rather than being identified as a conflict.
Funnily enough, structural problems can actually implicate leadership itself. You know, it may be the way priorities are set or the way communication flows that is causing friction. So that's uncomfortable to look at, you know, because once you start looking at the structural issues, you realize that there is something in the way you're leading your team. There's something in the way you're distributing roles and responsibilities in your team.
So it can be very uncomfortable to look at that and admit that, okay, you know, maybe I've got some work to do here as well. It's not just these two people that can't get along. And of course the structural issues take a lot more effort to address. Sometimes you need to change systems. You need to rewrite policies. You need to redistribute resources. It's much quicker to have a pep talk with the people involved and say, okay, you two need to get along. Then to go into roles and responsibilities and so on.
You already said sometimes you have two people not getting along, but then if they leave the role and new people come in, they have the same conflict. And this might be an indicator that there's some structural issue at play.
Absolutely. It's like trimming the weeds instead of pulling out the roots and then you cut the weeds and then they just grow back, you know, because you haven't addressed the problem, you know, the bad soil or whatever is happening there, you know.
Anne (:Yeah. And who would you see here in responsibility? Let's say someone who is not in a leadership position has an issue with someone else. Would you always say the leader of a team needs to either call in someone external like you to address the issue or can it also be initiated by someone who's not in a leadership role?
I think it really depends on the level of conflict literacy that exists in a certain individual or in a certain team or organization, because it doesn't necessarily have to be the leader of a team that reads these signals and sees that there is a problem. There is also such thing as lateral leadership or leading from below.
Where if you as an individual are equipped with the knowledge and the understanding that, you know, that would allow you to identify these issues early on and to say, okay, I think we have a problem here with the way the roles and responsibilities are distributed or with the way we are able to communicate with this team and that team.
You can easily signal this and say, okay, I think we need to, we have a problem here and we need to, we need to do something about this. And then of course it is the role of leadership to take action on it. But in terms of flagging it as, an issue, it's, anyone can do that. I would say that it's, it's a responsibility, but I think this comes down. Again, it comes back to, to the issue of psychological safety and the organizational culture.
Are we in an organization when people can even feel safe to do that without fear of repercussion? If you don't have that, it can only be leadership because if you don't have, if people don't feel empowered to raise these kinds of issues in a constructive way, then there's not much scope for engagement. And people end up leaving, you know, if they feel like they cannot even raise these kinds of issues.
Anne (:Yeah. So what I hear is psychological safety has to be given first in order to really address a conflict.
Psychological safety has been coined differently. You know, it can be also conflict resilience or engagement maturity of an organization. But, but what it comes down to when, when we talk about psychological safety is about whether people feel safe to speak up without the fear of punishment. It's about holding space. And if you don't have that, most conflicts will go on the ground. know, people will end up smiling and eating things, but vent in private. They gossip, they call in sick, you know.
So you lose opportunities for addressing a certain tensions or even for innovation because people won't raise difficult truths or challenge flawed ideas. So I would say it's for me, psychological safety is one of the most important elements when it comes to addressing conflicts at work. And it's also what makes the difference between whether a conflict
big, is it constructive conflict or if it becomes destructive, it becomes emotional, it becomes personal.
Yeah. So if a team leader is listening now and is wondering, do I actually have a conflict in the team that I'm not aware of? What could be questions they could ask to understand if there is a hidden conflict?
Iulia (:There's a number of ways of going about this. First of all, you can, it really comes down to how in tune you are with your team. I would say that the first sign of conflict in a team that I would be very wary if I was a leader is perfect harmony. Because to me, perfect harmony doesn't exist in a team. You don't want perfect harmony because that's fake.
