Overcoming the Conflicts That Keep Us Apart
Resolving What’s Between Us Begins Here…
I’ve watched good leaders with compelling vision, strong leadership skills, and sincere intentions get slowed down—or completely sidetracked—by unhealthy relational dynamics.
Sometimes it’s conflict between two people. Sometimes an entire leadership team becomes divided. And sometimes the original issue is surprisingly small.
But relational conflict has a way of spreading. What begins between two people can eventually affect trust, communication, decision-making, team culture—and even an organization’s ability to move forward.
Why it matters: We tend to think our conflicts are primarily about what happened between us. Often, they are also about what is happening within us.
The Conflict Beneath the Conflict
James asks a penetrating question:
“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you?”
— James 4:1
James points beneath the disagreement to something deeper: there is a battle going on inside us.
We want something. We fear losing something. We believe we deserve something. We need something from another person—and when we don’t receive it, something inside us gets activated.
That internal battle eventually finds its way into our relationships.
The presenting conflict may be about strategy, organizational change, authority, recognition, or communication. But underneath it may be something much more personal:
Do you see me? Do I matter? Am I safe with you? Can I trust you? Do I belong here?
The conflict in the room may have roots that began long before anyone entered the room. Until we understand those roots, we can spend enormous energy trying to resolve the presenting disagreement without ever addressing what is really fueling it.
Our Wounds Come to Work With Us
Attachment researchers Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson use four S’s to describe important elements of secure attachment: being Seen, Soothed, Safe, and Secure. Psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson has similarly helped many understand the intersection of attachment, relationships, neuroscience, and Christian formation.
From our earliest years, these relational experiences help shape our capacity to develop healthy relationships with others.
But none of us enters adulthood—or leadership—completely unwounded.
Some of us learned that being noticed required achievement. Others learned that mistakes threatened acceptance. Some discovered that vulnerability wasn’t safe. Others learned that control was the best way to prevent disappointment.
Those wounds can eventually become part of the root system beneath what I have previously called our shadow side.
Consider a leader who did not experience being adequately seen. That wound may become an excessive need for recognition. Achievement, position, attention, or admiration can become ways of filling an old deficit. Over time, the healthy desire to be seen can become an unhealthy demand to be noticed.
Other wounds may surface as control, defensiveness, approval-seeking, withdrawal, perfectionism, anger, or fear.
Our wounds don’t automatically produce these behaviors. But when wounds remain unexplored and unmet, they can exert tremendous influence over how we relate to others—especially when conflict activates them.
When Our Wounds Collide
This is where the issue becomes especially important for leaders.
Relational conflict is rarely just one person’s wound at work.
My need for control may collide with your need to be heard. Your fear of rejection may collide with my tendency to withdraw. My need for recognition may make your disagreement feel more threatening than it actually is.
Suddenly, we aren’t simply discussing the issue anymore.
Our wounds are interacting with each other.
That’s one reason seemingly reasonable disagreements can become so emotionally charged. A discussion about a decision becomes a battle over respect. Feedback feels like rejection. A disagreement about strategy becomes a struggle for control.
And the higher our responsibility, the farther those unresolved dynamics can travel.
A strained relationship between two senior leaders rarely remains between those two leaders. People notice. Teams begin taking sides. Communication becomes guarded. Trust erodes. Decisions slow down. Eventually, the relational conflict can undermine the very vision everyone is trying to accomplish.
Our wounds rarely affect only us.
What Are You Bringing Into the Conflict?
James doesn’t simply condemn conflict. He invites us to examine its source.
That requires humility.
When a relationship becomes strained, our instinct is often to ask:
What is wrong with them?
A mature leader learns to ask another question:
What is happening in me?
What am I wanting from this person? What am I afraid of losing? Why did that comment affect me so deeply? What old wound might this conflict be touching?
Those are uncomfortable questions—particularly when we are convinced the other person is the problem.
But they can also become doorways to freedom.
Because resolving relational conflict sometimes begins not by changing the other person, but by understanding what the conflict has exposed in us.
God Meets Us in Our Deepest Places
For those of us who follow Jesus, there is another dimension to this conversation.
We don’t simply identify our wounds and try harder to manage them. We bring them into our relationship with a God who meets us in precisely the places where we are most vulnerable.
One of my favorite pictures of this comes from Zephaniah:
“The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing.”
— Zephaniah 3:17
I find it striking how closely this picture of God speaks to those foundational relational needs:
SEEN — He takes great delight in you.
SOOTHED — He quiets you with his love.
SAFE — He is with you and mighty to save.
SECURE — He rejoices over you with singing.
God meets us where our wounds tell us we are lacking.
If I know deeply that I am seen by God, I don’t have to demand that you notice me. If I can be soothed by his love, I don’t have to require you to take away every uncomfortable feeling.
If my safety is ultimately found in him, I don’t have to control you or every situation around me. And if I am secure in how God sees me, your disagreement doesn’t have to threaten my identity.
What God heals within us changes what we bring into our relationships.
Grace Changes What We Bring Into the Room
James 4 eventually brings us to a simple but powerful statement:
“But he gives us more grace.”
That may be the most hopeful line in the entire passage.
Our wounds are real. Our desires can become distorted. Our shadow sides can damage relationships.
But there is more grace.
Grace allows us to stop demanding that other people heal wounds they didn’t create and cannot ultimately repair.
And that changes the way we enter relational conflict.
We can listen instead of immediately defending. We can apologize without feeling diminished. We can receive hard feedback without being undone by it. We can relinquish control. We can even find enough humility to say:
I may be part of the problem.
That doesn’t mean every conflict disappears. Nor does it mean healthy leadership avoids difficult conversations, accountability, or necessary boundaries.
It means we can enter those conversations from a healthier place.
Start With the Wound
Is there a relationship in your life or leadership that has become unhealthy?
Maybe you’ve tried talking it through. You’ve worked on communication, clarified expectations, or addressed the presenting disagreement—and yet the conflict keeps resurfacing.
It may be worth asking a deeper question:
What is this conflict stirring up in me?
Which of my deeper needs feels threatened? What am I demanding from this person that I may need to receive more deeply from God? Where might my own wound be contributing to the divide?
Healthy relationships don’t require unwounded people. They require people who are increasingly aware of their wounds—and willing to bring them into the healing presence of God.
Because what happens inside us rarely stays inside us.
And when God begins healing what divides us within, we become far more capable of healing what divides us between.
Is Relational Conflict Slowing Down Your Leadership Team?
Sometimes the presenting disagreement isn’t the real issue. Helping leaders and teams identify what is happening beneath the surface can create space for renewed trust, healthier relationships, and forward movement.
If I can come alongside you or your team in that process, contact me.