Things Leaders Do

Conflict IQ 101 – Why You Need It Yesterday

• Colby Morris

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Ever walked out of a meeting thinking everyone was aligned—only to realize the real conversation started in the hallway? That’s not alignment. That’s avoidance. And it’s killing your team’s potential.

In this kickoff episode of the Conflict IQ series, Colby Morris unpacks why most leaders get conflict wrong—and how you can build the intelligence to turn tension into trust. Drawing from research at Melbourne Business School, insights from Harvard Business Review, and Patrick Lencioni’s work on “healthy conflict,” this episode reframes conflict as a leadership superpower, not a liability.

You’ll discover:

  • Why avoiding conflict creates disengagement—not peace.
  • How Lencioni’s idea of “healthy conflict” changes everything about team dynamics.
  • The four dimensions of Conflict IQ and what they look like in practice.
  • Real-world stories of leaders who avoided conflict vs. those who leveraged it—and the very different outcomes they created.
  • A simple, three-step action plan (“Name it. Frame it. Close it.”) you can start using in your next meeting.

Conflict doesn’t have to be messy, personal, or destructive. Handled well, it’s the fire that forges stronger ideas, stronger teams, and stronger leaders.

Question for you: When was the last time you avoided conflict—and what did it really cost you?

If this episode resonates, share it with another leader who needs to rethink their relationship with conflict. For more tools on people-first leadership, visit nxtstepadvisors.com

Connect with Colby on LinkedIn
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Speaker 1:

People First. Leadership, actionable strategies, real results this is Things Leaders Do with Colby Morris.

Speaker 2:

Ever been in a meeting where everyone smiles, nods and says looks good, and then after the meeting, the real conversation starts in the hallway. You know exactly what I'm talking about, right? Susan from marketing suddenly has three major concerns she didn't even mention. Dave from operations is texting his boss about why this will never work and you're sitting there like wait. Didn't we just agree on this like 10 minutes ago? Yeah, that's not agreement, that's avoidance and it's killing your team's potential Faster than dial-up internet connection killed our patience in 1995.

Speaker 2:

Look, here's the hard truth. Most leaders aren't conflict intelligent. We either avoid it like it's a horror movie that we're just too scared to watch, or we just bulldoze through it. Both approaches destroy trust and they leave us wondering why our teams feel more like a group of strangers at a bus stop than a cohesive unit. Hey, leaders, I'm Colby Morris and this is Things Leaders Do, the podcast where we get real about leadership without the corporate buzzword. Bingo.

Speaker 2:

Today we're kicking off a mini-series on something I'll call Conflict IQ and why it's one of the most critical skills leaders need right now, not next quarter, not when you get around to it, but yesterday. Because here's what nobody tells you in leadership school Avoiding conflict doesn't make you a peacekeeper, it makes you a peace faker. So let's get real for a minute. Conflict has a bad reputation and, honestly, it earned it. Think about your earliest memories of a workplace conflict. Maybe it was that boss that turned every disagreement into a public execution. You know the type right. They'd call someone out in front of the whole team, voice getting louder that veins popping out, made everyone else shrink into their chairs like they were witnessing a car accident. Or maybe it was the executive who won, quote, unquote every argument through sheer intimidation. They didn't debate ideas, they steamrolled people. Disagreement wasn't discussion, it was insubordination.

Speaker 2:

So what happened to most of us? We went the complete opposite direction. We became these conflict refugees, fleeing to the land of everything's fine and setting up permanent residence there. You know what we did? We confused peace with health. We started believing that if nobody's arguing, everything is working is working. But here's the thing Silence in the room doesn't mean alignment, it means disengagement or worse, it means people have given up trying to make things better.

Speaker 2:

I learned this the hard way. Early in my career I had a team that literally never argued. They never pushed back, they never raised their voices. I thought I was a leadership genius, you know. Look how smooth everything runs, I'm telling myself, look how harmonious we are. Then our biggest project failed spectacularly, not because we didn't have the talent, not because we didn't have the resources, but because three different people saw problems coming up and never said a word. They didn't have the resources, but because three different people saw problems coming up and never said a word. They didn't want to create conflict.

