Leaders Urged to Build 'Essential Skills' as Workplace Conflict Surges

Claudia St. John has spent years helping print and promo businesses navigate hiring, compliance and culture. But lately, the founder and CEO of The Workplace Advisors says her role has increasingly shifted toward something far more fundamental: equipping managers to handle conflict in a deeply polarized era.

“We used to call these soft skills,” St. John told attendees during her presentation at the 2025 PRINTING United Expo. “They are no longer soft skills. They are now what we would call ‘essential skills.’”

St. John, whose firm is the endorsed workplace advisor for PRINTING United Alliance, works with organizations ranging from small shops to large national brands. Across the board, she says, leaders are facing steep challenges: stressed workforces, emotional volatility, political tension and frontline managers who feel underprepared.

“We have an extraordinary amount of conflict right now in the workplace,” St. John said. “We are becoming more and more polarized… and this is absolutely spilling over into the workplace.”

Rising Stress and the Cost of Conflict

St. John pointed to a range of data she says demonstrates the pressure employers are under. “Forty-four percent of employees reported having a lot of stress at work,” she said. “Fifty-one percent reported actively looking for a new job.”

Those numbers are notable, she added, because they follow the upheaval of the 2021 Great Resignation, during which more than 50 million Americans left their jobs. “Almost 35 percent of the entire U.S. workforce quit their jobs in that one year,” she said. “So, for 51 percent of employees to still be looking or considering looking for a new job — that’s huge.”

Conflict alone now carries a staggering financial toll. “U.S. employees spend on average 2.1 hours a week in conflict at work,” St. John said. “Forbes just came out with a report saying this is costing U.S. businesses $350 billion in lost revenue in 2025 alone.”

More concerning, she added, are the personal consequences. “Fifty-seven percent of employees have witnessed some kind of injury or illness at work — some sort of conflict that resulted in personal illness or injury,” she said. “This is not small stuff.”

Despite that, “three out of four employees believe their direct managers don’t have the skill sets necessary to navigate this kind of conflict,” St. John said. “Employees don’t quit their jobs — they quit their frontline supervisors and managers.”

Emotional Intelligence: The Manager’s First Tool

Much of St. John’s training centers on emotional intelligence, or EQ, which she describes as “brain science, not just a personality trait.”

She explained the role of the amygdala, which is the walnut-sized part of the brain that detects threats, and how quickly it can hijack rational thinking. “If the amygdala senses a threat, it floods the body with adrenaline, cortisol and other inflammatory hormones,” she said. “Those hormones can stay in your system for up to eight hours.”

That means a moment of frustration with a co-worker can linger long enough to fuel road rage on the drive home or conflict with family later. “When the amygdala is threatened, everything is an enemy,” she said. “Your IQ is diminished. You can’t think. Your pulse increases. Every aspect of your body is gearing up for a fight.”

Emotional intelligence, she emphasized, is not about avoiding emotion. “If you don’t have emotions, there’s something deeply weird about you,” she joked. “EQ is about how quickly you can recognize you’re in an emotional state and clear that red.”

Self-awareness, she said, is the hardest part of developing EQ — but also the most important. “Oftentimes the body tells us before our brain does,” she said. “Recognizing the telltale signs — tension, butterflies, tightness — is critical.”

The fastest way to calm the emotional threat response is surprisingly simple: breathing. “When you breathe deeply, you’re oxygenating your blood. You’re processing those hormones,” she said. “Your body can’t be in a threat state and also engage in deep, calm breathing.”

Communicating With Empathy and Precision

Once leaders manage their internal state, St. John said, effective communication becomes possible — and increasingly essential in an era of misinterpretation.

As she explained, only 10 percent of communication comes from the words themselves, while 55 percent comes from body language and 35 percent from tone. “And yet most of us now communicate with our thumbs,” she said. “Texting strips away so much of the meaning.”

To counteract that, she encourages leaders to rely on in-person communication whenever possible, followed by video, then phone — with email and text as last resorts. “If it’s important, show up,” she said.

Empathy, she added, is not optional for leaders, even those who claim they don’t naturally possess it. “Some people truly don’t care how others feel,” she said. “But as a leader, they have to make people feel like they care. And that can be taught.”

Active listening, she said, is the fastest route to empathy. “It’s paying attention, making eye contact, asking clarifying questions, deferring judgment,” she said. “People don’t need you to agree with them — they need to feel heard.”

One of St. John’s most popular “magic hacks” is a phrase she says transforms difficult conversations: “The story I’m telling myself is…”

“When you use that phrase, you’re not accusing,” she explained. “You’re opening the door to deeper conversation. The other person can’t argue with your internal narrative, but they can help clarify it.”

Her other go-to strategy is to eliminate the word ‘but’ from managerial communication. “When we hear the word ‘but,’ everything before it disappears,” she said. “‘You’re doing great, but…’ — all we hear is what comes after.”

Replacing ‘but’ with ‘and’ can change the entire tone of a conversation. “You can express a concern without shutting the other person down,” she said. “It becomes inclusive rather than adversarial.”

Preparing Managers for Critical Conversations

Few people enjoy conflict, St. John said, but leaders must be equipped to handle it confidently. She teaches a framework she calls. The steps of this framework include finding your “due north,” preparing emotionally, inspecting internal stories, establishing psychological safety, navigating others’ perspectives, and documenting next steps.

“Managers fear conflict because the stakes are high, opinions differ and outcomes are uncertain,” she said. “But with the right tools, they don’t have to fear it. They can navigate it.”

St. John’s core message is that conflict is not a fleeting workplace trend — it’s a defining challenge of modern leadership. And without equipping managers, she warned, organizations will continue to lose talent, productivity and stability.

“These are essential skills,” she said. “And the good news is, they can all be taught.”