The Hidden Cost of Avoiding Conflict
A recent Harvard Business Review study found that leaders spend nearly 20% of their time managing conflict. That is one full day every week devoted to navigating tension, and that doesn’t come close to telling the whole story of impact.
In addition to the time spent addressing conflict, there is also relational strain that results in lost potential. When teammates have something unresolved between them, collaboration becomes cautious. Conversations stay safe. People hold back ideas that could spark innovation or progress. Energy that could be spent building something together gets redirected toward managing discomfort. Over time, those small, unspoken tensions quietly erode trust and connection.
The impact also goes beyond just the time we spend dealing with it at work. Unaddressed conflict takes up significant mental and emotional space. When tension sits unresolved, it does not stay contained to our time at work. It follows us home. We replay conversations in our heads while making dinner. We carry it into our weekends, and it can even disrupt our sleep. When you consider this reality, one of the most compassionate things we can do for our teammates is to address conflict in a timely manner. After all, it might be the very thing that ensures they can be present with their friends and family when they leave work.
Reframing Conflict: A Sign of Care
The healthiest teams are not the ones who never experience tension. They are the ones who can see tension for what it is, a sign of engagement. When people disagree, it means they care. It means they are bringing their ideas, their perspectives, and their convictions to the table.
Avoiding conflict will not lead to greater alignment. It creates distance. Suppressing disagreement does not preserve relationships. It quietly weakens them. We have seen this dynamic play out countless times in our work with leadership teams. The moment a team begins to challenge each other with honesty and respect, something shifts. The energy changes. Meetings become more meaningful. Decisions become more clear and teams reach new levels.
Healthy teams do not confuse calm for unity. They understand that care sometimes sounds like disagreement. So, if tension exists on your team, do not interpret it as a sign of dysfunction. See it as a sign that people are invested in your mission, goals and overall performance. The key is not to avoid conflict, but to build norms and systems that increase the odds that your team will navigate it successfully.
Designing for Healthy Conflict
High-performing leadership teams do not handle conflict well by accident. They build systems that make it possible. When teams collaboratively and proactively discuss how they want to address conflict, it makes moments of bravery much more possible. Courage stops being a rare, heroic act and becomes a normal part of how the team operates. Here's a common example we have observed among teams that have taken the time to proactively establish norms about how they handle conflict:
The team was in their weekly leadership meeting, reviewing progress on their quarterly priorities. Each leader took turns giving updates, and at one point, one of them enthusiastically shared a new development, an idea that on the surface, sounded innovative and exciting.
But as the room nodded along, one leader, Amy, felt a subtle discomfort. She realized that while the new direction sounded promising, it actually shifted the focus away from the spirit of what the team had intended when they first defined the priority. She hesitated. Speaking up in moments like this is hard. Everyone was positive, momentum was high, and she didn’t want to seem like she was dampening enthusiasm.
Amy took a breath and said, “I love the energy behind this, but I want to pause for a moment. I think this direction might move us away from what we originally intended when we set this goal. Would it be all right if we put this on The List to discuss today?”
The room quieted. Then one of her colleagues said, “That’s a good catch. Let’s revisit the original outcome we defined.” The discussion that followed was open, respectful, and honest. By the end, they left with stronger alignment, a sharper definition of success, and more trust that they were capable of navigating tension together.
Here are the four simple agreements that existed for that team that made this moment possible:
Name tension early. When you sense friction, name it before it festers. The earlier a tension is named, the easier it is to resolve.
Debate ideas, not people. Keep the focus on the work. Disagree with concepts, not character.
Keep conflict in the room. Once you leave a meeting, decisions are final. Avoid hallway debates or side conversations that reopen what was already closed.
Assume positive intent. Remember that everyone in the room wants the same thing: the organization to thrive.
If this team had not had these agreements in place, Amy would have needed to summon superhuman courage to speak up. It still took bravery, but not the kind that requires a DNA line traceable to Krypton.
Without systems, teams rely on individual heroics to make progress. With systems, they make progress together.
It Won’t Always Go Smoothly… and that's OK.
It’s also worth remembering that building these muscles takes time. Even with clear agreements in place, conflict will not always go smoothly and that’s okay. Every team has moments that feel awkward, messy, or unresolved. What matters most is not perfection, but persistence. When a team can move through those moments together, it builds a quiet confidence that things will be okay. Over time, those small recoveries strengthen the team’s collective resilience and trust that they can face hard conversations and come out stronger on the other side.
A Quick Gut Check: How Well Does Your Team Navigate Conflict?
Use these questions to spark reflection or conversation with your leadership team:
These questions are not meant to point out weakness, but to invite intention. When a team can name tension, stay connected through it, and move forward with shared understanding, it turns conflict from a drain into a driver of performance. So, if you think your team has room to grow in how it handles conflict, start with these three questions and then run an experiment or two that can help you to feel some momentum.
-Shaun & Joe