Workplace Conflict Is a Skills Gap, not a People Problem: What I’m Teaching at SHRM National 2026
- Kimberly Best
- 4 hours ago
- 5 min read
This June, I’ll be in Orlando leading a 4-hour pre-conference workshop on how to manage workplace conflict at the SHRM Annual Conference, the largest gathering of HR professionals in the world. (Oprah’s keynoting this year, and I’m excited!)
My session is called “From Fixer to Facilitator: Mediation Skills Every HR Professional Can Use.” And the title says everything about why I proposed it.
HR professionals deal with conflict every single day. But here’s the pattern I see over and over: they get pulled into the middle of disputes, expected to fix things and figure out who's right, and then everyone's frustrated when the same problems keep coming back. That's not because HR isn't working hard enough. It's because determining who's right or wrong is not the same as helping people build the skills to navigate conflict themselves. Those are two completely different things.
There Aren’t “People Problems.” There Are Skills Gaps.
This is something I believe deeply, and it’s the foundation of everything I teach. Most people genuinely want to handle conflict well. They want functional teams, healthy working relationships, and productive conversations. They just don’t know how to get there when emotions run high.
That’s not a character flaw. It’s a skills gap. And skills can be learned.
Drawing on decades as a critical care nurse and my work as a mediator and conflict coach, I’ve watched what happens when people get the right tools. They stop avoiding hard conversations. They stop escalating. They start actually solving problems together. And the shift from “fixer” to “facilitator” is where it begins.
What I’ll Be Teaching
The workshop covers the core skills mediators use every day, translated for HR professionals who are navigating workplace conflict in real time: understanding how conflict actually works in the brain and body, creating psychological safety so people can engage instead of shut down, asking the kinds of questions that open conversations rather than close them, sitting with discomfort instead of rushing to fix, and helping people generate their own solutions rather than handing them answers. It’s conflict management training built around what actually changes behavior, not just what looks good on a slide.
That last one matters the most. When we help people find their own way forward, the solutions stick. When we hand them answers, they come back next month with the same problem wearing a different hat.
But First, You Have to Understand the Biology
Before we can talk about skills, we have to talk about why conflict is so hard in the first place. It’s not because people are difficult. It’s because our brains are wired to treat disagreement as danger.
“I have found that all of the markers in personal development - emotional intelligence, customer mindset, relationship building are improved when people learn the roots and causes of conflicts- particularly in themselves- and learn tools to manage conflict in a way that works for all parties.” Joyce Weiss
When someone pushes back on our idea, challenges our decision, or sees things differently than we do, the brain can register that as a threat. The stress response kicks in. We get defensive, we shut down, or we come out swinging. Not because we’re bad at our jobs or bad at relationships, but because our nervous system doesn’t always distinguish between a disagreement and a danger.
This is also why people’s capacity for conflict looks so different. Someone who grew up in a home where disagreement was unsafe will have a very different nervous system response than someone who grew up watching adults work through problems calmly. Neither response is wrong. But until we understand what’s happening in our bodies, we can’t change what’s happening in our conversations.
There’s a reason I put on the very first Best Conflict Conversation Cards: Workplace Edition and Professional Edition: “Just because I don’t agree with you doesn’t mean I’m against you. It means I’m different than you.” That reframe changes everything. Because once people stop experiencing disagreement as an attack, they can actually hear each other. And that’s where the real work begins.
Why I Created a Tool for This
One of the biggest challenges with any training is what happens after everyone goes back to their desks. The energy fades. The skills get buried under deadlines and meetings and the next fire to put out. I saw this pattern so many times that I created something to solve it.
The Best Conflict Conversation Cards: Workplace Edition and my second deck, Best Conflict Conversation Cards: Professional Edition, are 50-card decks designed to help teams practice conflict skills the way athletes practice fundamentals. Not during the crisis, but before it. There are 30 practice cards with real workplace scenarios and multiple response strategies, and 20 story cards that build the kind of understanding between team members that prevents conflict from escalating in the first place.
I’ll be using them throughout the SHRM workshop because that’s how they were designed to work: as a hands-on tool that makes skill-building concrete and repeatable. Teams use them in staff meetings, onboarding, leadership development, one-on-one coaching, and as preparation before difficult conversations. They’re like conflict coaching in a box.
SHRM carries the Best Conflict Conversation Cards: Workplace Edition in their Bookstore and just placed their second order.
If you’d like to see what’s in the deck or get a set for your team, you can find them at https://www.bestconflictsolutions.com/conversation-cards
The Bigger Picture
I’m not going to Orlando to give a lecture. While a one-hour lecture can plant some seeds, I’m going to put practical tools in people’s hands and let them experience what it feels like to facilitate instead of fix. Because the organizations that figure this out, the ones that invest in real workplace conflict training and stop treating conflict as a problem to suppress, are the ones that retain their best people.
The conversations we’re avoiding at work are costing us more than we realize. Not just in turnover and disengagement, but in the ideas that never get shared, the feedback that never gets given, and the trust that never gets built.
When people gain the right tools and frameworks, even the most challenging workplace relationships become opportunities for understanding and growth.
That’s what I’ll be teaching this summer. I’d love to see you there.
SHRM Annual Conference 2026: annual.shrm.org
On the Fun Side
I recently had a great conversation with Rebecca Greene on the Whinypaluza Podcast about conflict in families, marriage, parenting, and all the conversations we avoid at home.
We talked about why conflict is normal (and doesn’t mean something is broken), why silence often causes more damage than honesty, and why the person is never the problem. The problem is the problem. It’s a fun, honest episode with practical tips you can use right away. If the SHRM workshop is my professional side, this podcast is the kitchen table version of the same conversation.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | iHeartRadio | YouTube | TuneIn | C-Suite Radio | Pandora
Ready to build conflict skills on your team?
Best Conflict Conversation Cards help teams practice the conversations they’ve been avoiding.
About the Author
Kimberly Best, RN, MA, is the founder of Best Conflict Solutions, LLC, a court-listed mediator in Missouri and Tennessee, FINRA Arbitrator, and adjunct professor at Lipscomb University’s Institute for Conflict Management. Drawing on decades as a critical care nurse and her expertise in conflict management, she helps individuals, families, and organizations have the conversations they’ve been avoiding and find their best way forward. She is the author of How to Live Forever: A Guide to Writing the Final Chapter of Your Life Story and creator of the Best Conflict Conversation Cards. Kim is presenting at the SHRM Annual Conference in Orlando, June 2026.
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