The most dangerous leadership conflicts are the unspoken ones

By Sandra Oliver, Impact Founder

I wrote recently about how much tension we’re seeing in teams right now. The pace of change is relentless, and at the same time leaders are operating under more pressure than usual. People are tired, decisions feel harder, and communication is more easily misunderstood. It creates an environment where conflict, which is always present in leadership teams, can feel more personal and more difficult to repair.

There’s a particular version of this I’m seeing more often: the small senior team where relationships carry a lot of emotional weight. This is especially true in partnerships, founder-led firms, investment firms, professional services firms, and other organizations where a small number of senior people have built something together over many years.

That’s because these relationships aren’t just work relationships – they’re tied to ownership, identity, reputation, money, history, loyalty, status, and control. So when the dynamic becomes difficult, it can be extremely painful.

Very senior people often suffer quietly in these situations. We may be running successful businesses, leading large teams, managing clients, and making high-stakes decisions, while also feeling anxious, angry, dismissed, blamed, or exhausted.

Because we’re senior, we may feel we should be able to handle it. Or we may be embarrassed by how much the relationship affects us.

But of course it affects us. These relationships matter. And when the relationships at the top are strained, everyone in the organization feels it.

In a small team, the system matters

While a leadership team isn’t a family, Family Systems Theory gives us useful language for what can happen in small, emotionally connected groups. The main idea is that the behaviour of each member of the group affects the others, and over time the group creates patterns, for example:

• One person becomes more controlling, so another person withdraws.
• One person withdraws, so another person becomes more forceful.
• One person avoids conflict, so another person escalates.
• One person feels blamed, so they defend themselves.
• One person feels dismissed, so they go around the relationship and talk to someone else.

Soon the issue isn’t one difficult conversation, it’s a pattern that everyone reacts to even if we don’t fully see it.

This doesn’t mean all behaviour is equal, nor does it excuse volatility, intimidation, avoidance, contempt, or undermining. Those behaviours have real consequences.

But a systemic lens helps us ask questions that create more room for change. Rather than, “Who is the problem?”, we can consider: “What pattern are we now caught in, and how is each person contributing to perpetuating it?”

Conflict can deepen relationships, but only when there’s enough trust

A good, honest, heated discussion can build trust if the foundation is solid. When two people are able to disagree directly and still respect each other, the relationship often becomes stronger.

That’s one of the benefits of a strong senior team. People can take on the hard issues, challenge each other, disagree, and still keep leading together.

But when trust is low, conflict can feel threatening, triggering defensiveness, withdrawal, or an attempt to control the conversation. Then people stop debating the business issue and start protecting themselves.

This is why telling people to “just have the conversation” is often not enough. In a strained senior relationship, the conversation needs more structure – not to force closeness, but to create enough safety and clarity so people can function together again.

Define the relationship we need to lead the firm well

One mistake we make as leaders in these situations is aiming for the wrong goal. We may want the relationship to feel like it used to or for the other person to finally understand us. We may want an apology, acknowledgement, closeness, loyalty, or respect.

Those are very human wants, and sometimes they’re possible. But in a senior team, especially a partnership, the first question should be more practical: What kind of relationship do we need in order to lead the firm well?

Next, we can get very clear on other important issues, like:

• What decisions do we need to make together?
• Where do we each have authority?
• What information must be shared?
• How will we handle disagreement?
• What behaviour is not acceptable?
• What will we do when we get stuck?
• How will we prevent the rest of the firm from being pulled into our tension?

This kind of clarity may sound basic, but when trust is low, a missed meeting, delayed response, side conversation, or a change in tone can all become evidence in a story someone is already telling themselves.

Having a defined process that everyone has contributed to helps reduce interpretation and gives the relationship something sturdier to stand on while we rebuild trust. And that’s where the real work happens.

In part two of this series, we’ll look at:

• Why we should start looking inward before bringing everyone together.
• A better way to define success.
• Three questions to ask before the next hard conversation.