Every meeting you have goes smoothly. If no one ever challenges you, none of your team members challenge each other, it means people don't feel safe to do so. At least that's what's been my experience. So I would say that this is the first sign. one of the main questions that I would ask is really have team conversations and really see if people, if
people feel like they can speak up. If people feel like they can contribute to conversations, that would be the first step. I mean, of course then you have more obvious signs, you know, where you have the other side of the coin where people are constantly shouting at each other. People are constantly, you know, calling in sick. People are leaving your team and you don't really know why because in their exit interviews, no one is giving any...
valid reason, which means that probably people are so fed up that they don't even want to give you feedback because they think they won't be taken seriously or they won't make a difference, you know.
Yeah. So are there any sort of tools you could recommend to go about it, to discover conflict, to encourage healthy conflict culture?
Iulia (:I think one of the main ways of making sure that people are able to have constructive conflict is at the induction process. Whenever someone is on boarded onto the team, whether it's a new team member or whether it's a new leader, someone is given a new team lead role or any kind of like leadership position, you go back to what does the organizational organization code of conduct or what does the
on boarding training, what does it tell others about how we communicate, how we express disagreement, how decisions are made in the organization. Now I have to, I have to really make a clear point here. I'm not saying that we're supposed to, you know, as a leader that you're supposed to like always molly cuddle people and always, you know, step around, know, step on eggshells around people and always give people a voice and always
you know, involve people in decision-making because at the end of the day, as a leader, you are the one accountable. So you, if something goes wrong, you're the one who pays for it. So I think that's something that needs to be understood. But generally you can also not ignore the fact that people have their own ideas, dreams, aspirations, and, and most times people also feel the need to, to be heard. It's, it's human nature.
So if you don't provide the space for that, if you don't provide the space for people at least to feel like they've made the contribution, they've been heard, you know, at the end of the day, that's the thing that matters the most. People have difficulties getting on board with decisions if they feel like they haven't been at least listened to.
Yeah. So are there any practical tools you could even recommend for team leaders to, to, you know, establish healthy conflict culture or address conflicts?
Iulia (:Yeah, there's a number of different tools out there and I'm not claiming to have the answer to all the solutions, but normally what I would suggest to different team leaders is to conduct something like a conflict audit. And this can take place in many different ways and forms. I have my own way of doing it. Others would come in doing it differently and would call it something else, but
Essentially, it's a health check of your organization's relationships and systems and cultures. So it's not just when things are on fire, but it's more like a proactive tool that can uncover hidden tensions before they escalate. So you can do this when there are clear signs of conflict, but also when you notice like subtle but chronic indicators, like I was saying earlier, disengaged staff that are calling in sick often or low morale.
or repeated turnover in certain roles. These are all signals that something deeper is going on. So the process would involve normally like, you know, very basic things like listening through focus groups or to survey, surveys to get, you know, multiple perspectives and give people the possibility to speak safely without fear of repercussion.
Then you can do this mapping along the three dimensions of the conflict ecosystem framework where you look at the structural and emotional and cognitive dimensions of conflict. So you can see also not just who is clashing, but why the tension exists in the first place. Other than that, apart from doing this process that can be a longer term kind of thing, or a simple checklist asking some questions on
structural issues or psychological safety and this kind of components. You can also use more practical, very hands-on kind of tools that have been developed by others, like the ladder of inference. Normally when you're in a conflict, one of the biggest cognitive pitfalls that people fall into is assumptions. You make assumptions, immediately you interpret.
Iulia (:When someone says something, you interpret it in a certain way. And normally you interpret it in a negative way because of the history that you have with that person. So if someone is yawning in a meeting and you're presenting, your immediate thought is not going to be, that person must be really tired because they have a new baby and they haven't slept last night. No, you're thinking, my God, this person is bored of my presentation. They never anyway took any interest in what I'm saying because...
You know, with that and that and the conflict. So the ladder of inference helps people slow down their thinking. It walks you through what you observed. So in this case, you saw the yawning, but then you get to the meaning you gave it. You gave the meaning that someone doesn't find your presentation boring. And then you move on to the assumption you made and the conclusion you drew. When you walk back on that, you start at the different levels of this ladder, you start thinking what
could be another explanation for this behavior, you know, and, is my assumption correct? So simply just questioning your own, your own thinking might give you, might give you this understanding that, okay, maybe this is not about, this is not about me, or this is not about the conflict that we have.
