Conflicts are inevitable in teams, but courageous conversations can transform these tensions into opportunities for growth and improved performance. By understanding and addressing the natural tensions that arise in teamwork, we can foster deeper relationships and achieve better results. This article explores the power of courageous conversations and provides practical strategies for creating a safe space where these essential dialogues can take place.
This insight is structured around these five key take aways:
- Tensions are natural: Conflicts are a normal part of teamwork and should be surfaced, understood, and worked through together to help people grow within their relationships and realize better results. Calling conflicts ‘natural tensions’ reduces the threatening emotional link people may experience to ‘conflict’.
- Three different types of tensions require different approaches: 1. Task conflicts enhance creativity, breakthroughs, decision making and results. 2. Process conflict helps to set work standards. 3. Relationship conflict is a conflict between people personally and should be minimized to maintain team trust and performance.
- Courage to be vulnerable: Speaking from the heart requires understanding your own vulnerabilities, which are crucial for connecting with others during courageous conversations.
- Feel and connect: Facilitating your own feelings about conflict and being curious about others' feelings helps to inform vulnerability and connection during conflicts.
- Create a safe space: Establish a safe physical, mental, and emotional environment for courageous conversations, starting with a positive mindset and assuming good intent, to foster understanding and growth in relationships.
In this insight on Courageous conversations, we explore the natural tensions present in teams working together. We will use the words ‘conflict’ and ‘tension’ alternately. For many people, conflict is an emotionally loaded term, linked to negative experiences, they have had in the past. Natural tensions point to the normality of conflicts present in every team. They hold the key to deepened relationships and better performance, if people choose to surface, understand and work the differences that underly these tensions. Courageous conversations require a safe space. We will look at how you can create that. But too often ‘safety’ is now used as an excuse not to have the courageous conversations teams need. Many teams and organizations have been paralyzed by the concept of ‘psychological safety’. Safety in teams is hugely important in order to have unsafe conversations. But some things in life are inherently unsafe such as getting results in the workplace. Results, performance and objectives must be a critical part of real courageous conversations. They form the unsafety that is naturally present in teamwork. Let us not look away or shy away but step up as a team and explore the natural tensions.
“Creating a safe space for unsafe conversations”
Not all conflicts are alike
In academic research three different types of conflict are distinguished: task, process and relationship conflicts. A task -or content- conflict is a disagreement about work content based on different interests and perceptions. A process conflict results from logistics, scheduling, and planning how work gets done. Process conflicts help the team to set work standards and agree on final delivery. Relationship conflicts are interpersonal incompatibilities, misunderstandings and fall outs. They result from interpersonal differences and a lack of empathy. Relationship conflict hurts team trust, communication, and ultimately team performance.
Tasks conflicts are vital for the creativity and results of the team. Breakthrough ideas stem from robust disagreement, team members pushing boundaries, not taking limitations for granted and relentless work and battle to make things better. In every team there are natural tensions: Marketing wants to design new products, while IT wants to reduce the number of products and remove them from the systems. Customer service wants to invest to provide better service, but finance wants to cut costs. It is important here not to problem solve the tension but work the tension. The question is: how can you get the best out of both interests: How do we design new products that are well supported by IT AND how do we reduce the total number of products? How do we improve customer service AND save costs at the same time? Good teams know their natural tensions and work these tensions regularly. They nourish their task conflicts in a safe team setting.
In teams with healthy relationships, but little experience using conflict to improve their results, we often start to explain our view on courageous conversations. We get a team to practice with conflicts that they have no personal interest in, so they can focus on the dynamics, getting to know themselves and others better in conflict. Thomas Killman’s: Managing Conflict Styles can be an insightful tool for self-reflection and feedback from other team members. (see paragraph: Facilitating emotional connection).They practice expressing needs and giving feedback. They learn how to empathize with others interests whilst maintaining focus on promoting and defending their own ideas.
Process conflicts help the team to set work standards and agree on final delivery. For example: Theo is a creative person who does everything at the last minute. Amin likes structure and wants to follow a planning to be ready on time. This process conflict is a tension between spontaneity/creativity and structure. That is a matter of personal preference, but also a working method in organizations. Teams that set firm work standards, meeting structures and work processes create clarity within which people can be creative and flourish. The power is the consistency and continuity of these agreements. So, it is vital for each team to set up work standards, structures and processes and stick to these, then review after some time. It does not help to change processes too often.
Another example: The CEO wants an in-depth discussion about the new values in a small group of leaders. The HR director wants to involve everyone in the culture process. Bottom up versus top down is a classic process conflict that requires regular discussion. Intelligent solutions use the best of both approaches: You want to involve the best of everyone AND the depth and speed of good conversation in a small group.
