27 August 2026
Managing Conflict: Why Avoiding It Usually Makes Things Worse
By
Kate Waterfall Hill
Conflict has a curious reputation in leadership.
Most leaders would rather avoid it if they can. Difficult conversations feel unpredictable. One meeting can feel capable of damaging a relationship, creating tension or turning an already busy week into something considerably harder.
So the conversation gets postponed.
It can wait until things are calmer. Until everyone is less busy. Until the next one-to-one. Until there is a better moment, which has a remarkable habit of becoming a moment that never quite arrives.
Occasionally it does. More often, it becomes more complicated. What starts as a small misunderstanding gradually becomes frustration. People begin making assumptions about one another's intentions. Conversations become shorter. Collaboration becomes harder. Before long, the original issue is only part of the problem. The real difficulty is everything that has built up around it.
If you’d prefer to listen, this topic is also explored in the Summer Season podcast episode on Managing Conflict.
I've spent years watching thoughtful, capable leaders avoid conversations they know they probably need to have. Most aren’t avoiding conflict because they don’t care. Usually, it’s the opposite. They care about relationships, they want to be fair and they don’t want to create unnecessary tension.
Ironically, avoidance often creates exactly the atmosphere they're trying to prevent.
Linda, naturally, has her own approach. If two people in her team aren't getting along, she leaves them to "work it out between themselves". If someone repeatedly misses a deadline or undermines a colleague in meetings, she tells herself they're all adults and hopes they'll sort it out eventually. Three months later, Susan and Dave haven't spoken directly since Easter, every project has become an elaborate game of communication-by-proxy, and half the office has developed their own view on who is “right”.
Linda still insists she's avoiding conflict. The rest of the team would probably describe it differently.
Most workplace conflict doesn’t arrive wearing a name badge saying “official conflict”. It tends to arrive looking much more innocent: a missed deadline, a slightly awkward meeting, an email that is technically polite but somehow manages to make everyone’s shoulders rise a little. More often, it begins with something much smaller: a gap between what someone expected and what they experienced.
A report was expected on Friday. Monday arrives, and it still isn’t there. A leader believes they’ve communicated a clear priority. Their team understands something completely different. Two departments assume they’re working towards the same outcome, only to discover halfway through a project that they’ve been measuring success differently.
None of these situations begins with an argument. They begin with expectations drifting apart. And once that gap appears, frustration has a habit of filling the space.
One of the biggest misconceptions about conflict is that disagreement means something has gone wrong. Sometimes it does highlight an issue that needs addressing. But often, disagreement simply means people are looking at the same situation from different perspectives.
That’s not necessarily a problem.
In fact, teams that never challenge each other should probably make leaders slightly nervous. When everyone agrees all the time, it’s easy to miss risks, overlook better approaches or continue with assumptions that have never really been tested. The strongest teams I’ve worked with aren’t conflict-free. They’re teams where people feel able to challenge ideas without feeling they’re challenging the person behind them, and that distinction matters.
Conflict becomes difficult when disagreement starts to feel personal. Someone who questions a decision can begin to feel as though they’re questioning your leadership. Someone missing a deadline can quickly become “they’re unreliable”. Someone pushing back on an idea can become “they’re difficult”. But behaviour and intention are not the same thing.
One of the most useful shifts leaders can make is moving from judgement to curiosity. Instead of asking:
“Why are they being difficult?”
Try asking:
“What might they be seeing that I’m not?”
That doesn’t mean avoiding accountability. It doesn’t mean accepting every explanation or lowering standards. It simply means recognising that most situations are more complicated than they first appear.
A missed deadline might reflect poor ownership. It might also reflect unclear priorities, competing demands or assumptions that were never discussed. (Although occasionally, of course, it is simply someone missing a deadline. Leadership does occasionally require us to acknowledge that possibility too.) A team member challenging a proposal might be resisting change. Or they might be identifying a risk that hasn’t been considered. Curiosity gives you better information before you decide what needs to happen next.
The same applies when you’re having the conversation itself. The aim isn’t to prove who is right. It’s to understand what has happened, what needs to change and how both people can move forward. A useful question is:
“How do we solve this together?”
That changes the dynamic. It moves the conversation away from “me versus you” and towards “both of us versus the problem”.
The language we use matters here too. This is where phrases like “Can I give you some feedback?” become interesting. For some people, those words are simply the beginning of a useful conversation. For others, they trigger an immediate internal review of every decision they’ve made since joining the company.
Statements like:
“You always miss deadlines.”
“You never listen.”
“You’re not committed.”
rarely create useful conversations. They ask someone to defend themselves.
A more productive approach is to describe what you’ve observed:
“I noticed the report wasn’t ready when we agreed.”
“I’ve seen this happen a few times recently.”
“Can we talk about what’s getting in the way?”
The conversation becomes about something specific rather than a judgement about someone’s character.
Strong leaders also know that managing conflict is easier when they don’t wait until things have become a problem. Regular check-ins, clear expectations and open conversations about how a team works together prevent many issues from escalating.
The healthiest teams aren’t the ones where everyone gets along perfectly all the time. They’re the ones where people trust that disagreements can be handled well. That trust comes from watching their leader do the same thing repeatedly. Asking questions before making assumptions. Listening before responding. Being willing to have the conversation others might avoid.
After more than 30 years working with leaders, I’ve become convinced that confidence with conflict doesn’t come from finding the perfect words. It comes from learning to stay present when things feel uncomfortable, rather than deciding the best leadership response is to become extremely busy until the problem disappears.
Because leadership isn’t about removing every difficult moment. It’s about creating the conditions where people can work through them well.
If you’re finding yourself avoiding conversations you know you need to have, or you’re trying to build a team where challenge and accountability work alongside trust, that’s exactly the kind of leadership work we explore inside The Leadership Accelerator.
You'll also find more practical leadership insights, together with the How to Lead podcast and other resources, at waterfallhill.co.uk.
