Sam Bayer brought something different to AgileRTP this month: a framework for turning workplace conflict into collaboration, backed by an AI chatbot trained on his methodology.

The 55-minute session covered practical conflict resolution techniques and included live demonstrations using real workplace scenarios that had participants saying things like “those are the exact steps that we’re taking” and “there’s a certain amount of relief coming from the response.”

From Agile Veteran to Conflict Resolution Expert#

Sam’s journey to conflict resolution began during his 14 years founding and running an agile software company. “My recollection of having founded and run an agile company for 14 years is that on a daily basis there was conflict,” he told the group. “Conflict on scope, conflict on resources, conflict on time, conflict on money, conflict on executive sponsorship, conflict on customer availability, conflict, conflict, conflict.”

After retiring three years ago, Sam was inspired by his grandson Colden—a 12-year-old who wanted a gaming computer—to formalize his conflict experience into a systematic approach. This became the subject of his TEDx talk and the foundation for workshops across the Triangle.

“Most people don’t like conflict,” Sam observed. “They fear conflict. And the big life lesson that I want to impart to anyone that will listen to me is that conflict is actually an opportunity.”

“Conflict is actually an opportunity. It’s just an amazing opportunity to learn about the people that you’re in conflict with.” — Sam Bayer

The Foundation: Four Ways to Handle Conflict#

Sam started with the Thomas-Kilmann model from the late 1950s, which maps conflict approaches across two dimensions: how important the person is to you versus how important the result is.

“There are only four ways to deal with conflict,” Sam explained, using animal metaphors that stuck with the audience:

Avoid (turtle): “Put your head in the shell and let the world go by.” Neither person nor result matters much.

Accommodate (puppy): “Roll over and just do what they say and let them win.” Person matters, result doesn’t matter much.

Compete (lion): “Get in there… you can see that in our political system. You can see that in hierarchies and organizations.” Result matters, person doesn’t.

Collaborate: Both person and result matter. “We’re going to figure out how to make this thing work, and we’re going to have a win-win.”

The key insight: “In each one of these first three—accommodate, avoid, compete—somebody’s going to lose. And when people lose, often in a relationship, what happens to that relationship? It kind of goes sour… It ends up hurting the relationship if you accommodate, if you avoid, or if you compete too much.”

“When you win-win with somebody, everybody walks away happy, and it strengthens the relationship. That’s how you build strong teams.” — Sam Bayer

Only collaboration creates lasting solutions that strengthen relationships while achieving results.

The AGENT Framework: Making Collaboration Systematic#

Sam’s five-step methodology makes collaboration practical rather than aspirational:

A - Awareness: Choose Your Response#

“Be aware of the conflict and make a choice. Be intentional. Your instincts are to avoid it. Maybe your instincts may be to accommodate the other person. Maybe your instincts may be to compete. Be intentional.”

The challenge: “Collaboration takes a lot of energy, but you should pick how you’re going to react to a conflict as opposed to letting your emotions drive how you respond.”

Sam was candid about his own struggles: “That was the biggest battle for me is to say, all right, I’m sensing that this person’s really pissing me off. And I really just don’t want to be here, collaborate with this person, but I’m kind of forced to. They’re important to me. The result is important. And so I’m going to go take these next steps.”

G - Ground Yourself: Know Your Position#

“What are your interests?” Sam asked. “And you have to have certain criteria about that job, certain positions about that job… So you prepare yourself for this process.”

He emphasized understanding your BATNA: “What is your best alternative to a negotiated agreement? What happens if you don’t get that job with that particular [company], what are you going to do?”

Using job searching as an example: “Getting hired is a conflict. You want a job and the other company doesn’t know that you exist and they don’t want to give you a job.”

E - Empathize: The Hardest Step#

“This is the hardest step in a collaborative win-win negotiation, you need to be thinking more about them than you are about yourself. If you can’t help them solve their problem, whatever that might be, odds are you’re not going to get resolution to your perspective on the problem.”

Sam stressed the importance of genuine curiosity: “What are their interests? Why are they reacting the way that they’re [reacting], what is it that they want? What is it that they need? What is it that will make them successful? What is it that’ll make them a hero?”

