The Lane Alliance
Michele Lane

Workplace Conflict Transformation Services

“Every workplace generates chronic conflicts, yet few organizations have rethought the way they work, or used conflict resolution skills and ideas to prevent and transform the sources of chronic conflict, or examined their organizational communications and ‘conflict cultures’ to discover how their conflicts are generated and reduce their reoccurrence. Fewer still have integrated conflict resolution and coaching, trained leaders as mediators, used conflict-resolution principles to inform their change processes, conducted ‘conflict audits’ to reveal where these streams of conflict originate, or designed complex, multilayered, self-correcting systems to improve their capacity for conflict prevention, resolution, and transformation.”

—Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith, Straus
Institute for Dispute Resolution

Conflict in a workplace affects employees, managers, and leaders at every level of the organization, as well as the organization’s culture and profitability. The cost of conflict is high, including increased stress, reduced productivity, potential investigations, terminations and even possible litigation.

With over 30 years of experience in employment law, workplace investigation, management, and executive leadership in business, The Lane Alliance can untangle the complexities of conflict and positively transform the most intractable disputes in the workplace. Michele Lane has developed a keen, comprehensive understanding of conflict from multiple perspectives, and while managing and transforming specific disputes among individuals, she always keeps the entire organization’s welfare in mind.

The Lane Alliance is skilled in conflict transformation including identifying and understanding the root causes of the conflict, and the application of innovative methods toward conflict transformation that can benefit individuals and the organization as a whole.

The Lane Alliance offers the following Conflict Transformation services:

  • Conflict assessment: Identification of specific conflicts and their root causes that affect individuals, teams, departments and potentially the entire organization.
  • Leadership Development: Training leaders, managers, and employees on the signs of conflict and methods to transform situations from conflict to cooperation.
  • Pre- Formal Complaint/Investigation: Work with individuals, teams, and departments when conflicts arise–before a formal complaint is filed or an investigation begins.
  • Post-Investigation/Litigation: One of the more overlooked periods of potential conflict is during the aftermath of a workplace investigation. Often employees are expected to resume work-as-usual following an intense period of accusation and personal scrutiny. This eagerness to tamp down lingering doubts and hard feelings for the sake of productivity can blunt the perceptiveness of leadership toward dormant resentments. However, neglecting this sensitive juncture can lead to larger, more damaging conflict down the road.

The Lane Alliance offers special post-investigation services that can address the remaining conflicts among those involved in the original workplace complaint. Confronting any post-investigation conflict preempts further disagreements among teams and individuals before they can disrupt business operations again. Having conducted nearly 100 investigations, Michele Lane has a profound understanding of the potentially toxic wake that often trails after the investigation’s proceedings. As with most conflicts, the broader context of the investigation aftermath is as important to consider as any immediate, seemingly isolated dispute. The Lane Alliance consistently balances a multi-tiered approach—external and internal, personal and structural, compliant and uniquely innovative—that will restore a functional, amicable workplace.