Towards the end of a project: process questions emerge about the final delivery of a project. How to close, how to present, how to include last minute updates and changes. Process conflict is valuable at the beginning and end of a team’s work. Changes in team composition are a natural moment to review work standards, processes and structures. Once you choose to change processes, start with small changes and see whether these new team habits work. We have also seen teams walk away with an entire new meeting structure, agenda and big intentions. It is too much to handle. Within three weeks they had returned to their old habits. It takes focus, energy and stamina to change small team habits.
“Allow process conflict: at the beginning & end”
Relationship conflicts are the conflicts people rightfully fear. Many of us have experienced conflicts that took a team downhill, because people didn’t get on together. Spending time to get to know each other early on, is therefore a valuable investment. Slowing down to speed up later. If you know each others strengths & weaknesses, drivers, preferences and personal values, it is much easier to build understanding and appreciation for personal differences at the beginning, rather than after a team derailed completely. It destroys value, reputations and it is costly, if repairs require people to be re-energized, relocated, or removed.
For example: Jacinda is good at promoting her own ideas and never encounters resistance from Frederic, who likes to maintain harmony in the team. If this does not get talked about Frederic may easily think that Jacinda is selfish and arrogant, just pursuing her own interest. Jacinda can start to think that Frederic does not have an opinion and is not committed.
Lynn, who is new in the team starts to make a lot of jokes out of insecurity joining the new team and her want to be liked. If these jokes do not resonate with the team, she might start to feel disliked, alone and become increasingly elusive and antagonize more and more people. If these personal preferences would have been explained early on, then Jacinda would listen more, Frederic would use Jacinda’s invitation to share his different views. Lynn would use more productive ways to ask for help during onboarding. These dynamics don’t change much between the work floor and the top floor. At the top floor the messages maybe somewhat more concealed, making it just more difficult and important to address.
So, tensions are natural in relationships and teams. Content and process conflicts need to be nurtured and used to get the best and most creative ideas to flourish and develop the best work processes for the team. If that happens in a safe team setting focused on collaboration and results for the team instead of winning and personal interests, these conflicts are vital to team success.
“Conflicts provide a tool for differentiation, to let people breathe and grow inside their relationship”
- Esther Perel
The Courage to Be Vulnerable
In courageous conversations there is something at stake for all people involved. Courage comes from French: ‘to speak from your heart’. In Dutch: ‘openhartige gesprekken’. It means that how you feel about something is as important as how you think about the topic. Even with topics that seem to be 100% content driven and therefore a pure matter of the brain. In courageous conversations there is always something at stake: desires that can get fulfilled or not, needs that are listened to or rejected, and boundaries that are respected or not. But like Brené Brown said: “everyone wants to be courageous; no one wants to be vulnerable”. This is probably most true in the workplace, where we tend to rationalize to such an extent that tensions seem to be entirely impersonal. We prefer to talk about FTE’s when it comes to reorganization. Job profiles become important, if we struggle to hold someone accountable. In the world of work there are continuous attempts to separate the personal and professional. While we know deep down that we are avoiding something, it seems easier to talk about ‘letting go 3 FTE’ instead of the four people with their full names with whom you might have worked together in the past. The job profile shows the boundary between you and the person you are having a tough conversation with. The Service Level Agreement becomes important, if parties have lost the spirit to fix it together. Starting the ‘who is responsible?’ question, could start the blame game, so the formal agreement can be a useful document to fall back on. The FTE’s, job profiles and SLAs are all helpful tools to objectify our messy reality, but they don’t replace a courageous conversation. The more resistant a conflict is to being resolved, the more likely it is that there all sorts of emotions attached. Emotions are the hidden gem and the key to reconciling tensions or navigating conflict: can you come out from behind your job profile, reorganization plan or Service level agreement and speak from your heart: talk about how you are emotionally attached to the topic. There is a great connecting power in sharing how you feel about something.
“Everyone wants to be courageous; no one wants to be vulnerable”
- Brené Brown
In one of the leadership teams we worked with, a deep relational conflict had developed. It concentrated on one team member: Daniel who had created the impression to be in there for his own interest. He battled hard on every topic to an extent that other team members withdrew or tiptoed around him. We discovered in our interviews beforehand that three team members considered resigning. Daniel felt under pressure to defend himself, talked at length in his interview about others who dropped the ball and how he always had to fill the gaps and fight the battles with their laid-back manager. We started the team offsite with a check in around feelings and expectations. The check ins of most team members were hopeful and a bit skeptical: “I hope we get to the bottom of things this time. We have tried this several times before and it did not work”. A sense of sadness and frustration filled the room several times. Daniel was the last to speak. He picked up his lap top and started searching the words he had prepared for the start. I invited him to put his laptop down and speak from his heart. The moment he did, he turned emotional and was in tears. The tears, silence and the ill-formed sentences reconnected him right away to the rest of the team. The breakthrough happened because he was invited to shift from his mind to his heart.