Speaker 2:

Here's what the research tells us. Melbourne Business School identifies conflict intelligence as one of the most in-demand leadership skills for 2025. Yet Harvard Business Review found that, while 76% of organizations are experimenting with conflict management training because they know it's a problem, only about 40% of those leaders feel confident in their ability to handle it. That's a massive gap, and here's where it gets really expensive. Hbr also found that teams with poor conflict management have 23% lower psychological safety scores. Think about what that means. When people don't trust that they can disagree safely, they stop contributing their best ideas entirely. That gap shows up in different ways, like stalled projects, unresolved tension, teams that never hit their stride because they're too busy tiptoeing around that giant elephant in the room.

Speaker 2:

But, here's what's really crazy. We've created this, I guess, this false choice between toxic conflict and no conflict at all. It's like the only options we have are a Jerry Springer show or a library reading room. Look, there's a third option and that's where the magic happens. Patrick Lencioni nailed this in the Five Dysfunctions of a Team and, by the way, if you haven't read that book, may I highly recommend it. In it he puts fear of conflict right at the foundation of team dysfunction, not as a nice-to-have skill, but as a prerequisite for everything else that matters. Here's what Lencioni figured out that most of us miss. Teams that avoid conflict can't get to real commitment. Think about that If people aren't willing to voice their concerns or their doubts or different perspectives, how can they actually buy into the final decision? They can't. They just go along with it and then wonder why nothing sticks.

Speaker 2:

Lincione reframes conflict as healthy conflict. This is where the magic happens. He's not talking about fighting. He's not talking about personal attacks or storming out of the room. He's talking about rigorous debate, about ideas. He says.

Speaker 2:

When there's trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer. Do you hear that? The pursuit of truth. Not winning, not being right, not proving someone else wrong, but finding the best possible answer. That's the shift leaders need to make. Conflict isn't chaos, it's clarity, it's not destruction, it's construction. It's sharpening ideas until the best ones rise to the top, like cream in the coffee, except instead of coffee we're talking about solutions that actually work. Listen, I think about this like a blacksmith working with metal. You don't avoid the fire because it's hot. Right, you use the fire to make something stronger. Healthy conflict is the fire that forges better ideas and makes stronger teams and solutions that people will actually believe in. The difference between toxic conflict and healthy conflict is like the difference between a bar fight and a debate team One destroys, one builds, one leaves everyone bruised and one leaves everyone sharper. So what does conflict IQ actually look like in practice? Because it's not just about being comfortable with disagreement. Any teenager can disagree. It's about being strategic, intentional and skilled.

Speaker 2:

Well, first, there's awareness. You recognize conflict for what it is Energy that can be directed, not a threat to avoid. Most leaders miss this completely. They see tension and immediately think problem to solve instead of energy to harness. I remember working with a CEO. He could literally spot conflict from a mile away, but not in the way you'd think. He didn't wait for voices to raise or people to storm out. He could sense it in the pauses and the way people phrased their agreement and who wasn't speaking up. I swear he had conflict radar, all right.

Speaker 2:

The second is framing. You set the tone up front, and this is where most people fail. They either don't address it at all or they address it so poorly. The leaders who get this right say things like we're going to debate hard but we're going to walk out aligned, or something like I want you to disagree with me if you think I'm wrong. That's not disrespect, that's your job. And third are the tools. You know the room. This isn't accidental. It's tactical Questions like help me understand where you're coming from, or what would have to be true for your concern to be valid. These aren't just nice phrases, they're conflict navigation tools. And finally, there's follow-through. This is where good intentions go to die.

Speaker 2:

You don't leave conflict unresolved like some kind of leadership cliffhanger. You make a decision, you align and you move forward together. No loose ends, no unfinished business. No, we'll circle back to that later. That never happens. Think about the last time your team avoided conflict. Did that problem magically disappear, like it was David Copperfield working in Vegas? Or did it show up later, bigger, messier, harder to solve, like conflict, compound interest? Except, instead of building wealth, you're building resentment. Except, instead of building wealth, you're building resentment. Conflict IQ is about intercepting that pattern before it costs you. Trust money people, because it will cost you one of those three guaranteed All right.

Speaker 2:

I want to tell you about two leaders I worked with. Same industry, similar challenges, completely different approaches to conflict. The result Night and day. The first leader I'm going to call him Michael. Michael prided himself on keeping the peace. Meetings were smooth as butter. Nobody argued, everyone was polite, Everything looked fine from the outside. I mean, it was like a perfectly manicured lawn that you later discovered it was mostly weeds. Michael's team meetings followed the same pattern every time He'd present an idea, people would nod, maybe ask a few of those softball questions and everyone would leave quote-unquote, aligned. Except they weren't aligned, they were just quiet.

