Conflict is natural.
Drama is optional.
You’re a healthcare executive, and instead of focusing on strategy, quality, and patient outcomes, you’re spending an inordinate amount of time running interference.
Two or more of your senior leaders or clinicians are in ongoing conflict. Meetings are tense (or repeatedly canceled). Decisions stall. Communication happens sideways instead of directly.Â
You’re pulled into conversations that should not require your involvement at this level, yet if you step back, things deteriorate further.
You can see the downstream impact clearly: loss of productivity, fractured leadership alignment, and growing patient safety risks.
The problem is, you don't want to dismantle your team, and the people involved aren’t easy to replace. They are physicians, APPs, or senior leaders with institutional knowledge, professional credibility, and clinical expertise. You don’t have the luxury of waiting this out or hoping it resolves on its own.
So you’re stuck holding a situation that shouldn’t be yours to carry, knowing it has to be resolved, and knowing that what you’ve tried so far hasn’t worked.
Jump to Program Options
What You've Tried
You’ve tried serving as the mediator yourself, attempting to get the people involved to talk to each other directly. You’ve tried triangulating—carrying messages back and forth—to reduce friction and keep things moving.
You’ve involved your internal HR or Employee Resources staff to facilitate conversations, only to find they’re either not qualified for this level of complexity or not effective in practice.
And in many cases, physicians don’t trust internal HR, so they don’t feel safe enough to be vulnerable or honest, which means the real issues never surface.
Despite your efforts, the conflict persists.
Why It's Hard
Agreements can't be forced and smoothing things over doesn’t work, because first you need to create the conditions where people can speak honestly, feel heard and be understood. And as the executive, this is where you need to hold firm boundaries with real consequences, so everyone understands that the conflict cannot continue.
You were never trained to be a professional conflict resolution facilitator (and you shouldn’t have to be).
Like many executives, you expect adults to get along and resolve differences professionally. When that doesn’t happen, it’s both surprising and deeply frustrating.
At the same time, HR professionals are often either not competent in complex, high-stakes interpersonal conflict or not trusted by clinicians and leaders who fear political or professional repercussions.
This leaves you in an impossible position: responsible for outcomes you can’t directly control, in a system that doesn’t reliably support real dialogue or psychological safety.
The problem isn’t that you’re doing something wrong or should be doing more. It’s that the tools typically available to you aren’t designed for the realities of senior-level healthcare conflict.
The Truth & The Approach That Works
Typical mediation trainings and facilitations fail because they leave out or gloss over this one crucial element: Nervous system regulation to get out of survival mode (fight / flight / freeze / please).Â
You want your people to communicate clearly, yet no one, no matter how well-educated and experienced they are, can communicate clearly until they have shifted out of survival mode and managed their survival-driven protective patterns (aggression, people-pleasing, micro-managing, etc.).
That's why all of my programs are built on my Four Fundamentals of Drama-Free Communication.
What actually works is having someone who can quickly assess and ascertain what the root driver of the conflict is, create psychological safety and trust with the leaders involved, and facilitate true dialogue so the conflict can be fully resolved.
In my experience, people in conflict need to feel respected as they are. They need a sense of hope that they can be who they are and still succeed, that it’s okay to have emotions, strong opinions and challenges, and that they don’t have to change their personality to work effectively with others or succeed within their organization.
The reason I’m able to support this kind of resolution is that I help people recognize when they are moving into survival mode (fight / flight / freeze / please). From there, we slow things down enough to understand what’s really happening beneath the surface, identify the core concern driving the conflict, and build a foundation of trust between the people involved so they can finally resolve their conflict, repair their professional relationship, and move forward.Â
When that happens, resolution becomes sustainable, without you having to remain in the middle.
Meet Your Coach
Hi, I’m Annie Campanile, a PhD executive coach with 20+ years of experience in healthcare executive coaching and conflict resolution facilitation.
I’ve been an executive coach in five large health systems across the U.S., and I’ve facilitated complex conflict resolution with leaders at every level—from nursing directors and APPs, to physicians and chief officers.
Many people find persistent conflict among senior leaders to be intimidating, but I don't.
I understand the organizational pressures, the clinical culture, and the high stakes involved. My specialty is helping healthcare leaders and clinicians hold difficult conversations safely, directly, and efficiently.
Learn more about me
Program Options and 2026 Pricing
There are three ways to work with me, depending on what you need right now.
1.
A One-time
Consult
I advise you, the executive, on how to approach the situation and prepare for your next steps.
Duration: 60 minutes
Format: Video conference
Investment: $1,750
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Next Step: To get more information or to arrange for a consult, click here to request a Clarity Call.
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2.
Skill Building
for You
I teach you how to facilitate resolution yourself and coach you through a real case.
This active learning program goes beyond typical mediation training or executive coaching programs, so you can confidently handle this situation—and future ones—without being dependent on outside intervention.
Duration: up to 3 months
Format: Video conference
Core Components:
   - Individualized instruction on my Four Fundamentals of Drama-Free Communication and my proven approach to facilitating conflict resolution
   - Individual coaching sessions to help you prepare for, debrief, and learn from an actual facilitation process
    - DiSC assessment + individual debriefs for you and the (2-3) people who are in conflict
   - Opening alignment session
   - Closing review and sustainment session
Investment: $25,000
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Next Step: For more information, click here to request a Clarity Call.
3.
Direct
Facilitation
I facilitate the resolution process for you, working directly with the hard-to-replace clinicians and/or leaders involved in the conflict.
Your role is to set clear expectations and real consequences for the people who are in conflict, attend the facilitated conversation as a resource, and sponsor any new agreements or action plans that emerge from the facilitation.
Duration:Â 6-8 weeks
Format:Â Video conference
Core Components:
   - Opening alignment and goal-setting session with you, up to 2 other executives whose direct reports are involved in the conflict, and up to 2 organizational resources you want to include (such as HR / Employee Resources)
   - DiSC assessment + individual debriefs for you, the (2-3) people who are in conflict, and their (2-3) direct leaders (if not you)
   - Orientation to my Four Fundamentals of Drama-Free Communication and my proven approach to facilitating conflict resolution
   - Individual coaching sessions for each of the (2-3) people who are in conflict, to prepare for the facilitated conversation
   - One facilitated conflict resolution meeting (additional meetings available, at an additional fee)
   - Closing review and sustainment session
Investment:Â $35,000
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Next Step: For more information, click here to request a Clarity Call.Â
Next Step: Clarity Call
If this resonates and you would like to discuss the best path forward or begin a program, book a free 30-minute Clarity Call.Â
This is not a sales call. Regardless of whether or not we work together, I'll help you figure out your next right step.
©️2004-2026 ANNIE CAMPANILE, LLC
