Ep. 513 - Elevating Leadership: Conflict Resolution & Training Implementation

Summary

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Podcast Summary

Podcast: Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Episode: Ep. 513 - Elevating Leadership: Conflict Resolution & Training Implementation
Date: September 25, 2025
Host: Cameron Herold

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Cameron Herold delves into actionable leadership strategies for COOs and managers, focusing on conflict resolution and how to actually implement leadership training in an organization. Key topics include empowering managers to solve problems independently, establishing habits for effective communication, and creating systems so that leadership development doesn’t become a one-time event but a continuing process. Herold emphasizes the necessity of accountability, ongoing practice, and dedicated time for leadership growth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Empowering Managers for Conflict Resolution

• Encouraging Self-Sufficiency: Herold advocates for pushing managers to resolve their own conflicts, rather than relying on the leader to mediate.
  • “Our job is to get results through people. Our job is to grow their skills and their confidence. Our job is not to be the mediator. It's not to be the tiebreaker. The best thing moms and dads can do is get the kids to work it out. Don't tell me, talk to Bobby.” — Herold (01:29)
• Role-Playing and Practice: He suggests role-playing the conflict model with managers as needed, but encourages them to attempt problem-solving first before seeking help.

2. Building Positive Team Dynamics

• Weekly Gratitude Practice: Herold implemented a practice where, at each weekly leadership meeting, every leader must thank or praise a different business area for something positive that happened in the last week.
  • “[...]Celebrate all random acts of kindness instead of pointing fingers at each other. If we're going to point fingers, it's like, if I'm pointing finger at you, there's three pointing back at me.” — Herold (02:29)
• Breaking Down Silos: This approach helped erode blame-cultures and encouraged more interdepartmental appreciation and collaboration.

3. Project Management and Communication

• Advance Notice: Herold stresses the importance of proactive communication—teams should not be asked for last-minute work, but be included in planning stages well ahead.
• Training in Key Skills: He ties together essential business skills: project management, delegation, conflict management, and communication—all as leadership fundamentals.

4. Implementing Leadership Training that Sticks

• The Problem: Leadership training often becomes a check-the-box exercise, and many organizations fail to see real change.
• Herold’s Solution:
  • Go through all 12 training modules as a team to get an overview (total ~6 hours).
  • Subsequently, revisit two modules per week in depth for six weeks.
  • After each pair of modules, hold short “book report” sessions where each person shares what they learned and what they’ll actually implement.
  • Continue the discussion and accountability in regular one-on-one coaching sessions—ask what’s being practiced and how it’s going.
  • Repeat the training cycle several times: “They need to go through that cycle of learning four times. Three or four times… Going through it once gives them the concept, but then they need to practice it, then they need to do it, then they need to think about it, then they need to go and learn it again.” — Herold (05:14)

5. Leadership is a Process, Not an Event

• The Professional Athlete Analogy:
  • “It's like, why do the best athletes on the planet still have coaches? [...] They don't learn about a swing coach when they're 18 and they never think about their swing again—they're always working on some component.” — Herold (06:10)
  • Even at major companies like Starbucks, senior leaders revisit their core leadership content (e.g., situational leadership) every quarter.

6. Accountability Through Scheduling

• No More ‘Didn’t Have Time’:
  • Herold calls out a common excuse—you didn’t put training or leadership development in your calendar, so it never happened.
  • “If you tell me you care about something, show me your bank account and show me your calendar and I'll show you if you care about it.” — Herold (07:32)
• Coaching Tip:
  • Help team members identify the time for learning and actually put it in their schedules.
  • Immediate action: “By the way, I know you said today at 2 o'clock you're going to start. It's 2 o'clock. Let's do it. Give it 30 minutes. Go through it right now and then call me in 30 minutes and tell me what you thought of that module.” — Herold (08:16)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Our job is to get results through people…not to be the mediator. It's not to be the tiebreaker.” — Cameron Herold (01:24)
• “If I'm pointing finger at you, there's three pointing back at me.” — Cameron Herold (02:29)
• “Going through it once gives them the concept, but then they need to practice it…then they need to go and learn it again.” — Cameron Herold (05:14)
• “Why do the best athletes on the planet still have coaches? Because they're still working through some parts...they're always working on some components.” — Cameron Herold (06:10)
• “If you tell me you care about something, show me your bank account and show me your calendar and I'll show you if you care about it.” — Cameron Herold (07:32)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Empowering managers to resolve conflict: 00:00 - 01:35
• Weekly leadership gratitude exercise & team dynamics: 02:17 - 02:50
• Implementing leadership training (discussion & cycle): 04:49 - 06:04
• Professional athlete analogy for continuous improvement: 06:06 - 07:30
• Scheduling accountability & action: 07:32 - 08:17