“In a collaborative win-win negotiation, you need to be thinking more about them than you are about yourself.” — Sam Bayer

He gave a concrete example: “Why is my product owner constantly changing his mind or not able to constantly throwing low value features at me instead of the high value features? Why would he or she even be doing that? Those are the questions you need to ask as opposed to competing with them.”

The emotional challenge: “That’s really hard to empathize when you’re in an emotional state, because that is going to be the key to success here.”

N - Negotiate: Focus on Common Ground#

“It’s just a conversation, really, or a series of conversations. It starts out with the common goal. So what are we both trying to do here in the agile world? Hopefully, that’s anchored in business. What are we all trying to do here?”

Sam demonstrated with team dynamics: “Make money for the company. All right, so how am I gonna do with that? Well, what are your interests? Well, I’m in QA. I want to make sure you don’t ship crap. Or I’m a product owner. I want to make sure that you ship good stuff. Or I’m an engineer. I just want to do cool stuff, or I’m a CFO… everybody has their interests, and it’s all valid. Every single one of their perspectives is valid.”

The key distinction: “It isn’t about saying, no, we need a bigger [budget]. We need a longer deadline, we need more money, we need more people. It isn’t that at all. Those are positions. It’s the interests that they have that you can relate to. And that’s where you find the negotiated solution, by focusing on people’s interests, not on their positions.”

“It’s the interests that they have that you can relate to. That’s where you find the negotiated solution.” — Sam Bayer

T - Tie It Together: Document Everything#

“Get an agreement, write it down if it’s important enough… This isn’t about lawyers. This isn’t about politicians. This is about you and I in the workplace or in our family. Write it down. What did we just agree to? Because tomorrow everyone’s going to forget, and then the conflict is going to come back again.”

“Write it down. What did we just agree to? Because tomorrow everyone’s going to forget, and then the conflict is going to come back again.” — Sam Bayer

Sam emphasized specificity: “The more important the result is, the more important the relationship, the more important the win-win. The more important it is to tie it all together.”

The AI Innovation: Conflict Coaching at Scale#

The session’s breakthrough moment came when Sam introduced his AGENT chatbot, available free on ChatGPT by searching “Sam Bayer.”

“I’ve taken my methodology, this agent methodology, and I’ve created a chat bot. I’ve trained it on the five steps. I’ve trained it on the personality types. It’s watched my TEDx talk, I’ve fed it papers on how to deal with conflict, how to be creative. I’ve taught it on lean problem solving.”

The bot runs on ChatGPT’s free tier, though Sam noted: “You do not have to have a paid subscription. It’s going to frustrate you when you don’t because you’re going to run out of tokens.”

Live Demonstration: AI Adoption Resistance#

The real test came with a live conflict scenario suggested by Catherine Louis: “Trying to introduce AI to an engineering team.”

Arjay described the conflict: “The major issue is that everyone’s fearful of AI, that it’s going to take their jobs away because vibe coding is something that people are talking about that the guys in the field could do. And if they can vibe code the problem, they can get an answer. And there’s this fear that nobody needs the skills of a good developer and the skills to write good testing.”

Sam asked for specifics about who was driving adoption: “Who’s bringing it in?” When Arjay identified the VP of Engineering as the mandate source, Sam input the scenario into his chatbot.

The Chatbot’s Response: Systematic Analysis#

The AI immediately applied the AGENT framework:

Awareness: “You’re in the middle of a three-way workplace conflict. The VP of engineering wants AI adoption to boost productivity. Your engineers are resisting. You are in between, needing to move the org forward without breaking trust.”

Ground: The bot identified interests for each party—the VP wanting “faster delivery, competitive advantage, meeting leadership expectations” while engineers feared “job security, loss of craftsmanship.”

Empathize: “What might they be afraid of? Job security. Loss of craftsmanship. What pressure are they under? Could it be fear of being measured unfairly or not having proper training?”

When Sam specified that engineers feared “AI creating sloppy code” and “losing their jobs,” the chatbot refined its approach: “Their resistance isn’t just about the tech. It’s emotional. They’re worried about quality and security on one hand and job security on the other.”

