Round table: Building Teams that Disagree Well
Most organizations treat conflict as a problem to manage: send people to training, hire a mediator when things blow up, hope HR can sort it out.
This misses what's possible. When disagreement is designed into how work happens, it becomes a source of better decisions, faster course-correction, and stronger teams.
In this roundtable, we look at what organizations can do structurally to surface disagreement before it festers, the skills needed to keep disagreement productive, and what repair looks like when relationships rupture.
This matters most if you're leading people and culture through ambiguity: distributed teams navigating competing priorities, organizations absorbing the impact of AI-driven change, or teams where silence has replaced honest pushback.
What to expect
These 1-hour sessions bring together a small group of senior leaders to compare notes on how work is changing. We'll break down how companies are designing for productive conflict, then discuss what's working in your organizations and where you're shifting strategy next.
This event is part of our New Rules Lab series. Each roundtable focuses on a practical workplace topic and explores the shifts underway in how teams think, decide, and get things done.
Each session is small and invitation-only, bringing together senior leaders from different sectors who are actively rethinking how their teams work.
About your hosts, Elise Keith and Carrie Goucher
Elise Keith is a researcher, author, and practitioner in organizational collaboration and new ways of working. Her clients include IKEA, Logitech, Under Armour, Valdez Ports and Harbors, and Harvard Business School. She leads the US timezone sessions.
Dr Carrie Goucher has 23 years of experience helping organisations shift from traditional operating models, with a PhD in meeting and collaboration culture through a systems lens. She works with banks, life sciences, the NHS, and Parliament. Carrie leads the UK and Europe timezone sessions.