Facilitating Emotional Connection
Daniel needed a facilitator intervention to speak from his heart. When he did, he reconnected with his team members in a conflict situation. For many people in the business world and especially men, it is not easy to connect to how they feel, let alone in courageous conversations. It can be a journey of discovery to learn to physically and emotionally feel what is going on in courageous conversations. You need to know what feeling a conflict is causing in you: anxiety, anger, sadness, worry, impulsiveness, contempt? Once you know how you feel and what the source is of your feelings, you can change your default behavior in conflict situations.
K.W. Thomas & R.H. Killmann described five different conflict management styles in their ThomasKillmann conflict Inventory TKI model. The first four styles: avoiding, accommodating, competing and compromising can be called ‘default’ behaviors. We return to our ‘default’ or old behaviors under pressure when the heat is on, typically in conflicts. We don’t bring out our best at that moment. That can lead to suboptimal results as you can see in the figure: Conflict strategies.
The styles are self-explanatory. We have learnt to find our natural (default) way in conflicts based on our personality and our (early) life experiences. In some conflict situations the default style is good enough. It has clearly worked successfully in the past and still many conflicts get resolved wisely through avoiding, accommodating, competing and compromising. For courageous conversations you need to be able to navigate your way with both axis beyond your default style: the ability to stand up for your interests and ideas (assertiveness) AND the ability to get along with others (cooperativeness). The two axes form a natural tension. The most basic leadership tension. If you are naturally good at asserting your own ideas and interests, you are likely to be challenged in getting along with others and vice versa. Courageous conversations require assertiveness AND cooperativeness. Few people have developed their assertiveness and cooperativeness to the extent that they can use both simultaneously in a collaborative style under pressure. The vast majority prefers one axis over the other. Once you know your preferences and your feelings especially under stress, you can learn to move beyond your default style to what you need in the courageous conversation.
For instance: Khalid knows he feels anxiety when a conversation gets heated, and his default behavior under pressure is to avoid conflict. He can prepare for a heated courageous conversation. Once he learns to manage his anxiety, he can move beyond his default (avoiding or compromising) in conflicts. Deborah’s tendency is to verbally steamroll people. She is extraverted, highly assertive and low on agreeableness. As a child she learned to fight when she was bullyied. She still fights when she feels she is being attacked. Now that she knows how to distinguish between a task, process and relationship conflict, she takes things less personally. When she is triggered, she asks herself: is there a real threat in the here and now, or is this an old default reflex of mine? When she perceives a relationship conflict, she now knows she needs to sleep over it and talk it through with her partner. She has learned that the real win is a win-win with the person she is in conflict with.
So, feelings and the source of these feelings are valuable information in conflicts. These feelings inform where you are vulnerable in a conflict and what it takes to be on your best behavior rather than your default.
In the workplace a couple of practices support the facilitation of emotional connection:
- Do an emotional check-in. Ask people how they’re feeling and if they’re in the right mindset to engage before diving into a hard discussion topic.
- In the moment, if emotions are running high, it can help to recognize and name the emotions in the room—whether it’s anxiety, frustration, sadness, or excitement. This reduces the intensity of emotions and helps everyone to stay grounded.
- Practice compassion: Be mindful of the emotional impact of your words and actions. Approach the conversation with kindness and empathy, acknowledging that everyone is human.
Reflective questions about your courageous conversations practice
- What is your default conflict style?
- What are benefits of this style?
- What do I tend to avoid or ignore?
- Where am I holding back from advocating my own needs or setting my own boundaries?
- What is one courageous conversation I need to have but have been avoiding?
Care to Dare
This paragraph is inspired by the work of George Kohlrieser. He coined the term: ‘care to dare’. In his early work as a hostage negotiator, he describes how he always needed to build a relationship first with the hostage taker, before he could do anything to liberate the hostages. Everyone wants to be seen, recognized and loved. Now it may be difficult to love a hostage taker. However, you can show in a first encounter that you see the hostage taker as a person. The hostage taker has a reason to turn to such a dramatic and threatening act. It is always a cry for help as much as a violent act. In all courageous conversations there is another person as your counterpart. Apply Covey’s 5th principle: seek to understand before being understood. Use your heart, eye and ear to truly listen: Good listeners summarize what they've heard and how their counterpart feels. They thank their counterpart for their contribution. Even if that contribution is diametrically opposite to your own interests or needs. At least, now you know where (s)he stands, what (s)he thinks and feels.
