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For HR, ombuds, and people leaders

The 5% of employees that consume 50% of your management time.

Every workplace has them — the employees and stakeholders whose patterns of blame, all-or-nothing thinking, and extreme behavior eat disproportionate management attention. HCI gives HR, ombuds, and people leaders a structured response that protects your team without firing the person who's the problem.

What you see in your work

If any of these sound familiar, you're not alone.

These are the patterns we hear from workplace professionals every week. Each one comes from the same small group of high-conflict people who consume a disproportionate share of your team's time.

  • Chronic complainers who escalate every disagreement
  • Managers afraid to give performance feedback because of the blowback
  • HR business partners drowning in escalations from one or two cases
  • High performers leaving because of one toxic teammate
  • Customer-facing teams burning out from a small number of hostile customers
The methods

Why these methods work in workplace.

BIFF Response® for written communication and EAR Statements™ for difficult conversations are the daily tools — Managing High-Conflict Behavior at Work and New Ways for Work® give your team a structured playbook.

  • BIFF Response®

    Reply to hostile email and text without making it worse. Brief, Informative, Friendly, Firm.

  • EAR Statements™

    Three-second verbal moves that calm an upset person — Empathy, Attention, Respect.

  • 4 Big Skills®

    The framework at the core of every New Ways® program: Flexible Thinking, Managed Emotions, Moderate Behaviors, Checking Yourself.

Bringing this to your team?

Custom training for workplace organizations.

If you're bringing HCI to a workplace team — whether 10 people or 1,000 — we design custom programs around your actual cases and roles. Half-day workshops to yearly Corporate Partnerships.

500,000+

Workplace and other professionals trained worldwide since 2008.