For companies · Colleagues in conflict
Two of your people stopped working together. Now the company works around them.
The meetings still happen. The decisions do not. Everyone below them has learned which subjects are expensive, and the work routes around the one breakdown nobody will name. It is not on any org chart, and it is costing you most of a week.
A person reads every note and writes back. No deck, no demo.
What you have been told it is
Three explanations, and each one keeps the two of them where they are.
A personality clash
Oil and water, nothing to be done. Comfortable, because it makes the problem a fact about who they are rather than something in front of you.
One of them has to go
Sometimes true, and almost never true yet. Acting on it now means losing someone you cannot replace over something nobody has tested.
Mediation
So someone sat between them, and they were polite for a month, and nothing underneath was said, because nothing underneath was asked.
What it actually is
A small number of things assessed, and never said.
Someone decided, a year or two ago, that the other one was not serious, or not honest, or not competent. Nobody put that on a table where it could be answered. So it hardened. Each of them has been building a case since, and cases get more expensive to abandon the longer they run.
Underneath lives a mood, and it has a name: resentment. Wronged, and silenced. You have limited my future, and it is useless to complain, so the grievance hardens in silence. Its quieter sibling is cordial hypocrisy, the unspoken pact to keep things pleasant instead of true, pretending the trust is there while mistrust quietly poisons the room. Most companies live in the second one and call it professionalism.
Resentment is a stuck assessment that the other person is out to get you. It feels like protection. It is a cage.
Two people in that cage do not leave it by being nicer to each other. They leave it when the assessment is said out loud, held to evidence, grounded or dropped, and answered.
What it is already costing you
Most of your week, and nobody has totalled it.
Decisions get made in the room and undone in the corridor. Everyone below them has learned which subjects are expensive and works around them, which means the information you need arrives late or not at all. Two teams satisfy their own leader, and the customer waits in the gap between them.
And the people watching learn the real rule of the company: here, a grievance is something you carry, not something you say. The good ones read that first, and leave first.
for a leadership team stuck in missed handoffs, mismatched expectations and internal distrust to redesign how it coordinates, at a half-billion-dollar Planet Fitness franchise.
growth in that team’s engagement and capacity to handle breakdowns, as gauged by our shared assessment.
the year it closed: the first time in company history the revenue goal was not only met but exceeded.
You can test whether it is really personality in one conversation.
A call with us. No pitch, and no verdict on either of them.
Where companies are when they arrive
Nobody arrives in general. Find the one that stings.
Who this is for
The leader who will look at their own part.
CEOs, COOs and heads of business units with two people they cannot run the company without, who have stopped working together. You have been routing work around this too, and you set some of it up. If that sentence is bearable, this works.
And who it is not for. Anyone who wants a verdict that one of them is the problem; you will get an assessment offered back, and you will not enjoy it. Anyone who wants it handled; nobody is coming in to fix them. Anyone who wants warmth; you may never get warmth between them, and you do not need it.
What the work is
Five things, in order.
Every person gets a private seat
Each of the two, and you, with your own COROS, on what you have each concluded about the other and never said. It is the one place a grievance can be spoken without a witness, which is the only way it gets grounded instead of rehearsed.
We interview before we propose
The two of them separately, then the people around them, in the form of care rather than audit: what each is responsible for, what has not been workable, what they would ask for if asking were safe. Then we tell you exactly what we can do, and what we cannot.
The assessments get said, grounded, and answered
Not in a mediation. In working conversations, one at a time, where a hard assessment is put on the table, held to evidence, and either grounded or dropped. Agreement is optional. Getting what the other is saying is mandatory.
The requests nobody made get made
Requests with conditions and dates. Promises with a yes, a no, or a counter-offer. Breakdowns named in the room instead of in the corridor. Leaders go first, because everyone reads them.
COROS stays
After the two are workable, COROS keeps the practice alive in the moment it matters: the request about to be made as a wish, the promise about to be accepted as an intention, the old mood trying to return. It holds the company’s state of action, promises, moods and breakdowns, for the whole company and never for a name.
Never a window into any individual
Every person keeps a private, confidential coach.
Two memories. Yours holds your conversations, and it is yours alone. Your company’s holds only what is shared between people: the concerns, the conversations, the commitments. Never a personal detail.
Each of the two tells COROS the truth about the other precisely because you cannot read it. The organization sees the whole, never a transcript, never a name. That is what lets a grievance be said before it is a case, and why what gets said can be answered.
What changes
Not warmth. Coordination.
The unsaid thing gets said
A hard assessment on the table, answered, instead of two cases quietly growing.
The work stops routing around them
Requests get a yes or a no you can build on. Decisions made in the room stay made.
You get your week back, or a clean decision
If the working relationship genuinely cannot be repaired, you know inside weeks rather than another two years, with the evidence in hand to act cleanly.
In their words
“They helped move my team beyond conflict into trust, candor, and accountability,
and we’re now navigating a major shift in our company without a serious hiccup.”
“Eight months later, the mood in my team is grounded optimism and ambition.”
Fair questions
The questions that come up in the first call.
Should I just let one of them go?
Maybe, and not yet. You would be acting on an assessment nobody has grounded. Test it first, which takes weeks rather than quarters, and then you will be deciding on evidence.
Is this mediation?
No. Nobody arrives to sit between them. This works on what each of you is carrying into the room, and on the requests nobody has made. What changes is how the three of you coordinate, and that part is yours.
Do they both have to be willing?
It helps, and it is not where it starts. It starts with you, and with whichever of them will look at their own part first. The room shifts when one person in it stops rehearsing a case.
Is this therapy?
No, and it does not diagnose anyone, including the two of them. It works on moods and language in a working context.
The terms
Every price in the open, and nothing priced before we have told you what we found.
Free to start for every person, as themselves. Company plans are priced per seat and start at $2,500 a month, with every price on the pricing page, where you can build your own plan in a minute. Human mentors are there by the session when a person needs a person. The interviews come first, and everything is priced after we have told you what we found.
A divided leadership team is usually eight to twelve weeks of work. We say how long after the interviews, and we say so if the honest answer is that someone has to go.
A team that coordinates again, or clarity about who has to go, inside weeks rather than another two years.
An hour, one on one. You tell us what your company is up to and where it is stuck. We listen, and then we come back with what COROS could do, in plain terms, and what it would cost. If the honest answer is nothing, we say so.
Book a call with us →Would rather we came to you? Ask us to get in touch, with a line about your situation. A person reads every note, and writes back.