Healthy Conflict: It's Time to Move On

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. 

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, though she was one of the most sought-after voices in business during her lifetime, her work was largely forgotten within a decade of her death, and only rediscovered decades later.

A century later, we find ourselves still asking how we create healthy conflict as leaders.

What is conflict?

Let’s go back briefly to that office party, the cake now devoured and our team now sufficiently working under the influence of both sugar high and sugar coma. As a leader, you’ve been trained to anticipate what often comes next, conflict. 

But where does it really come from? Is it from within the organization, within the humans that just left the party, 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.

That conflict is likely still sitting undigested after the party, courtesy of RTO policies. But 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. Who at that office party will leave in six months because of conflict invisible to the organization? 

To answer this important question, we have to decide whether COVID actually disrupted talent retention in our business world. Or did COVID just reveal conflict that was invisible the whole time?

If COVID was the disruptor, we'd expect conflict to fade as the initial shock of RTO wore off. If COVID just revealed conflict that existed prior to it, we’d expect conflict to stay now that it has emerged. The data suggests the latter is happening, with remote-work behavior sticking, despite three years of escalating mandates. 22.6% of US employees worked remotely at least partially in March 2026, versus 23% in March 2024. 

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

Perhaps disruption just removes the veil hiding uncertainty. For many, there has always been an internal uncertainty in how we manage work life balance. How do we protect time with our families while protecting our careers in a world where time seems to be in shorter and shorter supply? Reawakening to uncertainty activates a fear in us, and that fear is what causes us to oppose the status quo. Neither Covid nor RTO created the conflict at the office party. They just made it visible.

Conflict is our internal opposition made visible, the fuel we draw on when responding to uncertainty.

Inside each of us are opposing forces pulling us in different directions. During periods of uncertainty, this creates tension, a stored fuel that is a prerequisite for change. 

In a world of increasing uncertainty, conflict can feel like a constant tension in ourselves and in our organizations. It can also be a strategic advantage to those who understand where conflict can take us.

What is healthy conflict?

The office party has long since passed along with the residual sugar fueling the team’s afternoon high. Remaining in many is the fuel of conflict. Perhaps the fuel is from opposition to the latest RTO communication or the leader’s new vision for the team that felt more pollyanna than practical. 

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 in which neither side gives anything up.  

Unhealthy conflict attempts to hide the fuel that is required to respond to uncertainty 

In the first two strategies exists the potential for unhealthy conflict, where avoidance and compromise diminish conflict. Unhealthy conflict attempts to empty the fuel tank to get it to zero. This can look like teams that have been programmed to appear empty. Or teams that have been trained to ignore it or over-facilitate it. Or teams that show up with "bottled up" conflict below the surface. In these cases, the tank is still full. The fuel never disappeared. It was just a management magic trick.

So what is healthy conflict then?

Healthy conflict is the allowance of both the fuel required to respond to uncertainty and the search to fit as a whole.

Within uncertainty is a search inside each person, each team, and each organization to find their fit. Leadership that understands the power of conflict seeks Follett's third way, outcomes in which no one gives anything up. Conflict-forward leaders seek not to satisfy people in ways that satiate conflict, but instead integrate their fuel into collective behaviors that create a new way to "fit” in the world.

How do we create healthy conflict?

It’s a new day. 

The colorful balloons have been thrown away. Along with the plastic office-standard tablecloths purchased years ago from the office party supplies budget. While the facilities staff expertly made the party disappear, you know that the conflicts in the team still remain. What you don’t know is that a number of your team actually talked about them in between sips of George’s famous peach punch. 

We can’t create healthy conflict.
We can only create the conditions that allow it to exist.

We have been taught that survival is determined by the fittest (individuals). Does healthy conflict enable us to respond to uncertainty and search for “fit” as a group interdependently?

Tomasello's Interdependence Hypothesis is a theory from evolutionary anthropology. Tomasello's research suggests that collaborative behaviors were critical to our survival as foragers. And our interdependent origin rooted in survival is unique to us as humans and deeply baked into our psychology. 

Neither interdependence nor healthy conflict is something we have to create as leaders.

We have to simply create the conditions for healthy conflict to exist. How do we do so in a way that leads to Follett’s third way and integration of each person and their fuel?

In this work, we use the Enneagram as a way to see conflict and understand how each team member is attempting to use it as a way to both integrate themselves into the larger group and seek fitness as a whole.

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

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. A car engine runs on two kinds of tensions. The first is friction, a disintegrative energy that grinds, wastes energy, and wears parts down. The second is compression, an integrative energy that holds the pressure until it converts to motion. 

Good organizations create the conditions for healthy conflict by reducing friction. Great organizations hold and protect compression.

The difference between good and great is understanding fear. Because fear is friction.

As Enneagram facilitators, we define nine "fear frictions" or unconscious disintegrative responses to uncertainty. These responses waste their fuel, waste the fuel of others, and cause teams to 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).

Internal safety serves as a natural lubricant, reducing internal friction. 

Compression is the more conscious response to uncertainty, naturally holding conflict while it finds integration with the team. When fear subsides and a team is allowed to use its conflict fuel, nine integrative responses emerge.

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).

How can we apply this?

It’s time to move on from healthy conflict. 

As leaders, it’s not our job to create it. We must shift our role into understanding how to create conditions for conflict to naturally integrate. Without a framework that understands how each person expresses conflict as friction or compression, we can begin to see all conflict as unhealthy and fail to help our organizations move through periods of uncertainty.

Here are six steps to begin to apply this thinking:

1. Look for teams that are being “emptied” of their fuel
2. Name how the teams are resolving conflict today
3. Understand the conflict fuel in the teams
4. Become aware of the "fear frictions" that grind teams
5. Make conflict safe by facilitating team awareness
6. Support integrative conflict responses in teams

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 Culture 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.