Preventing and Regulating Tensions in Teams

• Any professional with an interest in the topic.
• In particular: managers, team leaders, and professionals involved in multi-stakeholder project management.

• Understand what workplace tension is
• Identify and express, in a professional way, the feelings and lived experiences linked to tension
• Recognise the potential value of tension when it is well regulated
• Understand the human and systemic impacts of unregulated tension
• Identify limits and warning signs (blockages, escalation, paradoxical demands)
• Clarify the role and boundaries of the manager / leader
• Understand the fundamentals of psychological safety and its key role in preventing tension
• Use trust- and communication-based levers to support collective adjustment
• Develop reference points for prevention and regulation
• Share and apply learning together through real situations / practical cases

Tensions are an inherent part of team life.

When they are ignored or poorly regulated, they undermine trust, cooperation and collective effectiveness.
When they are understood and actively addressed, they can instead become levers for adjustment, clarification and sustainable performance.

This training offers a structured and safe framework to understand what lies beneath workplace tensions, clarify the role and boundaries of the manager or leader, and develop simple, practical approaches to preventing and regulating tensions, grounded in real-world organisational contexts.

Participants gain clear reference points and practical tools to make sense of tensions, strengthen psychological safety within teams, and support healthier, more responsible collective ways of working.

The training combines conceptual input, peer exchange and hands-on application to real situations brought by the participants.

• Understanding workplace tensions: definitions and distinctions (tensions, disagreements, conflicts, polarities and paradoxes)
• The human and systemic impacts of unregulated tensions
• Managing complexity by recognising the value of tensions and polarities (Barry Johnson’s Polarity Management model)
• The foundations of psychological safety in teams
• Trust and communication levers that support collective adjustment
• Warning signs and derailments: blockages, escalation and paradoxical injunctions
• The role and boundaries of the manager / leader in preventing and regulating tensions
• Practical reference points for preventing and regulating tensions in everyday work
• Peer exchange and application to real professional situations

• Innovative and participative learning approaches
• Experiential learning based on real professional situations
• Body and mind practices supporting presence, perspective and action
• Peer exchange and co-learning

Certificate of continuous vocational training

Face to face