Case Study - Bella & Eliza's Conflict

The Situation
Eliza and Bella both worked in administrative roles for a large company. Eliza had been with the firm for about 12 months and Bella had been with them for some 20 years. Eliza was a newly recruited graduate and Bella had no credentials but they worked together in the same division performing the same work.

Eliza complained to their divisional manager that Bella had been withholding information from her on several occasions and had been aggressive with her in staff meetings and that Bella ‘talked down to her’ even though they worked at the same level.

The manager reassured Eliza that everyone knows that Bella can be a bit abrasive and that she doesn’t mean any harm by it. She informed Eliza that she would have a chat with Bella when an opportunity arose but that it would not be in Eliza’s best interests to make a big deal out of it and that in the mean time it is probably best to just ‘stay out of Bella’s way’ when she was in ‘one of her moods’.

Over the next couple of months things got very busy for the manager and so she did not follow up with Bella. Bella’s behaviour towards Eliza continued and Eliza had assumed that the manager had spoken to Bella and so was even more worried as it did not seem to produce any change.

As work pressures increase on the whole division over the next few months the relationship between Eliza and Bella deteriorated and it escalated to breaking point when an incident occurred during a staff meeting at which Bella lost her temper with Eliza and humiliated her in front of other staff.

Eliza then went on sick leave as she was feeling ‘stressed out’ by it all.

HR became involved at this stage and offered Eliza and Bella mediation as a way of trying to resolve the situation.

The Mediation
ScotCoach mediators met with Eliza and Bella individually and explored with each of them how they saw the issues and what they each thought would need to happen in order to move forward.
Eliza and Bella were then brought together in a joint session and the Mediators assisted them both to listen to what the other person had to say, to explore together what had happened and to arrive at workable ways that they could agree on for how to move forward.

The individual sessions and the joint session only took a day in total and at the end of the process Eliza and Bella had reached an agreement about how they would resolve their differences in the future.

The Underlying Issues
It emerged during the mediation that Eliza had felt that Bella was trying to control her and prevent her from working effectively. Bella realised that she did feel threatened by Eliza’s qualifications and angry because she felt that her 20 years of experience was not being valued in the same way.

However during the mediation Eliza was able to let Bella know that she had great respect for Bella’s experience and wanted to have the chance to learn from her and share problems with her as she knew that having a degree did not mean that she knew everything to do the job.

This represented a huge breakthrough for them both and having established this as a new foundation for mutual trust respect they agreed that they would always be open with each about what was happening at work in the future and work as a team rather than against each other.

Added Value
It also emerged that Bella had been asking her mangers for some time to support her to gain some qualifications that would reflect the depth of her knowledge and experience, but there had always been a reason why this could not happen and then when Eliza was brought as a graduate entry level person she felt betrayed and brushed aside by her employer.

This explained why the manager had been observing Bella being ‘in a mood’ at work at different times but rather than addressing these concerns in a meaningful way Bella’s concerns or her behaviour were not given any priority.

Subsequently Bella explored these issues with her managers and it was agreed that she would receive support from her employer to become qualified. As a result Bella stayed in her post and brought even more value and loyalty to her organisation.