And then you have things like, you know, feedback frameworks. Everyone knows the, the SPI framework for situation behavior and impact for, for clear and non-personal feedback because feedback is one of the, one of the things that is a very heated kind of process in, most organizations, especially when people are in a conflict. So, so trying to make the feedback about, you know, the situation and the behavior and not about the person, which becomes harder and harder, the more you're in a conflict with someone.
Yeah, thank you for all these very practical tools. When is the time to call you the conflict medic to help in a conflict?
Iulia (:That's a very good question. mean, it really depends. It depends on how, on whether people feel like they're able to run through this process on their own. If they feel like they're able to impartially, neutrally, independently, and objectively assess all these different elements. Or whether most times also many people don't have the time to do that.
And why should you be wasting your time? Because you are a CEO of something or other and your role is to do this and that. And my role is to, deal with conflict. So, you know, it's, it's also a matter of who, who thinks they have the time to do this. And I would actually say the busier you are, the more you probably shouldn't add this on top of your workload.
And, and bring in someone whose job is to do that, you know, to look at these different dimensions and detangle this, this, this mess and, and give you a very, you know, clear overview of where the tension might be coming from. And, and of course that, that, that's only the first step of the process, because once you've done the diagnosis, once you've done the conflict audit, that's when the hard work starts then.
You have to think of the different ways of addressing it depending on where the weaker link is. That's where you have to start intervening at the structural level. Oftentimes you get to the point where you realize that, okay, maybe at the structural level things are not so bad, but in terms of the level of trust in the team, in terms of the level of...
communication and ability for people to work together after all of this storm. That's where you find that the most damage has been done. And then that's where you decide that you need to do some team building activities. You need to do some individual conflict coaching so that people learn how to deal with issues in the future in a more constructive way. When you realize that at some point you have to rebuild the trust bank of the team. And that's a lot of work.
Anne (:Yeah. Imagine I'm a team lead and I see that there's a conflict. I call you, you come in. Would you then take the two conflict parties to discuss this, to diagnose it, and then give me as a team lead some sort of debriefing with some suggestions what to do next or how does it look like?
It depends on what I'm called in, because if I'm called in to sort of say mediate or facilitate the deal simply with the conflict between the two individuals, then you do that. You have the process that one would go through in a typical mediation conflict resolution process between two individuals. You have the standard process where you have individual conversations and then you bring people together.
Of course, while you also have conversations with the team lead and whoever else might be involved in or affected by the conflict. But if you want to, like I said, address the deeper issues, then you would need to look at, would need to review the job descriptions. I would need to understand how the people, how the team normally communicates.
predominantly via email, is it predominantly via stand-up, daily stand-ups meetings? Is it how regular do we have team meetings? How do we communicate feedback and so on? So that's a more complex intervention that requires a lot of different conversations and review of a lot of documents and processes. And at a very administrative level, you look at these kinds of elements as well.
Yeah, we talked a lot today about the responsibilities of team leads. What we didn't address so far is the role of human resources since we have often positions for people and culture, for example. So can you tell us a little bit about their role, how you might interact as the conflict medic with them, what you think could be their contribution for a healthy conflict culture?
Iulia (:I think HR has a very important role to play in so many different ways, starting with the simple fact of how an organogram is designed, reporting lines, job descriptions, workload distribution, and so on. At least on paper, HR has a very big say on this. So that's one thing.
In terms of organizational culture, again, I think HR has a lot of power and a lot of responsibility that comes with this power. Because for example, one of the things that I always give as an example is the, one of the structural elements of conflict or one of the dimensions that can feed conflict is opportunities and spaces that people have for interaction. And so for example, if you have.
two teams that normally just structurally they are opposed like operations and finance. These are normally teams that just by the definition of the work that they do, they're opposed because one is about implementation and fast delivery. And the other one is very heavily focused on compliance. You can't really do it. You can't do much about this, even like as HR, that's the functions of these two teams, no? But you can.