Speaker 2:

Six months into working with Michael, his top performer quit. Not just any employee, his absolute best, the person everyone else looked up to, the one who made everyone else better just by being there. When I asked her why she was leaving, she said something that stopped me cold. She said I'm tired of raising concerns that nobody wants to hear. I'm tired of being the only one who thinks we should actually solve problems instead of just smiling and hoping they go away. Michael had created a culture where conflict was so unwelcome that people stopped trying to make things better. They just showed up, did their jobs and saved their real thoughts for after-hours conversations that never led to change. Now I'm going to contrast that with another leader. I'm going to call her Sarah.

Speaker 2:

Sarah invited conflict like it was her favorite dinner guest. Every single strategy meeting started with something like okay, poke holes in this. Tell me what I'm missing. Convince me I'm wrong if you think I am. The first time I sat in on one of her meetings, I thought it was chaos. People were interrupting each other, challenging assumptions, pushing back on everything. It was loud, it was messy and it looked like exactly the kind of meeting most leaders try to avoid. But here's what I noticed Nobody was attacking people. They were attacking ideas. Nobody was getting personal, they were getting specific. And at the end of every meeting, something amazing happened they made a decision. Everyone understood their role and they walked out energized instead of exhausted. Sarah's retention rate Through the roof. Her team's performance no-transcript. The difference wasn't the people Both teams were talented. The difference wasn't the challenges they both faced similar obstacles. The difference was the leader's conflict IQ.

Speaker 2:

Michael treated conflict like kry this week and yes, I'm calling it homework, because this is school and the subject is leadership and the grade that matters is whether your team trusts you enough to tell you the truth. Next week, your next meeting, if you sense tension, say it out loud. Say something like I feel like we're not aligned here. Let's unpack that, or I'm sensing some hesitation. What are we not talking about? Just naming conflict lowers the temperature faster than jumping in a cold lake. Why? Because most conflict stays hot when it stays hidden. The moment you acknowledge it, you're going to transform it from that scary monster under the bed into a problem you can actually solve. And then second frame it Set the rules of engagement.

Speaker 2:

Before the engagement starts, try something like hey, we're debating ideas, not attacking people. Disagreement is how we get sharper, not how we tear each other down. I'd rather have a messy conversation now than a failed project later. Hey, this isn't just feel-good leadership. Speak. This is creating psychological safety so people can do their best thinking instead of their most cautious thinking. That was good, all right. Third, close it. Don't let conflict linger like that one friend who never knows when the party's over. End it with clarity. Here's what we decided. Here's who owns it. Here's where we'll check back in.

Speaker 2:

Unresolved conflict is it's like a splinter. It might not seem like a big deal at first, but it gets infected and causes problems way out of proportion to its original size. So here's my question for you as we wrap up today when was the last time you avoided conflict and what did it actually cost you? I don't mean what you told yourself it cost you. I mean what it really cost you. Maybe it was a project that failed because nobody wanted to point out the obvious flaws. Maybe it was a team member who checked out because they just felt unheard. Maybe it was an opportunity you missed because you were too busy managing around the tension instead of addressing it. Here's the truth I've learned after years of watching leaders rise and fall.

Speaker 2:

Conflict is not a leadership liability, it's a leadership superpower. When you can handle it well, develop your conflict IQ and you'll transform those tense moments from team killers into trust builders. The leaders who master this, they don't just have better meetings, they have better teams. They don't just avoid problems, they solve them faster. And they don't just keep the peace, they build something worth fighting for.

Speaker 2:

Next week, we're going to dive deeper into this, and I want you to know sometimes the most dangerous conflicts are the ones nobody's talking about yet. Hey, if you want more tools for people-first leadership that actually work in the real world, make sure to visit my website at nextstepadvisorscom. There's no E in next, just NXT. And if this episode helped you think differently about conflict, do me a favor and share it with another leader who needs to hear it. And, if you don't mind, give me a review and share it with another leader who needs to hear it. And, if you don't mind, give me a review wherever you listen to your podcast. That's how we help leaders get better. Get the word out so that more leaders will lead better faster. Again, thank you for listening to the TLD podcast. I'm Colby Morris, facing conflict with courage, turning tension into trust and building stronger teams. And you know why? Because those are the things that leaders do.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to Things Leaders Do. If you're looking for more tips on how to be a better leader, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and listen to next week's episode. Until next time, keep working on being a better leader by doing the things that leaders do.