When conflict disappears, so does commitment
Why effort, relationships, and real conversation matter now, more than ever
By Yasemin Eriskon, Project and Operations Coordinator; Antoine Laganiere, Coach; and Sandra Oliver, Founder, Impact Coaches
Organizations aren’t having the right conversations to build the right workplaces. At Impact, our team spans generations – from Boomers to Millennials to Gen Z. Recently, three of us sat down to talk about a pattern we’re seeing across organizations of all sizes: dialogue is disappearing from work, and with it, trust, commitment, and healthy culture.
What emerged wasn’t a simple “generational divide,” but something more nuanced. Across generations, we’re seeing and hearing from leaders about people pulling back from conflict and challenging conversations, building fewer relationships, showing less accountability, and creating cultures that look calm on the surface, but may be more problematic underneath.
Yasemin (Gen Z)
People who are just entering the workforce are often scared they’ll get a bad reputation if they speak up about issues they’re seeing or experiencing. They don’t want to rock the boat, so they stay silent. But small issues eventually pile up, and when they finally do say something, the conversation aren’t the most productive.
We’re also hearing constant messages in the media about economic instability, layoffs, and how replaceable work can be. When it already feels risky to have a job, dialogue starts to feel risky.
There’s also less practice. Many of my peers have spent most – or all – of their professional lives working remotely. Face-to-face conversations, especially difficult ones, simply aren’t a muscle that’s been built yet. And when things get uncomfortable, optionality makes leaving easier than staying and working it through.
Antoine (Millennial)
My generation sits in the middle. We didn’t grow up expecting to stay at one company for forty years, but we also weren’t taught what to replace that commitment with.
There’s also been a real shift toward individualism among people my age. Many of us are focused on our own performance, goals, and boundaries. That’s not wrong, but when the organization is trying to build a business or culture, individualism without shared responsibility makes collaboration more challenging.
As a society, we’ve rightly removed behaviours that were harmful in the workplace – yelling, bullying, harassment. But we haven’t replaced them with strong, relational skills. So now there’s avoidance – and avoidance doesn’t build culture, either.
Many millennials want harmony, but not conflict. Safety and security, free from having to be vulnerable. Belonging, without effort. But these things don’t work that way.
Sandra (Boomer)
When I started my career, we expected work to be hard sometimes. We didn’t envision people or relationships to be perfect. If someone said or did something that caused issues, we were willing to talk about it and work it out rather than dismiss or cancel them. We gave people the benefit of the doubt.
And hardship was part of the journey. Difficult bosses, tough feedback, uncomfortable conversations – those experiences shaped us as leaders. We learned patience, resilience, delayed gratification, and how to work through things together.
Today, older leaders are quieter too. Many are afraid of saying the wrong thing and being “cancelled.” So across generations, people are choosing silence over dialogue – and that’s new.
What we’ve replaced dialogue with
Instead of conversation, many workplaces rely on systems, like performance reviews, escalation protocols, whistleblower lines, Slack messages, texts, and emails. These tools have their place, but they’ve also become ways to avoid engaging directly with one another. We’re outsourcing conflict and deprioritizing relationships – and it’s impacting our cultures.
As Antoine puts it: “If there’s conflict, there’s commitment. If there’s commitment, there’s accountability.” But without dialogue, we lose all three.
We often sideline relationships because they feel subjective and “unmeasurable.” If you can work from home, why come in? If you can send a message, why meet face to face? If you can leave, why put in more effort?
But we’re not as good at our work when we’re not collaborating. We don’t grow without feedback, build trust without friction, or experience meaning at work without investing in each other.
The depth people say they’re missing at work doesn’t come from finding the perfect job. It comes from contributing to the culture right where we are.
Putting difficult things on the table, staying in the conversation, contributing our perspectives and knowledge, learning from the people around us, and choosing relationships over convenience.
How good dialogue builds commitment, accountability, and connection
Dialogue is a skill, and if we don’t practice it, we don’t carry it with us. We move from job to job hoping the next environment will feel better, warmer, easier. But warmth, trust, and belonging don’t appear on their own. They’re built through effort and sacrifice. Through choosing to stay when it would be easier to disengage. And through conflict.
Healthy, productive conflict isn’t about being aggressive or confrontational. It’s about learning how to:
- Open up about difficult issues.
- Understand our role in the dynamic.
- Listen without defensiveness.
- Strengthen the relationship in the process.
When organizations invest in these skills, something powerful happens: people become more committed, accountable, and connected to each other, and to the work itself.
Impact can help
If you’d like to build a culture where dialogue is possible again, we can help. We work with individuals and teams to analyze conflict, understand what’s really happening beneath the surface, and build the relational skills that make work more meaningful – and more effective.