You can make sure that these teams that anyway, you know, that they're going to be in a, in a sort of at least task conflict. You have to think of how can we make sure that there is at least trust being built between these teams, that there is at least an opportunity for the people in finance and people in operation to put faces to names. And that's, that's the kind of, the kind of work that, that HR can do. They can come up with things like, you know, the lunchtime lottery where you have these sort of.
random pairings of people from different departments. And once a week they have lunch together. Unless you kind of force this type of interactions and force is, I'm saying it in a good way, people are not going to do it themselves. And you can end up having people who never see each other, but they're daily in email communication, daily on team communication. And they don't have the trust bank, that trust reserve.
Iulia (:to say that, okay, when this person from finance sends me an email and rejects my payment request or claim, I know they don't have something personal. It's not me because I've seen this person. They're nice. I had lunch with them the other day. They're very nice person. I can humanize this interaction and then I won't take it personally when they write back to me and they say no to a request that I had.
So Iulia , I wondered if you could give listeners some idea of what to try out in the next three to four days at work in order to be more ready to deal with conflict or establish a better conflict culture.
One exercise that I would like to propose to people, regardless of whether you're a team member or in a leadership position, for the next three days at work, you can pick one recurring friction in your team, or even in your day-to-day interactions at work or in your personal life. And you can ask yourself or your team, if we put personalities aside,
What systems conditions would still create this conflict? And then look at this and try to fix one structural irritant, so to speak, whether it's role clarity or communication modalities, channels, or information flow, or meeting frequencies and meeting agendas and so on. And then agree on how you will...
test this out for the next two weeks. I think people would get some really interesting insights. And I would even say that if this kind of exercise is especially important if you are in a conflict. So if you're honest enough with yourself to acknowledge, first of all, that you are in a conflict with someone. And secondly, to put personalities aside.
Iulia (:and objectively reflect on the other elements of the conflict, the structural conditions, you would get some really interesting insights.
Yeah, for listeners who like this suggestion, just, you know, tell your team, I listened to this podcast, I listened to the Conflict Medic and she had this fantastic suggestion. Let's try it out. So Iulia , we're coming to the end of this conversation. Is there anything else you would like to tell our listeners?
Yeah, I mean, I very much enjoyed it, enjoyed this conversation and there's really just so much more that we didn't have time to get into, or maybe I wasn't able to really put forward to in very clear terms. So, I mean, one of the main, one of the first things that I would like to suggest readers is first of all, please feel free to reach out. Happy to, you know, give you more details about the way I view conflict and the way we can try to.
transform it. So that would be my first call to action. I'm very, very passionate about this topic and I love talking about it. I don't think there's many people out there who love talking about conflict as much as I do. And then of course, if you are working with a team or if you are in a smaller or bigger organization and you feel that this is something you want to do with your team or with your organization.
I'm also very happy to do this on a pro bono basis for NGOs especially. Because I know that normally organizations that are non-profit, they don't have the budget for this kind of work. And these are the organizations that actually suffer most of this because normally when you work in an NGO, you're very stressed and overwhelmed and underworked and under-resourced.
Iulia (:Definitely reach out if you want to talk about how we can work on this together.
Great, that's a very generous offer and we make sure to also share it with our community so NGOs, nonprofits can reach out to you. Thank you so much, Iulia . It was really interesting to hear you speak about conflict. As you said, there's so much more to get into. I'm sure lots of information can be found on your website. And I thank you so much for your time.
Absolutely, happy to have been able to share these insights with you and your listeners and I look forward to hearing back from everyone.
Great. Thanks, Yuya. Have a nice day.
Thank you.
Anne (:Thanks for listening to Think Beyond Talks. If you enjoyed today's episode, share it with someone who inspires you. And if you'd like to explore how you and your organization can grow your leadership and impact, visit thinkbeyondgroup.eu. Until next time, keep thinking beyond.