While listening, focus your intent positively to view conflict and criticism as an opportunity to grow in the relationship. This part of a growth mindset is the hardest to embrace in deep seated conflict, especially if it is personal. Simultaneously your own mind is the biggest hostage taker of all. We all get caught up in our own assumptions, convictions and judgements. We feel we are right and the other one is wrong. We can learn to postpone judgement and stay relaxed while acknowledging your counterpart’s viewpoint and feelings. Breathe and relax into your unpleasant feelings, opposing views and criticism. The Covey institute’s advice to truly connect in difficult conversations is: 1. Pause (don’t panic), 2. Observe (don’t judge) 3. Ask (don’t assume). Your body language can support your openness: uncrossed arms, relaxed body, and making eye contact, all signal you are engaged.
In our practice with teams we experience a lot of positive energy at the start of a team development workshop in an exercise to strengthen connections. The ‘Trust Marketplace’ requires that all team members engage with each other one-to-one for three minutes and exchange either one of the following five options: 1. gossip positively about another team member, 2. Ask for some real help, 3. Ask for feedback on a specific encounter with the other person, 4. Say sorry for an upset with the other person, or give a 15 second hug to release positives endorphins. Notice the increasing intimacy of the 5 options so it is accessible for all relationships in all shapes you can imagine. As 3 – 6 speed dates happen at the same time, you create a buzz, positive intent and investment in caring for relationships. The more care builds, the more ‘dare’ becomes possible.
Benefits of Courageous Conversations
Courageous conversations keep relationships clean and deepening. “You can change your life, one conversation at a time”, Susan Scott says in Fierce conversations. In organizations courageous conversations have transformative power. These conversations ensure that energy loss is low, because toxic behavior is prevented or addressed. If not addressed valuable task conflicts might deteriorate into process conflict. These conflicts become more personal as as neglected process conflicts turn into relationship conflict. This is the kind of conflict you wanted to avoid at all costs. Relationship conflicts show toxicity through signs of contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling. Collaboration comes to a standstill. That damages team performance and company culture. John and Julie Gottman studied over 40,000 couples in their intimate personal relationships. They predict the odds of divorce with 94% accuracy after more than 30 years research. The indicators of divorce are the levels of toxicity (contempt, criticism, defensiveness and stonewalling). With contempt leaving the heaviest negative imprint on the relationship.
“You can change your life, one conversation at a time”
- Susan Scott
More importantly they discovered what leads long term relationships to thrive. They see long term couples apply a 5 – 1 ratio for appreciation & criticism. Couples that nurture their relationship turn toward one another 86% over 33% of time for quitters. They turn toward each other with their needs, requests for help and to say sorry. These partners also realize that most relationship conflicts don’t change much over time. Therefore, partners learn to live with their differences taking themselves less seriously and taking the other viewpoint into account when deciding on common issues. They use their differences to make the best out of the struggles they encounter. The Gottman’s found that most couples fight about the same things over and over again and they still do five years later. That is similar to relationships at work, but here team members often don’t know each other that well or that long. In our practice we have seen the same toxic dynamics in work teams as the Gottman’s did in their couples’ studies. Their material is used widely with work teams to increase their understanding of toxic team behaviors. In team sessions where the topic is addressed lighthearted and clear, it helps team members to own up to these toxic behaviors, understand the patterns in the team and learn to use antidotes to the toxins. Hereby, they literally clean up relationships and culture in the team through courageous conversations.
In conclusion, courageous conversations keep relationships in teams healthy. By embracing vulnerability, fostering a safe environment, and addressing conflicts head-on, teams can unlock their full potential and achieve unimaginable results. Each courageous conversation is a step towards a more collaborative and high-performing team. Let's not shy away from these essential dialogues but rather embrace them as opportunities for growth and connection.”
Reflective questions about your teams’ courageous conversations practice
- Do we have courageous conversations regularly?
- What is the quality of these conversations: does it lead to better outcomes (different decisions, innovation, breakthroughs) and deepened relationships?
- What is my assessment of the team’s capability to have courageous conversations?
- What does my team need to have more (valuable) courageous conversations?
Bibliography
- Brené Brown (2019) Dare to lead, brave work, tough conversations, whole hearts
- Covey Institute (2025) Navigating difficult conversations (video)
- Amy Edmondson (2018) The fearless organization
- Daniel Goleman (2011) Leadership: the power of Emotional Intelligence
- John & Julie Gottman (2024) Fight right
- George Kohlrieser (2012) Care to dare, Unleashing Astonishing Potential Through Secure Base Leadership
- George Kohlrieser (2006) Hostage at the table
- Esther Perel (2017) The state of affairs
- Susan Scott (2017, 2022) Fierce conversations, Fierce love
- Fons Trompenaars (2020) Riding the waves of culture, understanding diversity in global business
- Anna Wise (1996) High-performance mind
