Mike Pelfini — 03 July 2026

Teams that learn to disagree without personal animosity achieve better results and have stronger relationships than their peers. Leaders set the tone to encourage healthy conflict.

What is healthy conflict?

Healthy conflict can be characterized as an interchange of competing ideas based on principles rather than personalities. It is marked by productive disagreement that allows assumptions to be challenged, logic to be tested, and conclusions to be examined and evaluated.

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Some leaders worry about the impact of friction and conflict on their teams. But a lack of conflict isn’t always a positive sign. It can mean that team members are disengaged, not in agreement.

In a classic Harvard Business Review article on creative friction in technology companies, the authors write: “Indeed, we found that the alternative to [healthy] conflict is usually not agreement but apathy and disengagement.” 

The results of this conflict avoidance show up in the bottom line. According to the authors: “Teams unable to foster substantive conflict ultimately achieve, on average, lower performance.” There will be more about this article in a bit.

Studies published in the European Journal of Social Psychology and the Academy of Management Journal have also found that better decision making and more creative solutions come from teams whose members are encouraged to debate and who feel safe disagreeing with each other.

Author Amy Gallo also observes: “By working through conflict together, you’ll feel closer to the people around you and gain a better understanding of what matters to them and how they prefer to work.”

Gallo agrees that healthy conflict improves decision making, writing: “When you and your coworkers push one another to continually ask if there’s a better approach, that creative friction is likely to lead to new solutions.” 

In this article, we examine what leaders can do to promote healthy conflict and we point to some actions that successful teams take to avoid veering into unhealthy territory.

How can leaders encourage healthy conflict?

Amy Gallo, author of the HBR Guide to Dealing with Conflict, writes in a 2025 article that leaders need to take specific steps to encourage healthy conflict and creative friction.

Say it’s OK to disagree. The first step is to remind your team that disagreements are normal. Gallo writes: “It’s critical that you are explicit that you expect people to disagree and that’s not a problem to solve but an opportunity to seize.” In other words, set the expectation that people not only can, but should ask questions, challenge assumptions, and critique proposed solutions.

Establish ground rules. Leaders need to establish ground rules for productive discussion. The article suggests three rules to keep discussions positive:

1. “We communicate openly, say what we mean, and mean what we say.” Everyone’s ideas, opinions, and contributions matter. People should be encouraged to speak freely, but respectfully, to each other.
2. “We focus on the issues.” The team focuses on problems or ideas, not on personalities. Competing ideas should not be linked to individuals, which can lead to hurt feelings and resentment.
3. “We respect different perspectives.” Different viewpoints are needed to achieve the best solutions. All team members should be encouraged to step out of their comfort zones and think outside of the box.

Finally, model the behavior you want to see. The single best thing a leader can do is to model the behavior they want to see among their team members. Most importantly in this context, leaders should stay calm and at ease when friction and disputes arise.

As Gallo writes, “A leader’s whisper is heard as a shout.” If the leader’s words – or actions – betray impatience, exasperation, or anger when a debate arises, team members will take that to heart and filter or even mute their engagement in the discussion.

If the leader is calm and confident in guiding the discussion in a positive way, the team will be more willing to discuss, debate, and disagree within these positive boundaries. When necessary, the leader should feel comfortable guiding the discussion back to the issues. Practicing emotional regulation can help in these situations.

How do teams manage healthy conflict?

In 1997, during the lead-up to the “dot com” boom, three university business professors and researchers teamed up to write  How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight, published by the Harvard Business Review.  It examines how the top management teams in twelve technology companies handled friction, disagreement, and conflict, and continues to be referenced, studied, and holds relevance today.

The twelve companies fell into three distinct groups of four:

1. The first group experienced little disagreement or conflict. On average, it achieved lower performance levels than the other two groups.
2. The second group handled conflict in a way that avoided interpersonal hostility. It achieved higher performance while boosting morale and engagement.
3.   The third group could not avoid hostility. It achieved some successes but suffered from poor morale, burnout, and attrition.

The teams that managed conflict successfully shared six strategies in common. Each team employed ALL SIX of these strategies, which developed within these teams “implicitly” and by “instinct” among team members.  These are the six strategies:

Strategy #1.  Work with information, debate facts: The successful teams worked with more information and debated on the basis of facts. They regularly sought out objective, up-to-date business data, and encouraged people to focus on issues, not personalities.

The teams that experienced high conflict were often poorly informed. They relied on extrapolation from past events and made intuitive attempts to predict the future. They collected data selectively and infrequently. The authors conclude: “There is a direct link between reliance on facts and low levels of interpersonal conflict.”

Strategy #2.  Multiply the alternatives: The successful teams multiplied the alternatives being considered rather than focusing on one or two. Four or five options were often under discussion at the same time. To generate debate, team members even introduced ideas they didn’t support.

The high conflict teams typically only focused on one or two options, which often became identified with their proponents. The result was personal hostility, resentment, and a tendency to fracture into cliques. This narrowed focus also discouraged new ideas and stifled creative problem solving.

Strategy #3.  Common goals and a shared vision: The successful teams shared broad common goals. They framed decisions as collaborations in which everyone was trying to achieve the best collective result. This strategy relied on heterogeneous thinking, and still resulted in a shared vision.

The high conflict teams tended to see themselves in competition with one another. They often framed decisions as reactions to threats or as a zero-sum game in which one person’s gain became another person’s loss. 

Strategy #4.  Humor relieves tension: The successful teams made efforts to relieve tension and promote collaboration by “making their business fun.” They used humor to build camaraderie on the job, even if that humor occasionally resulted in  groans instead of laughter.

Humor was “strikingly absent” from the high conflict teams. Pairs of executives were sometimes friends but there were few efforts to create cohesiveness beyond a “standard holiday party.” The climate was hostile and tense.

Strategy #5.  Balancing the power structure. The successful teams were neither autocratic nor weak. In practice, that meant the CEO had the most power, but each team member had substantial power in their area of responsibility. Team members were willing to accept decisions, even when they disagreed, because they felt they had a voice in the process.

The high conflict teams had either autocratic or weak leadership. Autocratic leaders skewed the process toward their own goals, causing jealousy and resentment. Weak leadership led to power vacuums. Team members competed with each other for influence, which led to more conflict.

Strategy #6.  Avoiding forced consensus: Successful teams may have tried to reach full consensus when making decisions, but they didn’t rely on it. Instead, they used what the authors call “consensus with qualification.” First, the team discussed the issue and tried to reach consensus. If they couldn’t, the “most relevant senior manager” made the decision, guided by input from the group.

Sometimes “forcing consensus” caused haggling, delays and interpersonal conflict as members jockeyed for influence. In some cases, a looming deadline forced a last minute, unilateral decision that had little support from the executive team.

Encouraging healthy, unfiltered conflict around ideas can keep teams engaged and promote creative problem solving. If you would like to learn more, please contact us.

About ForeMeta

ForeMeta prepares leaders for breakthrough transformation. Founded by leadership coach and Vistage Chair Dr. Mike Pelfini, ForeMeta focuses on the people who make the decisions—helping CEOs and leaders of small to mid-sized companies from all sectors to deepen their self-leadership, clarify their why, and expand their capacity to lead. 

Through 1:1 executive coaching and thoughtfully facilitated peer groups, ForeMeta helps leaders create new possibilities and more fulfilling results for themselves, their organizations, and their communities.

©Mike Pelfini 2026, all rights reserved.