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Conclusion

This episode offers a no-nonsense, repeatable approach for COOs and team leads to increase leadership effectiveness: empower managers for problem-solving, foster positive internal culture with regular praise, systematize leadership training for enduring benefits, and reinforce growth by literally scheduling (and checking up on) development in managers’ calendars. Herold’s balance of tough love and pragmatic tactics delivers a toolkit listeners can implement right away to elevate their leadership and their teams.

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Transcript

[A]

Yeah. So I would sit down with them and just say, you guys are having an issue. Take the conflict model, sit down and go through it together and then come back and tell me how it went. If you're struggling or you don't know how to do it, we can role play it right now. We can practice it right now, but I'd like you guys to try to solve it first. If you can't solve it, then I'll come in and we'll kind of. I'm not going to mediate, but I'll come in and I'll help you solve it. Right? Our job is to get results through people. Our job is to grow their skills and their confidence. Our job is not to be the mediator. It's not to be the tiebreaker. It's not to be the. The best thing moms and dads can do is get the kids to work it out. Don't tell me, talk to Bobby.

[B]

Welcome to the Second in Command podcast, produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the Second in Command podcast, we Talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the. And now, here's your host, Cameron Herald.

[A]

How do you empower your managers to resolve conflict effectively and ensure crucial training actually gets implemented? This episode provides practical strategies for elevating leadership skills. We discuss using a conflict model to enable independent problem solving and address the common challenge of employees prioritizing training. I emphasize the importance of scheduling dedicated training time, holding teams accountable, and viewing leadership development as a continuous process, much like professional athletes continually honing their craft. Take the conflict model, sit down and go through it together and then come back and tell me how it went. If you're struggling or you don't know how to do it, we can role play it right now, we can practice it right now, but I'd like you guys to try to solve it first. If you can't solve it, then I'll come in and we'll kind of. I'm not going to mediate, but I'll come in and I'll help you solve it. Right? Our job is to get results through people. Our job is to grow their skills and their confidence. Our job is not to be the mediator. It's not to be the tiebreaker. It's not to be the. The best thing moms and dads can do is get the kids to work it out. Don't tell me, talk to Bobby.

[C]

Excellent.

[A]

The second part is that we really have to grow. So what we instituted was every weekly meeting, everyone on the leadership team had to come in and say thank you or praise a different business area for something that had happened over the last week. And it was a little bit of just catch people doing something. Right. Right. Celebrating all random acts of kindness instead of pointing fingers at each other. If we're going to point fingers, it's like, if I'm pointing finger at you, there's three pointing back at me. We tried to create a little bit of that environment where instead of pointing fingers, I'm going to say thank you to the other group first. And that slowly started to break it down. The next thing was making sure that there's really good communication between business areas so that everybody knows what's expected of them from the other business areas. Right. If marketing is working on a project, the CEO has to know about it. Operations might need to know and finance needs to know. And it's giving them enough heads up it's not coming to them and saying, hey, can you work on this for me tomorrow? No, they already have shit on their plate from the last two or three weeks. They should have known that a month ago that you were going to need them. So just training people how to deal with project management, communication, delegation, and managing conflict and giving them those skills. Hey, it's Cameron. I hope you're loving today's episode. Quick question for you. Does your company have a strong leadership training program in place to grow the skills of everyone who manages people? If you want to help yourself and your company grow, get everyone who manages people learning from my invest in your leaders online training program. There are 12 core leadership skills that I cover online and they're all going to really grow. CEOs pay me $78,000 a year to coach them one on one, and now you can all benefit for 1% of what they pay me. These are the same leadership skills that I created and certified everyone in at 1-800-got junk when I was there as COO. Go to investinyourleaders.com today and use promo code podcast10 before the end of the month to get 10% off each manager you sign up. Now back to the show.

