With trust, healthy conflict can lead to innovation
By Pat Kearney
Last month, Kate, an executive director at a growing nonprofit, described her team’s “toxic” workplace culture to me. Her talented team had become fractured, with heated debates turning personal and decisions endlessly derided through office gossip. “People are afraid to disagree with each other,” she confided, “so they just stay silent in meetings and complain afterward.”
Her story isn’t unique. In my work coaching leaders in a variety of sectors, I’ve found that the real problem isn’t conflict itself — it’s the fear of conflict that poisons workplace culture. The truth is, conflict can be healthy. When managed well, it signals engagement, passion and diversity of thought, and can result in collaborative solutions. The key lies in creating an environment where disagreement drives innovation rather than division.
The difference between success and stagnation in today’s organizations often comes down to how teams handle conflict. At its best, conflict drives innovation and sparks breakthrough ideas. At its worst, it tears teams apart.
Productive conflict has clear hallmarks: Team members focus on challenging ideas, not attacking people. They listen with genuine curiosity and push for deeper understanding. All participants have a voice. Most importantly, discussions end with clear decisions and next steps that everyone supports.
Conversely, when conflict turns destructive, the signs are equally clear: Team members take disagreements personally. Issues never truly get resolved — they just go underground, only to resurface again and again with building resentment. Relationships suffer, tensions simmer and innovation stalls. And perhaps most dangerous of all, teams can swing to the opposite extreme avoiding conflict altogether. This leads to stagnation, where assumptions go unchallenged and new ideas die before they’re even voiced. The difference between productive and destructive conflict often comes down to one critical factor: trust. But not just any trust — what management expert Patrick Lencioni calls “vulnerability-based trust.” It isn’t simply about believing colleagues will meet deadlines; it’s about feeling psychologically safe enough to admit mistakes, ask for help or challenge prevailing opinions.
How do you build this kind of trust? Researcher Brené Brown offers a practical framework she calls “BRAVING.” It breaks trust into seven components: boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault (confidentiality), integrity, non-judgment and generosity. When teams struggle with trust, it’s usually because one or more of these elements is missing.
Consider a team I worked with recently. The team had established explicit agreements about availability — such as no meetings before 9 a.m. and 24-hour response times for non-urgent emails (boundaries) — and team members consistently delivered on their commitments (reliability).
However, they struggled with the “vault” component. Information shared in confidence often leaked to others, creating an atmosphere of suspicion and guardedness.
By creating clear confidentiality guidelines — including what information could be shared with whom and when — the team transformed its culture. Within a few months, the team reported more open discussions in meetings and significantly less backdoor complaining. Team members began bringing up concerns directly, knowing their vulnerability wouldn’t be used against them.
The payoff of building trust goes beyond just better feelings; it translates directly to results. Teams with high trust engage in what Lencioni calls “productive conflict,” where ideas are debated vigorously in the passionate pursuit of the best outcomes, and relationships remain intact. These teams make better decisions faster, innovate more effectively and adapt more quickly to change.
The path to building trust isn’t always comfortable. It requires leaders to model vulnerability, admitting when they don’t have all the answers. It means establishing clear norms around communication and conflict resolution. Most importantly, it demands creating space for diverse perspectives — not just from the loudest voices in the room.
As one leader put it to me recently, “I used to think my job was to prevent conflict. Now I realize it’s to create an environment where confl ict makes us stronger, not weaker.” For leaders ready to strengthen trust on their teams, start with three concrete steps. First, assess your team’s current trust level using the BRAVING framework. Second, choose one element to focus on improving over the next month. Finally, schedule weekly check-ins to discuss team dynamics openly. Remember, trust building isn’t a onetime event — it’s an ongoing practice that transforms conflict from a threat into a catalyst for innovation and growth.
The goal isn’t to eliminate conflict but to make it productive, allowing diverse perspectives to drive innovation and growth. In today’s rapidly changing environment, organizations that master this skill won’t just survive — they’ll thrive.
Pat Kearney is founder of Eddyline CoachingandFacilitation,aJacksonbased leadership development firm. He also is a group facilitator for Silicon Couloir. Visionary Ventures is a monthly column submitted by the staff of Silicon Couloir.