At the executive level, decisions move faster, stakes are higher, and personalities are often stronger. When conflict arises, as it inevitably does, it can either fracture alignment or fuel performance.
In our recent webinar on Navigating Conflict With Grace, Dr. Lindy Greer offered a compelling insight:
“Conflict isn’t something to avoid, it’s a core ingredient of executive team excellence.”
A professor of management and faculty director for leadership development at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, Dr. Greer is a leading researcher in team dynamics and leadership conflict.
She’s advised powerhouse organisations like Amazon, Google, and the NFL, and her work is rooted in academic rigour and real-world impact.
Her perspective on conflict is unique: she doesn’t just study it, she equips leaders to thrive within it.
Why Executive Conflict Is Inevitable (and Necessary)
The higher you climb in an organisation, the more complex the decisions, and the more potential for differing opinions.
“Conflict is simply the expression of difference. If an executive team isn’t having conflict, it probably means they’re not addressing the real challenges, or they don’t feel safe enough to disagree.”
Instead of trying to eliminate conflict, Dr. Greer encourages leaders to normalise it, structure it, and channel it.
What Makes or Breaks an Executive Team?
Dr. Greer outlines three key pillars for navigating executive-level conflict successfully:
1. Practice the Muscle
“Teams that avoid small day-to-day disagreements are setting themselves up for big blowouts later, often during high-stakes decisions like annual budgets or strategy pivots.”
By treating everyday friction (e.g., a disagreement about priorities) as a practice ground, teams build the skills they need when tensions escalate.
She’s seen executive teams engage in different tools to practice more debate in their team, For example, in healthcare technology c-suite, the team adopted a mantra of ‘debate, commit, and act’ and had each member serve as a rotating team-coach each meeting to debrief how well the team in living up to the mantra.
In an intelligence agency, she saw them embrace murder boards, where they put an idea for feedback on a board and over the next 24 hours, employees could walk by with post-its with the questions or challenges around the idea.
In the leadership team of a non-profit, she saw them formalise a rotating devil’s advocate each meeting, where the person playing the role had the job to ask tough questions and encourage different points of view.
2. Plan for Conflict – Don’t Wait for It to Explode
Too many teams only address issues when it’s already tense. Dr. Greer’s advice? Build in release valves.
“The best executive teams formalise feedback, use clear agenda structures, and never blindside each other. If conflict is inevitable, then let’s prepare for it.”
Some of her recommendations include:
- Set expectations in agendas (e.g. “debate approach to Q4 hiring”): By setting expectations in advance that debate is expected, research shows that people will better prepare and show up focused on exchanging and debating information (versus each other). She’s seen a c-suite in London use this to good effect in time-stapping agenda items for meetings, where they formally block time for debate.
- Use a rotating devil’s advocates or red team/blue team structures: Giving team members a formal role that requires teams to debate can make things like about personality and style, and more about facilitating a good debate of the facts. Make sure to explain to people in advance what the job description is of these roles.
- Flagging emotionally sensitive topics in advance to reduce threat response: Don’t blindside people (or teams) with negative feedback. Let people know in advance the topics you want to talk about and level set, so they walk in prepared.
3. Polish the Skills – Especially Around Emotion
Executives are humans too. And unresolved emotional reactions – frustration, defensiveness, pride – can derail logic fast.
“When we enter a conflict emotionally flooded, our brains aren’t thinking clearly. We default to fight, flight, or freeze. And that leads to poor decisions.”
Lindy suggests using tools such as:
- Box breathing (used by surgeons under pressure): Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold 4 seconds, breathe out 4 seconds, and then hold for 4 seconds, and start again. Visualize a box as you engage in these 4 stages of a breath. Intentionally slowing down and focusing on your breath can calm your emotions and help you figure out how to be the person you truly desire to be in the conversation.
- Third-person self-talk (e.g., “What would Lindy do in this moment?”): Ethan Kross has wonderful research and a new book (called Reset) showing that thinking about ourselves from a distance can help us step out of our emotions and into a more objective view of the situation. We could ask ourselves what a valued mentor would advise us, or even, as he shows, think about yourself in the third person to think through your best step forward in the conversation.
- Acknowledging tension in the room without needing to solve it immediately: We often jump to fight or flight mode when emotions escalate in conversations. Christina Bradley has shown a third option exists – emotional acknowledgment, or the ability to verbally recognize the emotions others might be feeling. By normalizing what others may be feeling, her work shows this can de-escalate emotions in conflicts more effectively than ignoring them or trying to ‘fix’ them.
The Impact: What Happens When Exec Teams Get Conflict Right?
“The teams that handle conflict well are the teams that outperform, innovate faster, and lead with clarity. The ones that don’t? They lose time, lose people, and lose trust.”
In other words, navigating conflict with grace isn’t just about feeling better – it’s about performing better.
From clearer decision-making to healthier cultures and more resilient strategies, the benefits of functional conflict are far-reaching.
As she shows in her research in the Journal of Applied Psychology, the highest performing teams are those who can have healthy debate, leveraging the unique insights members bring to the team and helping their team perform better.
Final Thought
Lindy’s challenge to leaders is simple but profound: Make space for difference. Plan for disagreement. Build trust through clarity, not harmony.
“If you’re not creating space for debate at the top, you’re not harnessing the full power of your team.”
Grace in conflict isn’t about avoiding tension, it’s about leading through it with structure, emotional intelligence, and respect.
Is Your Leadership Team Ready to Transform Their Team’s Experience of Conflict?
If you’d like to learn more about Lindy’s research or her work with organisations to transform their outlook on navigating conflict, you can do this using the links below:
Lindy’s approach aligns beautifully with the Serlin Method used at London Speech Workshop.
If you’re ready to build your own conflict resolution toolkit, or enhance your communication style, why not book a Free 15-Minute Discovery Call with our team?
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