[C]

Good. And the. The other question I have is in the invest in your leader. So I have everybody who's gone through it, and we're going through it weekly, each module discussing those modules. But we haven't done a great job of implementing a lot of the strategies because I feel like maybe we're just moving too quickly. So how would you recommend we go back and implement that in a more strategic way to make sure some of this information sticks and we're actually using it.

[A]

Yes, a couple things. One is there's 12 modules in the course, right? It takes about six hours total to go through all 12 modules. I like having everybody go through the 12 first. Just go through all 12 and then let's go back and go through two of them a week for six weeks. But on Monday, after you've gone through two of the modules, come back and tell me, let's say you went through situational leadership and coaching. What did you like from those two modules? What are you going to put in place from those two modules? And get each person to do a bit of a five minute book report on what they liked and what they're going to put in place. And then coaching them in your one on one coaching in your normal meetings, talk to them about what they're using from those models. How is it going with those models? Are you practicing it? Are you doing it day to day? After a period of about three months, have them go through it again. Really? The way that adult learning works is abstract conceptualization, active experimentation, concrete experience and reflective observation. They need to go through that cycle of learning four times. Three or four times. Okay. Going through it once gives them the concept, but then they need to practice it, then they need to do it, then they need to think about it, then they need to go and learn it again. So that's kind of my approach to it. Makes sense.

[C]

Absolutely.

[A]

It's like anything, right? It's like, why do the best athletes on the planet still have coaches? Because they're still working through some parts of, you know, whatever, you know, they don't, they don't learn about a swing coach when they're 18 and they never think about their swing again. Like they're a golfer, right? They don't work. So they're always working on some components of something all the time. I think we as owners always want that. Well, I trained them and they should be good at it. There's no, there's no athlete in the world that like reads a book and is then really like proficient at it. Like maybe you're at a bronze, but then you want to get to a silver and then you want to get to a gold level of competency. Last example on that is the one on situational leadership. The leadership team at Starbucks goes through training on the situational leadership content every quarter. And they have for years. That one core skill is something they talk about every three months. At the senior leadership team at Starbucks. So if they're doing it every single quarter and that's part of their ongoing growth as a leader, why do we expect to go through it once and think we're going to be really good at it? When in your calendar did you have it blocked off last week to do it? Well, I, I didn't. Well, you didn't run out of time? You didn't schedule it? I. I was going to do it on Thursday. Show me your calendar for Thursday right now. Show me in your calendar when you had it blocked off. Well, I don't. Well, then don't tell me you ran out of time. You didn't schedule it. So your coaching has to be to hold up the mirror and to let them know, by the way, this is working on the business. I want you to schedule time to grow. Put that in your calendar completely. Ken, I can guarantee you that every single person that says they ran out of time didn't have it in their calendar. It's that current saying that's going around right now amongst a lot of coaches and thought leaders that if you tell me you care about something, show me your bank account and show me your calendar and I'll show you if you care about it. Like, I want to get in shape. Great. How many times you go to the gym this week? I didn't have time. Bullshit. You never even had in your calendar this week like you had no intention to go. So don't say that you care about it. Do you have a trainer? No. Are you investing in any courses? No. Then don't tell me you care about it. And then our job as a leader then is to help them schedule. Okay, let me put it in your calendar with you. Let me find time to go do it. By the way, I know you said today at 2 o' clock you're going to start. It's 2 o'. Clock. Let's do it. Give it 30 minutes. Go through it right now and then call me in 30 minutes and tell me what you thought of that module.

[B]

You'Ve been listening to. Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herold. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit cooalliance. Com.