Managing Conflict on Your Executive Team

Conflict is inevitable on any team, but it can be particularly fraught for an executive team tasked with making high-stakes strategic decisions. Strong personalities representing distinct parts of the business bring diverse perspectives, making disagreement natural. This is even more true today, when rapid technological change and global uncertainty have eroded many of the shared assumptions leaders once relied on. Whether it surfaces as personal attacks, rivalries, backchanneling, turf wars, or just strong disagreements, when left unaddressed, conflict on the executive team can distract from strategic execution and poison the broader culture of your organization. Recommendations One thing you don’t want is the absence of conflict in executive team meetings. “Conflict is the raw material of innovation,” says executive advisor Ron Carucci, because it disrupts insularity and underscores the need for change and adaptation. As CEO, you need to elicit diverse viewpoints while rooting out disruptive patterns and behaviors. Here’s what healthy conflict on a senior team looks like and how to encourage it. Establish and adhere to shared norms. This helps the team recognize what behavior is acceptable when discussing contentious issues. You’ll need to choose what works for your team, but some norms that tend to be productive are: We avoid personal attacks. We speak openly with each other, but don’t let our disagreements leave the room. We listen to others with curiosity and openness. We believe that giving each other challenging feedback benefits all of us. We name tensions as they come up to depersonalize disagreement. We pursue common goals instead of seeing performance through functions. When you sense a norm violation, actively address it in real time, in the room if possible. You can do this lightly—you don’t want to chastise—just make it clear that the behavior has been noticed and should be stopped. If the behavior happens repeatedly or outside of a meeting, act fast to address it. Waiting around to see if the issue resolves itself signals tolerance and could erode your team’s trust in your commitment to your shared norms. Assume good intentions, be curious, and ask questions about what made the person choose to behave in that way. Be compassionate while firmly explaining that the behavior goes against the team’s norms and isn’t acceptable. For example: Scott, I want to address something that happened in our meeting this morning. We agreed as a team that we speak directly and candidly when issues arise even when we’re uncomfortable. When Janet was finished with her presentation, you were clearly frustrated by some of her perspectives. But instead of engaging her directly, you sighed and looked exasperated and made sarcastic remarks to Laine and Mark. I’m presuming that upsetting Janet wasn’t your intention, but I don’t think I’m alone in my experience. Help me understand what was going on for you and what about the conversation brought out those behaviors. Address interpersonal conflict. If team members approach you to resolve an interpersonal disagreement, send them back to work it out themselves. You can coach them, but it’s their responsibility to resolve it. If past incidents are getting in the way of mutual trust and effective collaboration, help those involved name and work through what is happening. Empathy-building exercises are often helpful: Ask feuding team members to switch perspectives or role-play each other’s position. If the conflict stems from a feud over status—and executive teams are rife with this kind of jockeying—make roles and common goals clear. If the conflict is long-running, consider assigning them to co-lead a high-stakes, cross-functional project with a shared outcome. Be clear that part of the assignment is to build their relationship. Make yourself available to provide support along the way. Keep an eye on those side-stepping the team. Avoidance of overt conflict is a common issue facing executive teams. While informal chats and allyships among your team members can help them think out loud and build relationships, these behaviors cross the line when they’re used to undermine team alignment. Often, behaviors like backchanneling, end-runs, and public grumbling after decisions have been made are a sign that the CEO hasn’t fostered a culture of healthy disagreement in team meetings. If your team meetings are a series of updates or readouts, as opposed to active debates, you need to take a stronger hand in facilitating these sessions. You can measure your success by asking yourself: Did we identify everyone’s assumptions? Did we raise multiple viewpoints? (If not, you can bring them in from the outside.) Did we debate? Were our discussions based on facts and data? Were everyone’s voices heard in a balanced way? Did we come up with better solutions? Were people uncomfortable at times? For example, Thomas P. Meier, the CEO of Ricola, a Swiss manufacturer of cough drops and breath mints, observed that when his team members presented financial data for their area of responsibility in an executive meeting, everyone else would simply nod along. Meier introduced structured discussions, encouraging everyone to compare results, ask each other probing questions, and constructively challenge one another. Initially some team members were concerned that they would offend their colleagues; they needed encouragement to speak up. Others had to be slowed down to avoid the impression that they were attacking the presenter. With several months of both individual and team coaching, though, the team was regularly having more healthy discussion. Look for structural problems. Sometimes conflict isn’t about the individuals involved, it’s more about how the organization is structured. Are incentives set up in such a way that the conflict cannot be resolved? For example, a chief technology officer might be tasked with reducing complexity and retiring legacy code, while a chief customer officer wants to maintain bespoke solutions for important clients. Their conflict might appear personal, but it’s actually about how success is defined for each of their roles. Especially in matrixed organizations, team members need to know who owns what—and where collaboration is expected. Review whether your org chart and incentive structures are forcing leaders into zero-sum dynamics, and develop alternate, shared metrics (such as “safe speed to market” for the example above). Model healthy conflict behaviors. Research shows that a team will default to the senior-most leader’s approach to conflict. So, if you tend to avoid conflict, or grow prickly when it appears, your team will too. Manage your own reactions to new ideas or problems surfaced in team discussions: Don’t overreact or focus on blame; critique ideas instead of people or personalities; and take new ideas or objections seriously. Ask questions and don’t hesitate to show your own vulnerability if you don’t know an answer. Remember: When people feel unheard or disrespected, they find other ways to express themselves, which often results in unhelpful behaviors. Get help. It’s lonely at the top—and CEOs are rightly wary of discussing team conflicts with other company leaders or the board. But when conflict gets toxic, you may need outside help. HR can clarify policies, mediate, or facilitate development, though this rarely works if HR itself doesn’t have an established and respected role as your right hand. External coaches can be brought in for behavior change, trust-building, or team resets. If things aren’t changing even with your interventions, know when to exit someone. Some leaders won’t or can’t change. Don’t sacrifice the team for one of its members. Go Deeper Why Leadership Teams Fail by Thomas Keil and Marianna Zangrillo HBR, September-October 2024 (14-minute read) How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight by Kathleen M. Eisenhardt, Jean L. Kahwajy and L.J. Bourgeois III HBR, July-August 1997 (20-minute read) How to Encourage the Right Kind of Conflict on Your Team by Amy Gallo HBR.org, February 3, 2025 (6-minute read) Case Study: When Two Senior Leaders On the Team Hate Each Other by Boris Groysberg and Katherine Connolly Baden HBR, January-February 2019 (12-minute read) Credits Expert advice courtesy of Amy Gallo (contributing editor to HBR, author of Getting Along and advisor and speaker on workplace dynamics), Ron Carucci (cofounder and managing partner at Navalent), Thomas Keil (professor and chair in international management at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and partner at the The Next Advisors), Rebecca Newton (organizational and social psychologist, senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the CEO of CoachAdviser), Marianna Zangrillo (partner at the The Next Advisors).

Managing Conflict on Your Executive Team

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