A Team that Doesn't Know How to Productively Navigate Conflict is a Team in Trouble
How your team behaves in rough waters is the true predictor of success.
On the face of it, it was a dream team.
Senior, proven leaders with decades of experience.
They were transforming a company, shifting it into growth mode and making it transaction-ready.
They showed up to meetings on time. They came to a decision quickly. They were aligned on the next steps, and people shifted into action seamlessly.
And yet when it came to their collaboration, something seemed off. They contemplated few ideas. Very little was debated, especially highly strategic decisions. When there was dissent, it was about minor topics like the formatting of a deck or the timing of a meeting.
They were going through the motions of execution well, but their results were mediocre, and they weren’t improving.
When the leader came to me to help him and his team achieve higher performance, he had no idea what was brewing under the surface.
After the first few sessions, it was clear to me — this was a team that deeply feared conflict, with their leader and with each other.
What felt like safety was costing much more than each person realized. Without conflict, they were missing out on better ideas, smarter solutions.
Even worse, they were creating a culture that drained everyone’s energy walking on eggshells. Left unaddressed, the team would fall apart.
The good news? It wasn’t too late to fix.
Conflict isn’t a sign of risk. Misunderstanding it is.
Conflict gets a bad rap. It’s associated with wars and physical violence. It’s something culturally we teach people to fear and avoid.
And yet conflict can support problem solving, creativity, and innovation. Technological advancements, scientific discoveries, and creative endeavors often require productive friction to source diverse ideas, debate merits, experiment and test, and overcome setbacks.
So why does conflict trip us up?
Because not all types of conflict1 are productive, and most teams don’t take the time to identify which one needs addressing:
Task conflict (disagreements about what to do or how to think about a problem) can lead to better decisions, more creative solutions, and higher quality outcomes — when managed well.
Process conflict (disagreements about how work gets done, roles, resource allocation) is correlated with a decline in team respect and trust, as well as reduced team productivity and viability.
Relationship conflict (interpersonal friction, feelings of dislike or disrespect) is almost always detrimental. It erodes trust, increases stress, and hurts performance.
The teams that navigate conflict well are the ones that understand the difference between each category and know how and when to address each.
The ones that struggle can’t distinguish between them and allow a task or process conflict to transform into a relationship conflict.
Where to start and why.
Build awareness and a common language around these different types of conflict. With a shared understanding and common language, it’s much easier to get alignment on why this matters and make the changes necessary.
Take the time to discuss openly how conflict is impacting your team. Invite the team to share examples of where the team isn’t able to focus or execute well together because conflict is distracting or stalling progress.
Commit as a team to improving how you navigate conflict. This needs to be a group commitment because conflict can arise at any time and with any configuration of people. Any efforts to effect change will be lessened if only a subset of the team is ready to engage.
Learn how to identify the different types of conflict. Use specific examples and discuss them. Only when you get into particular examples will everyone develop the muscles to identify them as they emerge.
Discuss how to navigate each type of conflict more effectively. This will be specific to each team, but will generally center around roles, responsibilities, goals, constraints, and acceptable norms. One of the most important elements is clarifying who the decision-maker is and how that gets determined for each situation.
Make it safe to call out when you’re starting to drift from one type of conflict to another and to pause before continuing. The pause gives everyone engaged a chance to step back, away from the fray, calm their emotions and get some perspective. Are you slipping into relationship conflict when the real issue is process? Is someone getting caught up in a process element when another person is focused on task? Just the act of pausing can help everyone get back on track.
This might feel like a lot to work through to just get started, but when you are dealing with group dynamics and trying to correct unhealthy norms, you need to be thoughtful about how you set the foundation.
As you set up your guidelines, don’t worry about creating hard and fast rules. Just start with a few scenarios and create guidelines organically. The key is to get started and open up the conversation. Simply acknowledging that there is an opportunity to improve can help the team create more productive habits.
Your turn.
Most teams in my experience spend 90% or more of their time focused on the “what” of their work. Few take the time to step back and align on what I call “meta topics” on “how” they do their work, like conflict management. These conversations require thoughtfulness and a pausing of the work that feels uncomfortable.
But it’s exactly these types of topics that, when left unaddressed, can become a terrible distraction at best and a highly destructive force at worst.
I’d love to hear if you have spent time on your team talking about the “how”. And if conflict management is one of the topics you’ve addressed.
If you haven’t, may this post be your invitation to start the conversation. I’d love to hear what emerges.
If you found this post helpful, I’d greatly appreciate your sharing it with others who you think would find it useful.
And if there are other topics you’d like me to cover around team dynamics, please reply and let me know. I read every message, even if I can’t respond to them all.
May you lead without limits,
Jehn, K. A. (2014). Types of conflict: The history and future of conflict definitions and typologies. In O. B. Ayoko, N. M. Ashkanasy, & K. A. Jehn (Eds.), Handbook of conflict management research (pp. 3–18). Edward Elgar Publishing.