Strategic Solutions: Quality First#

The bot suggested addressing code quality concerns first: “Meeting them where they are on code quality will feel safer and more concrete.” It recommended validation: “I get why code quality matters. Sloppy AI output would hurt all of us.”

For practical implementation: “Maybe we run AI assisted coding on low-risk tasks and you all review the output first. This approach lets them stay in control which reduces hidden job loss anxiety without calling it out.”

Validation from Real Implementation#

The demonstration’s power became clear when Arjay confirmed the bot’s recommendations: “There’s a certain amount of relief coming from the response because those are the exact steps that we’re taking all the way through… anytime I have one-on-ones with folks, we talk about reframing this as augmentation, that it’s going to help them, that it’s taking away the grunt work, but we’re also building in a whole program for upskilling teams and new hires.”

“There’s a certain amount of relief coming from the response because those are the exact steps that we’re taking.” — Arjay (validating the AI chatbot)

Arjay even described their pilot approach: “We’ve even done a pilot program of essentially a hackathon where they got a topic and they sat down in a room… all of them using cursor and Claude and jammed out something that looked pretty cool… I think all of them walked away from it, going AI [isn’t] taking our jobs, but sure making it fun.”

Job Security Fears: The Deeper Challenge#

When Thomas Moore pushed deeper into the job loss concern—“the people are not necessarily wrong”—Sam acknowledged the complexity while maintaining empathy.

The chatbot’s response to job security fears was nuanced: “First, acknowledge without amplifying. ‘I know AI can feel threatening. It’s changing the industry. And it’s normal to wonder how it affects your role.’ This normalizes their fear without confirming doom.”

It suggested reframing: “Our goal is to make you more powerful, not to shrink the team. AI takes the grunt work so you can focus on architecture, problem solving, and the parts only humans can do.”

For building safety: “Offer upskilling. We’ll invest in training so everyone can master AI instead of fearing it. Commit to transparency… Pilot AI as a career tool. Show how engineers who adopt AI become even more valuable to the organization.”

Sam was realistic about industry changes: “In the technology industry, jobs will get lost. Things are changing… there is a reality. But there’s some guidance here on how to be empathetic and deal with it in a humane way.”

Complex Scenarios: The Turtle Problem#

Antoniela Castellar raised a common workplace challenge: “What I find difficult sometimes when dealing with conflicts is that the other person [doesn’t] recognize that there is a conflict and try to work on the solution. Because there are people who just close up and decide not to talk anymore… even if I try, like, hey, listen, let’s discuss about this. They say, no, everything is okay, but the environment, you feel it.”

Sam immediately recognized the pattern: “They’re playing turtle.”

The chatbot’s guidance was specific: “When someone is avoiding, the key is to lower the emotional stakes and invite them in gently. Ground yourself first so you stay calm and patient even if they withdraw. Use empathy and curiosity instead of pushing for your agenda.”

It suggested practical language: “I know this project is a lot right now. I’d love to understand what’s on your plate or what might make this conversation easier.”

The key insight: “Make the conversation safe by framing it as shared problem solving. Emphasize a common goal. ‘I think we both want this project to succeed. Can we find a time to talk about how to get there together?’”

Sam added context from a real family situation: “I just dealt with a situation like this where there was a situation between a mother and a daughter, really bad situation… and the daughter would only text the mom, and mom is saying, no, I can’t do this over text… But both the mother and the daughter want to have a relationship here. It’s important. So the mother is the one that has to empathize with the daughter and say, okay, we’ll continue this… but we have a common goal here.”

Multi-Stakeholder Negotiations: Board Presidents#

Wendy Gordon presented an executive-level challenge: “The situation’s a tad different when you have two board presidents. They’re stakeholders and they’re not collaborating… I’m in the middle trying to figure out how to negotiate to get them both to the table so we can all collaborate and meet our end goal.”

The chatbot identified this as more complex than scheduling: “What you’re facing isn’t just a scheduling issue. It’s a subtle conflict of priorities, egos or risk perceptions.”

It suggested systematic empathy: “What exactly do you need and why? Is it a joint meeting with the presidents? Or could the conversation start with a lower stakes step like sending trusted delegates or doing one-on-one pre-calls?”

