Managing conflicts in leadership team

He is delusional. She is too sweet. He loves to hog attention. She plays her cards well. These are some remarks I hear about team members at the top. In a recent coaching session the CEO of the company was literally pulling his hair. He kept referring to the “spoilers”. One particular senior member was driving him crazy.

“He is good at his job. He gets along with his team. He speaks up. He speaks randomly. He is good but bad. He is bad but professional. He is uncontrollable but very honest. He is too comfortable in what he is”. My question to him was ‘what is bothering you’ about him? His reply was “Nothing much but his refusal to be more driven and ambitious”. This is a typical leader versus leadership team conversation. The exasperation in the CEO voice is so reflective of trying to deal with people who are experienced and carry their own brand value.

Senior leadership is a different story. They are not the middle management who is comparatively raw and expected to toe the line of people above them. Senior leaders are people who have senior egos. They have almost made it to the top.

Many of them may have more experience than the CEO. They will not be easy to manage. Many of them internally feel that they are the real heads of the company. Some, who are older and insiders, may resent a CEO who is younger and outsider. Others who are hired from other companies may observe this friction and try to take advantage.

The problem is that while CEOs or heads of the company have dealt with difficult people before, they are not really trained to deal with conflicts within this cadre. DDI’s or Development Dimension International leadership assessments of more than 70,000 manager candidates globally found that nearly half (49 percent) fail to demonstrate effective conflict management skills and only 12 percent show high proficiency in this area.

This is an area of great concern. What happens at the top, sooner or later happens thereunder too. Conflict at the top is detrimental not only to many key areas; it trickles all the way down. For a CEO the ability to let diverse opinions prevail but not derail is key to creating a high performance leadership team. To work out a balance, the head of the leadership team needs to understand the following conflict triggers:

Conflict Trigger No. 1- The smartest in the meeting — these people hog attention. They over-speak and under-listen. They constantly talk about their own glorious experience. They feel they have expertise in nearly every topic under the sun. In a meeting that I was asked to join where suggestions by senior team members were to be discussed the dynamics were revealing. This person started by saying, “I know my colleagues have great ideas, but in my opinion…”

He went on putting forward his suggestion. After he finally finished and other people started talking, he would be constantly seen defending his idea by pointing out why other suggestions were not as good. This was not taken well by some members who actually said that this meeting was supposed to collect ideas, not prove some right and others wrong. The conflict was tangible, and the meeting was unproductive.

Conflict Trigger No. 2- The Feedback Avoider/Retaliator— Another problem is the senior leader, who does not take feedback positively. If his team development needs to improve, he will just brush off the topic by giving examples of how well the targets were being achieved. If his behaviour with his colleagues needs to change, he will keep insisting all is well. If the feedback is repeated, he may become retaliatory and go in the blame game. Being in senior positions, this is a major point of contention. Such people by dint of their experience and ego are resistant to consider any behaviour modification.

Conflict Trigger No. 3- Me Rather than We — Then there is this “solo flight” senior member who does not socialize with the senior team. In one of the senior team planning retreats, I saw such people going for walks alone while the rest of the team was bonding on treks together. They could be introverts who are more comfortable on their own, but are signalling the wrong cues. Other team members perceived him as a “me, myself and I” guy who is a loner. This led to resistance from other members as a personal rapport could not be developed.

Conflict Trigger No. 4- The ‘yes’ but ‘no’ guy — Then there is the classic lip service expert. He would be all accommodating in meetings and interactions, but would be pursuing his own agenda behind the scenes. He would have very close ties with some directors of the company. This feeling of being bypassed by the senior team due to Board member connections creates rifts in the C-Suite.

The real leadership test is how to manage the conflicting personalities and styles of the senior team. While diversity requires differences of style, it should not lead to divisions in the team. The CEO needs wisdom to handle the team, keep them engaged and keep them together. Some ways of doing that are:

1. Understand the team players — having a diverse team with differences is definitely strength. But if these differences are not managed, they make the team dysfunctional. Thus the CEO must understand the team background and expertise to assign roles. To manage the dominating personalities, role allocation is strategic. Assign them a role where they feel they are leading. Make some subcommittees and let them convene those committees.

2. Model the behaviour and accountability — to ensure equal opportunity in meetings, etc, set the rules of the meeting and assign a neutral person to run the meetings. Time slots of putting ideas, letting everybody hear everybody, should be strictly monitored. To set the ball rolling, the CEO should start by himself by going overtime and then being checked by the meeting controller to send the message that nobody is above the law.

3. Develop coaching interventions — for more behavioural modification, external one to one coaching for senior members should be organized to get professional help.

To do all this, the CEO or the head of the leadership team needs to develop a mindset that while diversity is a great thing to have, so is clarity and accountability. We must not avoid, ignore, evade, but manage conflicts. As Thomas Crum said, “The quality of our lives depends not on whether or not we have conflicts, but on how we respond to them.”

Copyright Business Recorder, 2026