Most teams don’t have a conflict problem. They have an unclear-work problem that eventually turns into conflict.

Conflict is what happens when goals, roles, priorities, or decisions stay fuzzy long enough that people start fighting to protect their time, status, and sense of control. That’s why “just communicate better” rarely works. The conflict is usually the symptom. The design is the cause.

What Conflict Actually Is

Conflict is disagreement that carries friction. Sometimes it’s useful friction. Sometimes it’s corrosive. The difference isn’t tone. The difference is what people are actually disagreeing about, and whether the team has norms that keep disagreement pointed at the work.

Karen Jehn’s foundational research helped make this practical by distinguishing types of intragroup conflict and showing that different types relate to outcomes differently depending on context. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Four Types We Track

We use a simple, research-backed taxonomy that maps to how conflict actually shows up at work.

Task conflict

Task conflict is disagreement about the work itself, like ideas, tradeoffs, and options. It can be useful when it stays focused and when the team has real norms for debate.

It becomes destructive when it drifts into personal attacks, political positioning, or endless circular debate.

Process conflict

Process conflict is disagreement about how work gets done, like roles, ownership, timelines, handoffs, and decision-making protocols. This is the conflict that makes meetings feel like quicksand.

Process conflict is often the most fixable because it usually has a systems cause. Clarify ownership, decision rights, and cadence, and it drops fast.

Relationship conflict

Relationship conflict is personal friction. It’s disrespect, distrust, and negative attribution. This is the version of conflict that destroys performance and satisfaction, and it tends to spread.

Meta-analytic research has consistently found relationship conflict is strongly and negatively correlated with team performance and satisfaction. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Values conflict

Values conflict is disagreement about what matters, what’s acceptable, and what “good” looks like. It shows up around ethics, fairness, quality bars, and identity-level priorities.

Values conflict is hard because it feels moral. People aren’t debating a plan. They’re defending who they are.

What Conflict Isn’t

A lot of teams label healthy tension as “drama,” and they label unhealthy avoidance as “alignment.” Both errors are expensive.

Conflict isn’t automatically bad

Some conflict is a sign the team is doing real work together. If there’s never disagreement, it often means people have learned it’s not safe to challenge anything, or they’ve stopped caring enough to try.

Conflict isn’t just a personality issue

Yes, individuals matter, but conflict patterns are usually shaped by systems. When roles are unclear and priorities keep shifting, conflict becomes a predictable outcome, not a random interpersonal failure.

Conflict isn’t solved by “being nicer”

Tone matters, but structure matters more. If the decision process is broken, polite disagreement still turns into resentment.

What the Research Actually Says

The popular myth is that task conflict is good and relationship conflict is bad. Reality is messier.

De Dreu and Weingart’s meta-analysis found that relationship conflict is strongly negative, and task conflict is often negative too, especially because task and relationship conflict frequently become entangled. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

That doesn’t mean teams should avoid disagreement. It means teams need the conditions that keep disagreement productive.

Those conditions include clear goals, clear roles, strong norms for debate, and enough psychological safety that people don’t interpret challenge as attack.

What Conflict Looks Like in Real Work

Conflict is easy to miss when you only look for raised voices. Modern conflict often shows up as friction, delays, and quiet sabotage.

Early signals teams ignore

• Meetings that loop without decisions
  
  

• Side conversations and backchannels that replace direct discussion
  
  

• People arguing about process when the real issue is priority
  
  

• “Quick feedback” that always lands as critique
  
  

• Repeated misunderstandings that create rework
  
  

Late signals you can’t ignore

• Personal jabs disguised as jokes
  
  

• Email or chat threads that get colder and shorter
  
  

• People avoiding each other or routing around each other
  
  

• Public agreement followed by private resistance
  
  

• Decision paralysis, then sudden blowups near deadlines
  
  

Longitudinal research has shown high-performing teams tend to maintain low relationship conflict, with task and process conflict patterns that vary across the project lifecycle. JSTOR

Why Conflict Gets Worse Over Time

Conflict doesn’t usually begin as hostility. It begins as ambiguity.

When work stays unclear, people start filling in the blanks with stories. Those stories become judgments. Judgments become defensiveness. Defensiveness turns into behavior. Now you’ve got conflict.

Most leadership teams try to fix the behavior without fixing the ambiguity. That’s why conflict keeps coming back.

How Conflict Connects to the Other Metrics

Conflict is rarely a standalone issue.

When psychological safety is low, task conflict turns personal because people feel exposed. When alignment is low, process conflict explodes because people are solving different problems. When execution risk is high, conflict spikes because everything feels urgent and fragile.

Conflict is often the surface signal of deeper cultural instability.

What To Do About Conflict

You don’t need a workshop. You need a few structural moves that reduce ambiguity and raise the quality of debate.

1) Separate the question from the person

Make it normal to say, “We’re debating the work, not each other.” That single norm reduces relationship conflict because it keeps challenge from turning into threat.

Define “done” as meetings where dissent shows up without personal heat, and decisions still get made.

2) Force clarity before debate

Before a discussion starts, confirm the goal, constraints, decision owner, and time horizon. This prevents fake conflict where people argue hard while aiming at different targets.

Define “done” as fewer meetings that end with “we need to sync again.”

3) Fix decision rights in writing

Most conflict is a decision bottleneck wearing a disguise. Clarify who decides, who advises, and who executes.

Define “done” as fewer revisited decisions and fewer end-runs around ownership.

4) Call out process conflict early

When a discussion slides into “who owns this” or “why are we doing it this way,” pause and resolve the process question. Don’t keep pretending you’re debating strategy.

Define “done” as fewer recurring debates that are really ownership fights.

5) Build a repair habit

Even strong teams get tense. The difference is repair. Add a simple reset question at the end of hard meetings, like “What felt off in that conversation, and what do we need to clean up?”

Define “done” as less lingering resentment and fewer repeated flare-ups between the same people.

Recommended Sources and Definitions

Here are the core references we use for how we define and talk about conflict, plus a couple of practical resources leaders can actually apply.

• Jehn (1995) A Multimethod Examination of the Benefits and Detriments of Intragroup Conflict (PDF)
  
  

• De Dreu & Weingart (2003) Task Versus Relationship Conflict Meta-Analysis (PDF)
  
  

• Jehn & Mannix (2001) The Dynamic Nature of Conflict (JSTOR landing page)
  
  

• ScienceDirect overview citing De Dreu & Weingart meta-analysis findings (Link)
  
  

• Google re:Work guide on understanding team effectiveness (context for norms and team dynamics) (Link)