What Happens When You Keep Running From Conflict — and Why It Always Catches Up

Working with leadership teams that actively avoid conflict has led me to recognize two truths. The first is that not saying what needs to be said leads to passive aggressiveness and, ultimately, stagnation. The second is that the status quo is almost never the right path.

​Nobody wants to be the first one to address a topic that could be highly contentious. It’s much simpler to pretend that big issues don’t exist, hold regular meetings, never discuss those issues and go about work as usual. But something happens when important topics aren’t discussed and people are expected to carry on: Motivation drops, and people feel defeated.

​But conflict, when navigated well, is a primary driver of trust, innovation and team resilience.

​Politeness as a form of avoidance

Team harmony is a nice thing to have, but only if it’s authentic. I often hear teams boast that they have no conflict and that everyone gets along well all the time. But when I start to dig deeper, it becomes obvious that the ongoing peace everyone is talking about is really just a suppressed form of politeness.

When a team has never had a real disagreement, it’s not a sign of trust or balance. It’s often a sign of avoidance. Real harmony doesn’t mean everyone agrees all the time; it means everyone feels safe enough to disagree. And often in a workplace that claims to be “conflict-free,” people don’t feel that they can speak up. Eventually, the polite exterior will begin to crack, and what’s left are people silently trying to flee or collecting paychecks without caring about the work.

​It takes time to develop safe spaces

There’s often a good reason why people don’t feel safe to discuss contentious topics at work. I’ve seen many leaders (even skilled ones) say things in meetings they instantly regret when someone speaks up. Part of the reason this happens is anatomy — the brain doesn’t distinguish between real and perceived danger. Stress hormones effectively hijack the brain, resulting in an inability to think rationally.

This is where emotional intelligence — and the ability to pause, reflect and respond rationally — plays a massive part in leadership. Those skills can be honed over time, but won’t have a chance at development if conflicts are regularly and effectively avoided. Regularly working through disagreements can help leadership distinguish between constructive conflict (personal, positional) and generative conflict (idea-driven, value-led), too.

​Conflict data

​It’s rare that workplace conflicts are seen as data, but that’s what they really are. When something doesn’t sit quite right with several team members, that’s information that something isn’t adding up. When I step into a room that’s rife with conflict, this is the type of data that I try to gather:

• What are team members trying to say?
• Is there a new policy or structure that’s unfavorable? Why?
• Has leadership recently changed? Is the new leadership style not widely accepted?
• What about a specific topic is the most common complaint?
• Has anyone tried to address the issue? What was the result?
• What exactly isn’t working?

The answers to all of those questions will provide you with useful data that you can use to discuss issues with your team and, ultimately, find a way to clarify or change the things that aren’t working. There will be moments when you’ve heard the room, considered the pushback and still believe the current path is right.

What matters in those moments is that you don’t just repeat your position louder. You owe your team the full picture: why the decision was made, what it’s based on and what you might be missing. Actively addressing collective angst isn’t about polite agreement; it’s about listening, hearing and considering what the people around you are saying.

Building a conflict capable culture

Conflict is a healthy and productive part of any work environment. The unhealthy part is avoiding discussions around collective conflict. I’ve seen many ways to allow for regular discord from conflict rooms to regular retrospectives, and all of them work. The goal is to make room for friction and reframe it as a valuable way to gather data and further collaborate. It’s not always going to be an easy task and there will be some pushback, but it is the path forward. 

Cultures that are capable of conflict start at the top, and that means leadership has to be open to discussing the harder topics and addressing the pointed questions. This doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process that takes practice and a skill that requires honing. You won’t always get it right, but you will make it clear that any conversation can be had and listened to — and that’s what lessons learned from conflict are all about.