Case: ticket ownership, Olha and Taras

Some conflicts are built into the setup before anyone acts. The sign: both people act on a real rule, and the rules give the same thing to different people.

A family asked for their money back for unused lessons, a little outside the standard terms: a refund exception. It came in as a hard ticket on Taras's rotation day, and the rotation gives hard tickets to whoever is on rotation. So Taras replied within twenty minutes: "We'll refund the unused lessons." But the February agreement with Iryna gives refund exceptions to Olha, so next morning she told the family the exception still needed her review. The family got two answers and complained about both.

Nothing says which rule wins when a ticket is both hard and a refund exception. That gap is the root cause. "Taras is careless" and "Olha doesn't want to give up control" are labels for behavior the setup produced, and blaming the family's request misses the point: requests like this will keep coming.

Before you talk to anyone, collect the facts that separate the setup from the people. Four kinds of fact point to structure.

Written rules that collide: each person quotes one. Repeats on the same kind of day: Olha's "again" is a clue, and the clash happened twice in May, both times on a rotation day. A single gate: every refund exception waits for one person, Olha, who also had the most overtime of the coordinators in May and June (38 hours), and someone must cover her vacation in summer. A silent rule: the rotation note doesn't mention refunds at all, so the overlap was never addressed.

Traits don't explain the pattern. Taras being the fastest replier, or the two having very different working styles, describes how each behaves inside the setup, not why the clash keeps happening. Bring the structural facts to the conversations; leave the trait descriptions out.

Fix the rule, but first the people: both felt accused in front of the team. Talk to each separately, ask what made them act as they did and what worries them most, and listen for interests, not positions.

Taras says: "The family was upset, the rotation says hard tickets are mine, and I'm tired of being the sloppy one." Olha says: "If refunds go out unchecked, I answer to Iryna. And I can't be the only gate." Under the two positions ("rotation tickets are mine", "exceptions are mine") sit four interests: families get a quick reply; Taras is trusted with hard work and not judged in public; refund decisions stay consistent (Olha answers for them); Olha's load is sustainable, so she isn't the only gate.

None of these conflict. That's the point of the mapping: a rule that serves all four can end the clash, and both people can recognise their own needs in it. Bring the list to the joint talk as the criteria for choosing an option.

The first minute of a joint talk sets its frame. If it starts with who was right, or with one person's action, the call becomes a trial, and each side spends it defending. If it starts with a shared problem, both can work on the same side of the table.

Here the shared problem is concrete: one family got two different answers from Support and complained about both. Olha and Taras both care about that. So open with it ("One family got two different answers from us last week; let's work out how that can't happen again"), set the ground rules, then let each say what matters to them while the other restates it.

Then collect options before choosing. Olha herself offers one: on rotation days, whoever's on rotation sends the family a holding reply within the hour and keeps the conversation, and she decides the exception within four working hours. Others: Olha trains Taras to decide small exceptions inside the policy up to a limit she sets, or all refund tickets leave the rotation. Three options, then the choice.

With options on the table, choose the one that serves all four interests: a fast reply for families, trust and no public judgment for Taras, consistent decisions and a sustainable load for Olha.

The strongest combination: on rotation days, the rotation person sends a holding reply within the hour and keeps the conversation; Olha decides the exception within four working hours; and, with Iryna's OK, Olha trains Taras to decide small exceptions up to a limit she sets. The family hears back fast, Taras stays on hard work, decisions stay consistent, and Olha gets backup for her summer vacation.

The other options each fail an interest. Sending all refund tickets straight to Olha piles more on the single gate. Letting Taras decide exceptions on his rotation days changes decision rights agreed with Iryna and breaks consistency. "Whoever sees the ticket first decides" restarts the race that caused the clash.

A rule agreed between two reports can still need sign-off from above, and only some parts of it. The test is decision rights: does this part change who is allowed to decide something?

Since February, Olha decides refund exceptions inside the policy, as agreed with Iryna. Olha and Taras have agreed a new rule with three parts. The rotation person sends a holding reply within the hour and keeps the conversation: that's how the team organises its own work, the lead's to set. Olha decides exceptions within four working hours: she already owns refund exceptions under the February agreement with Iryna, and a time limit doesn't change who decides. Olha trains Taras to decide small exceptions up to a limit she sets: that changes who can approve refund exceptions, so it goes to Iryna first.

Iryna has said where she stands: inside the policy, she's fine with Olha delegating up to a set limit, as long as it's written down. So the note to her asks for one specific approval, with the limit named, rather than asking her to bless the whole arrangement or skipping her altogether. Module 7 goes deeper into decision rights.

An agreement that lives only in a call's memory drifts within weeks. Write the rule where people look: the rotation note and the decision log, with the rule itself, who decides, why, and when you'll review it. Klasna's rule: on rotation days, whoever's on rotation sends the family a holding reply within an hour and keeps the conversation; Olha decides the exception within four working hours.

Then close the two loops the clash opened. The family got two answers; now one person writes once, with one answer and an apology for the mix-up. Two more apologies would repeat the original problem. The team saw the argument in the chat; now it gets one short note about the new rule, with no verdict on who was right. A verdict would reopen the conflict in public.

How it fits together: two rules that overlap make a conflict nobody chose; fix the people side with separate talks and a joint talk around the shared problem, then fix the rule, get the right approval and write it down. Next, module 7: in July the decisions get bigger, starting with who decides what.