One certainty in construction is conflict. Every day, project teams negotiate competing priorities involving schedule, cost, quality, safety, productivity, and people. It's tempting to treat conflict as something to avoid—we associate it with arguments, tension, or damaged relationships. But conflict is simply evidence of a different point of view or a misalignment of expectations; it is neither inherently good nor bad. Like risk itself, conflict is something to be understood, embraced, and managed rather than feared.
Recognizing conflict, embracing it, and deliberately choosing my response took me years to learn, and it began long before I had the academic language to explain it.
Conflict in My Face
Over 20 years ago, I accepted a new role as a risk manager for a large construction company. After a successful career in pharmaceutical sales, I finally had the chance to return to my profession in safety and risk management. It felt like coming home. I had negotiated a flexible schedule, accepted a strong offer, and was excited to help build a safety culture that integrated operational excellence with protecting people. This was my dream job.
My first major assignment was to travel to visit our regional offices and present the company's new strategic safety plan to two senior operational executives. Corporate leadership had embraced the vision, moving away from a traditional, compliance-only view of safety toward a focus on operational excellence. We started with the basics: housekeeping, personal protective equipment, accountability, and consistency across every project.
I walked into that conference room expecting thoughtful discussion and healthy debate. Instead, within minutes I found myself in one of the most difficult leadership conversations of my career. Every recommendation on my carefully crafted strategic plan was aggressively challenged. "That will never work." "You're going to put us out of business." "You obviously don't understand construction." That became the drumbeat of the meeting.
Hour after hour, it dragged on. Looking back, I can now recognize that I instinctively cycled through several conflict styles. Hoping to collaborate, I listened carefully, believing understanding would build trust, and searched for compromise wherever I could find it. When comments became personal, I chose to avoid, holding my tongue because I didn't want the relationship to deteriorate further. Meanwhile, every response from the executives was designed to shut the discussion down rather than open it up—a steady stream of competing objections. I sincerely believed that if I explained the strategy well enough, everyone would eventually reach the same conclusion. Nothing was further from reality.
By 5 o'clock, I was emotionally exhausted. I quietly excused myself, stepped into an empty restroom, closed the door, and cried. Then I called my mother. "This is never going to work," I told her. "I made a mistake. I'm going to have to leave."
Conflict Intervention
My mother listened for less than a minute before interrupting me with the directness that only a woman from the Bronx can deliver: "Don't you dare let them push you out." So I washed my face, fixed my makeup, took a deep breath, and walked back into the conference room.
This time, I thanked everyone for their candid feedback. Then I said, plainly, "We will start the new safety initiative on Monday." No anger. No apology. No raised voice. I simply conveyed the decision.
That evening, we joined the CEO for dinner. I braced myself for the executives to tell him my plan would never work. Instead, when he asked what they thought of the strategy, they praised it. "It's exactly what we need," one of them said. I was stunned.
It would take years, and eventually a master's degree in dispute resolution, for me to understand what had happened that day. Those leaders weren't only evaluating the plan; they were evaluating me and my resilience. More importantly, I learned that my natural response to conflict wasn't always the response that the situation required. That realization became the beginning of a much larger journey into conflict, negotiation, and leadership.
Conflict as a Discipline
The meeting stayed with me, replaying in my mind more than I'd like to admit. Had I handled it differently than I should have? Was I too accommodating, too collaborative, or too willing to keep listening long after listening had stopped working? And why did a single, calmly declared decision accomplish at the end what 8 hours of discussion could not?
I realized my responsibilities extended well beyond implementing safety programs or arguing over hard hats and housekeeping. My real job was to influence culture, persuade operational leaders, and negotiate and resolve risks before they became claims, injuries, or lawsuits. Technical knowledge only got me so far. What mattered more was influence—the ability to navigate difficult conversations and understand what other people actually needed. If I couldn't influence people, I couldn't improve safety. If I couldn't navigate conflict, people could get hurt. That realization led me to enroll in Southern Methodist University's master's program in dispute resolution. Ironically, I went to graduate school expecting to become a better negotiator. Instead, I learned how people think.
Negotiation has been part of my career since I was 21. Working in insurance claims meant conflict wasn't something I occasionally encountered; it was the job description. Most people assume claims are about money. However, they rarely are. Money is usually the final agreement, but it's seldom the real issue. Behind nearly every dispute lies something deeper: Someone wanted to feel heard, someone wanted respect, someone wanted acknowledgment that something unfair had happened, or someone just wanted an explanation.
The longer I worked in claims, the more I realized that a successful negotiation depended far less on having the perfect argument and far more on understanding what the other person valued. Without realizing it, I was studying conflict long before I ever opened a graduate school textbook.
Why Self-Awareness Matters
As I moved into leading operational leadership development, I noticed that conflict rarely revealed a person's character so much as it revealed their habits. Regardless of title, experience, or technical expertise, most leaders instinctively responded to disagreement the same way, every time. The response wasn't necessarily intentional; it was familiar.
Faced with resistance, some leaders became more assertive, pushing harder to gain commitment; when that healthy assertiveness drifted too far without enough support for others, it became dominating—a high-challenge, low-support approach that shuts down dialogue instead of strengthening it. Others responded by gathering more information, convinced that additional facts or analysis would eventually produce the right answer. Some focused first on preserving the relationship, softening the conversation, or searching for a compromise. Others quietly withdrew, hoping time, circumstances, or someone else would resolve the issue for them.
