[MUSIC] You're a human resources professional and you have an employee coming to you and wanting to talk to you about a situation. You don't know what the situation is. But when the employee shows up, they tell you that they feel that their supervisor is not being fair to them. Not allowing them to do things that they would like to do. Not supporting them in the role that they sit in. And it's becoming from the employee's perspective a very dysfunctional and not supportive environment. This particular conflict from a human resources professional chair is very interesting because you have a course of action to take, you have responsibility to the employee, the company, as well as the supervisor. So when you're opening a dialogue with an employee, you need to make sure that you establish ground rules. You don't know what the employee's about to tell you, at the same time period, you need to make sure that they understand what your responsibilities are and how you have to manage them as a representative of the company So as a human resources professional, your first goal is to establish the ground rules of the communication. You need to make sure that the employee understands that there may be some things, that they share with them, that the HR professional cannot keep in confidence. For example, if the employee tells you that there's sexual harassment going on, the HR professional cannot keep that in confidence. If there is a violation of company protocol or rules, the HR professional cannot keep that in confidence. If the employee shares that there's just a communication breakdown between the supervisor, the human resources professional can help guide the employee to find a better way or alternative way or different methods of communicating with their supervisor to have a resolution of their conflict and for it to become a more productive situation. So the reality is, is you first have to identify what is the issue at hand before you can actually assist an employee to properly manage the conflict and to support a resolution. [SOUND]