For understanding resistance: “Ask yourself what might they be afraid of? Are they worried about appearing weak, about being pressured into a deal, or about wasting time?”

Creative solutions included: “Propose a very short exploratory conversation. Let them suggest the agenda or even meet individually first to surface concerns before a joint session. Sometimes offering an observer role for the first meeting eases the pressure.”

When Wendy mentioned ego issues, Sam was characteristically direct: “Oh my gosh, I didn’t have one of those when I was [building my company].”

Catherine Louis offered practical wisdom: “I used to have amazing success with writing a nice invitation, like a nice card and promising food. And then all of a sudden you get more people than you would have ever gotten.”

Complex Organizational Conflicts#

The session concluded with a sophisticated scenario about conflicting priorities between a VP of Account Management (wanting features for existing customers) and Chief Growth Officer (wanting features for new business acquisition).

The chatbot’s analysis was comprehensive:

Awareness: “This is a high stakes conflict. Both the issue requires roadmap priorities and the relationships with two exec peers matter. That makes it a candidate for collaboration rather than just competing or accommodating.”

Ground: It identified positions versus interests for each role—the VP focused on “retention and upsell features” to “strengthen existing relationships, reduce churn, hit retention KPIs,” while the CGO wanted features to “capture market share, hit growth targets, show momentum to the board.”

Creative Solutions: The bot suggested practical approaches like “split sprints or release cycles between retention and acquisition features” or “bundle features to serve dual purposes. For example, a reporting tool that helps demos for new customers but also delights existing ones.”

Sam added strategic context: “All this has to be driven by the strategic plan. What’s the strategic plan say? What is the organization committed to? Each of them individually might not… they might be exceeding what the plan actually set for them. And they’re not collaborating. They’re on opposite sides.”

Technology Limitations and Human Judgment#

The session included thoughtful discussion about AI boundaries. NLIVANOS challenged: “This is exactly why your machine is not able to replicate your actual experience… It can say the right words, but it doesn’t have the experience.”

Sam’s response was measured: “I honestly don’t think this is meant to replace me. I think I still have a purpose in life. I think, though, that it really instigates some conversations. It really does say, all right, let me look at it differently. What other questions should I be asking?”

He positioned the tool practically: “It’s like writing that email, not sending it. It’s not perfect, but oh my gosh, if I had this when I was building my company, it wouldn’t have taken me 14 years to build it.”

Personal Application: The Ultimate Test#

Catherine Louis closed with humor: “When you have an argument with your wife, does she say, ‘Sam, not the agent stuff. Get that agent stuff away from me.’”

Sam’s response got the biggest laugh: “Actually she says, ‘What does your girlfriend say?’”

Practical Resources and Implementation#

Sam launched WinWinAgent.org the day of the presentation, providing access to the chatbot and additional resources. The framework applies across contexts—“family, grandchildren, neighborhood, homeowners associations… non profits, executive boards, fighting with executive directors.”

The chatbot catalogs conversations for reference, making it useful for ongoing conflict resolution. Sam noted its systematic approach: “To give you a breather, to talk, to consult with it and say, okay, so here’s what I think. Here’s what I think the conflict is. Talk to it naturally, and it’ll respond back and it’ll pull it out from you.”

Why This Matters for Agile Teams#

For agile practitioners, the AGENT framework addresses daily realities Sam knew well from 14 years of agile leadership. The systematic approach provides structure for teams who understand they should collaborate but struggle with implementation.

The AI coaching element offers something new: neutral, 24/7 conflict facilitation that helps teams work through issues before they damage relationships or derail projects.

As Sam concluded: “Conflict is all around you… run in the direction of the conflict, not away from it. And I’m gonna say, oh, this is a great opportunity for us to figure out how to make this thing work.”

Whether addressing AI adoption resistance, executive alignment challenges, or team communication breakdowns, the AGENT framework offers a practical alternative to avoiding, accommodating, or competing through workplace conflicts.

The AgileRTP meetup was held August 5, 2025, with about 30 attendees. The session was recorded and full resources are available at WinWinAgent.org. The AGENT chatbot can be accessed free on ChatGPT by searching “Sam Bayer.”