Healthy Conflict: It's Time to Move On

A leader's real job isn't managing conflict or outcomes, but facilitating the safety that determines whether people show up defensively or collaboratively.

We just passed the 100th anniversary of Mary Parker Follett's initial insights into conflict in the business world. And yet, we missed the office party invite, the oversized Costco cake, and half-hearted applause around the water cooler. We're still getting it wrong.

In 1925, Mary Parker Follett, a management theorist, presented a paper called "Constructive Conflict" to the Bureau of Personnel Administration conference. Back then, the assumption was that conflict needed to be eliminated. Instead, this brilliant management theorist proposed that conflict could be a positive force for organizational growth.

She identified three ways that conflict gets resolved. Sadly, she was largely ignored during her lifetime and only rediscovered decades later.

A century later, we find ourselves asking if we are still ignoring conflict.

It's true that so many organizations and teams want to create a culture of healthy conflict. But what is healthy conflict? And, more importantly, are we actually doing it?

What is conflict?

To understand conflict, it's important to observe collective conflict. This is the type of conflict we see across American business. Where does this conflict come from? Is it from within the organization, within the humans that form the organization, or from somewhere outside the organization?

Let's consider Covid as an origin for a great deal of workplace conflict, both within the American business world and in the whole lives of the people who work inside it. A 2023–2024 Gartner survey found that 74% of HR leaders cite return-to-office mandates as a source of conflict in their organizations.

Why do companies still have unresolved conflict lingering six years later?

That same Gartner research found that intent to stay among average employees dropped 8% under strict RTO mandates and 16% among high-performing employees specifically. Even years later, conflict behaviors persist. They're distributed unevenly, and often land hardest on our most valuable people.

Are these behaviors healthy? And, more importantly, what is the conflict, really?

To answer these questions, we have to decide the order of events. Is this conflict disrupting our business world? Or is this disruption revealing conflict?

If the first were true, we'd expect conflict behavior to fade as the initial shock of RTO wore off. Instead, actual remote-work behavior has barely moved despite three years of escalating mandates. 22.6% of US employees worked remotely at least partially in March 2026, versus 23% in March 2024. Companies keep pushing, and the number keeps holding. Why do we keep hearing so much conflict if the underlying picture has barely changed?

This clue points to the latter being more true. Conflict may have been there well before the disruption arrived.

When conflict is revealed, it can't easily hide again.

Perhaps disruption removes the veil hiding uncertainty. Our sudden reawakening to uncertainty activates a fear in us, and that fear is what causes us to start disagreeing with the current status quo. There may have been a collective uncertainty around how we want to work together and work from home, hiding in plain sight the whole time. Neither Covid nor RTO created conflict; it just made it visible.

So what is conflict, really?

Conflict is an internal fuel we draw on to respond to uncertainty.

If that's true, then the constancy of conflict follows from the constancy of uncertainty. Uncertainty is always with us or around us. Our illusion that tomorrow is certain masks the conflict's continual presence in our lives. If uncertainty never actually goes away, neither does conflict.

Organizations that understand that the conflict fuel tank is always full have an advantage. They are not blind to the potential energy ready to respond.

What is healthy conflict?

Follett named three ways in which conflict is resolved. Most organizations still default to one of them. Get one side to give in, or get both sides to give something up. Rarely do they reach for the third, an outcome that actually satisfies everyone. 

So many organizations look for conflict frameworks or approaches to manage conflict. Healthy conflict is often defined as something that doesn't impair productivity, doesn't impact revenue targets, or doesn't create HR or legal issues.

All three are measures of what conflict doesn't do, not what it does. An organization can be productive, revenue-generating, and risk-avoidant, yet still be sitting on invisible conflict fuel. 

Are the outcomes of healthy conflict actually unhealthy?

What if unhealthy conflict is the organization's avoidance of the conflict fuel we spoke about earlier? 

Avoidance doesn't make the fuel disappear; it just traps it. Unhealthy conflict is assuming the fuel tank is low and trying to get it to zero, to reduce conflict. What shows up later as "bottled up" conflict is just that same trapped fuel finding another way out.

These strategies aim to mitigate the negative outcomes of fuel that couldn't be released. They're only disguised as "conflict strategies."

So, what if healthy conflict instead is maximizing every drop of fuel in the organization? 

Leadership in this mindset understands that uncertainty is the status quo, and that embracing the messy feelings of this reality uncovers the constant fuel necessary to respond to the world.

What if this style of conflict-forward leadership actually creates an internal strategic advantage that has been dormant this entire time?

How do we facilitate conflict?

Let’s consider how we actively facilitate conflict. As we carry forward Follett's view of conflict as an imperative to growth, there is an opportunity to ask ourselves: "Are we actually doing healthy conflict?"

Follett's first two approaches were based on either win/lose or partial win/partial win, using either domination or compromise. The business libraries are well stocked with books on these subjects.

It's her third integrative (win/win) model where we can add to the library a bit and redefine ourselves as conflict-forward leaders.

For integrative conflict, what does win/win look like?

Tomasello's Interdependence Hypothesis is a theory from evolutionary anthropology. In today's world, we often believe survival is determined by the fittest (individuals). We've been taught to be independent to be successful. Tomasello's research suggests that collaborative behaviors were critical to our survival as foragers. And this interdependent origin rooted in survival is unique to us as humans and deeply baked into our psychology. It's not something we have to manufacture as leaders.

Going back to our definition of healthy conflict. If winning means maximizing every drop of conflict fuel, how do we allow or facilitate integration within a team?

In this work, we use the Enneagram as a way to see human potential and understand how each team member is attempting to use their conflict fuel and integrate themselves into the larger group, with another important person, or into an existing space that is in alignment with the change they experience.

With the Enneagram, we can define Follett's integration as nine unique Enneagram types, all interdependently using their fuel to move in concert together.

Each type has a different conflict fuel that they naturally use within a team. In working with teams, we often see different expressions of this fuel. Like a car engine, there are many moving parts that use fuel to operate. The engine will grind to a halt if there is too much friction. The car, like a facilitator, moves by acknowledging friction. It doesn't ignore friction; it reduces it as much as possible to prevent the engine from seizing up.

In an organization, a good facilitator keeps things moving by reducing friction. Great facilitators do this by understanding the underlying fear that is causing friction.

As Enneagram facilitators, we define these as "fear frictions" or "shadow" responses. In these moments, an individual's unconscious behaviors can become highly disintegrative due to fear. Often, this fear is of being socially excluded. We look for the "fear frictions," where teams grind. They include responses that are intimidating (8), indirect (9), judgemental (1), reluctant (2), impatient (3), intense (4), hesitant (5), anxious (6), and pollyanna (7).

As facilitators, we can't change the response or empty their fuel. We must look deeper, acknowledging the fear that is taking them from an internal place of safety. Internal safety serves as a natural lubricant, reducing internal friction.

Beyond "fear friction," we can observe the natural conflict behavior each of the nine types uses to integrate themselves in a healthy way. These natural drives are naturally considerate of others within a team, seeking alignment both individually and interdependently.

There are nine unique integrative behaviors when we feel safe inside the team and are full of conflict fuel. What does this team look like?

This team integrates itself by constantly taking action (8), understanding each other (9), improving what we're doing (1), affirming one another (2), solving problems (3), resolving deep unseen issues (4), constantly learning (5), moving through risk and consequences (6), and expanding into a better future (7).

That's the real work of a facilitator. Not managing the conflict. Not managing the outcome. Not managing the fuel level. It’s understanding and being aware of the level of safety that decides which of the two shows up.

How can we apply this?

Remember, healthy conflict is maximizing every drop of fuel in the organization by facilitating the integration of all nine natural responses to uncertainty.

How do we do it?

We must facilitate in integrative ways. Without a framework that understands how each person experiences conflict inside themselves, integration has the risk of getting stuck in "fear friction", becoming a product of the individual biases we have about others, or, more importantly, the biases we have about ourselves.

Here are six steps to begin practicing healthy conflict:

1. Look for the bottled-up conflict
2. Name the default conflict style (domination, compromise, or integration)
3. To become integrative, understand the conflict fuel in the room
4. Become aware of the "fear frictions" that grind teams
5. Make conflict safe by facilitating awareness
6. Form teams around the nine integrative behaviors

Interested in discussing conflict in your organization or team, or in developing your own integrative framework using the Enneagram?

About the Author

Jon Kohrs serves as the Human Design Principal at Empactful Studios. With over 20 years of experience in design strategy and human change, he leads the reimagination of how we design business to be more human. He does this by designing and facilitating immersive, co-creative experiences that integrate human development, conscious teaming, and meaningful business outcomes. His work bridges the psychology of transformation and the phenomenology of change with workforce culture design to accelerate the teams tackling complex challenges shaping the future of health.