None of these responses is inherently right or wrong; each can be remarkably effective under the right circumstances. The trouble starts when a natural tendency becomes our only strategy—when, without realizing it, we approach every conflict exactly the same way, regardless of the people involved, the stakes, or the outcome we're trying to achieve. That's the predictability trap: Our habitual response becomes so consistent that the people around us—and our counterparties across the table—learn to anticipate and manage it, long before we do.
Competing. Taking a firm, assertive position to achieve an important objective when quick decisions, safety, or accountability outweigh consensus.
Collaborating. Working together to find a solution that fully addresses everyone's concerns and creates the greatest long-term value.
Compromising. Finding practical middle ground where each party gives something up to move forward.
Avoiding. Intentionally stepping back from a conflict when more information, lower emotions, or better timing will produce a more productive discussion.
Accommodating. Prioritizing the relationship, or another person's needs, over your own when preserving trust matters more than winning the issue.
The most effective leaders know when to use each one and have the self-awareness to recognize when their default style is no longer serving the situation. The goal isn't to master one style; it's to recognize when the moment calls for a different one. Leadership maturity comes from expanding our repertoire so we consciously choose the approach that best serves the situation, rather than simply reacting out of habit.
Task Conflict Versus Relationship Conflict
One of the most valuable lessons that I carried through my construction career was reinforced years later when I became certified in the Giant Worldwide Empowered program for women in construction. It came from Adam Grant's book, Think Again—not all conflict deserves the same label.
Dr. Grant distinguishes between relationship conflict and task conflict. Too often, we assume that because a conversation feels uncomfortable, the relationship itself is in trouble. In reality, many disagreements have very little to do with the relationship and everything to do with the task. Relationship conflict gets personal—it attacks motives, questions intentions, and erodes trust. Task conflict, by contrast, challenges ideas, assumptions, and methods. It asks, "Is there a better way to do this?" rather than "What's wrong with you?"
Throughout my career in construction, I've found that the healthiest leadership teams aren't the ones that avoid disagreement—they're the ones that debate ideas vigorously while continuing to respect one another. Healthy task conflict leads to better decisions because it forces us to examine assumptions, test alternatives, and consider perspectives that we may otherwise overlook. As leaders, our job isn't to eliminate conflict—it's to keep it from becoming personal. When we build an environment where people can challenge ideas without attacking individuals, conflict becomes one of our greatest tools for innovation, better decisions, and stronger cultures.
Bringing this Back to the Jobsite
For construction risk professionals, conflict is not a distraction from the work; it is the work. Every negotiation with a subcontractor, every disputed change order, every safety conversation on a site walk, and every claim discussion with an owner's counsel are all an opportunity to practice self-awareness. The next time that you feel your default response taking over—the urge to push harder, to give in, to walk away, or to keep gathering data—pause and ask whether that habit is serving the moment … or simply serving your comfort. That pause is where leadership begins.
References
Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann, Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, Myers–Briggs Company.
Adam Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, Viking, 2021.
Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton, Getting to Yes, Penguin Books, 1981.
Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Jossey–Bass, 2002.
Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization, Wiley, 2018.
Five Voices leadership framework, Giant Worldwide.
Research summarized by Adam Grant and others demonstrates that teams with healthy task conflict and low relationship conflict consistently outperform teams that suppress disagreement or personalize it.
Opinions expressed in Expert Commentary articles are those of the author and are not necessarily held by the author's employer or IRMI. Expert Commentary articles and other IRMI Online content do not purport to provide legal, accounting, or other professional advice or opinion. If such advice is needed, consult with your attorney, accountant, or other qualified adviser.
One certainty in construction is conflict. Every day, project teams negotiate competing priorities involving schedule, cost, quality, safety, productivity, and people. It's tempting to treat conflict as something to avoid—we associate it with arguments, tension, or damaged relationships. But conflict is simply evidence of a different point of view or a misalignment of expectations; it is neither inherently good nor bad. Like risk itself, conflict is something to be understood, embraced, and managed rather than feared.
Recognizing conflict, embracing it, and deliberately choosing my response took me years to learn, and it began long before I had the academic language to explain it.
Conflict in My Face
Over 20 years ago, I accepted a new role as a risk manager for a large construction company. After a successful career in pharmaceutical sales, I finally had the chance to return to my profession in safety and risk management. It felt like coming home. I had negotiated a flexible schedule, accepted a strong offer, and was excited to help build a safety culture that integrated operational excellence with protecting people. This was my dream job.
My first major assignment was to travel to visit our regional offices and present the company's new strategic safety plan to two senior operational executives. Corporate leadership had embraced the vision, moving away from a traditional, compliance-only view of safety toward a focus on operational excellence. We started with the basics: housekeeping, personal protective equipment, accountability, and consistency across every project.
I walked into that conference room expecting thoughtful discussion and healthy debate. Instead, within minutes I found myself in one of the most difficult leadership conversations of my career. Every recommendation on my carefully crafted strategic plan was aggressively challenged. "That will never work." "You're going to put us out of business." "You obviously don't understand construction." That became the drumbeat of the meeting.
Hour after hour, it dragged on. Looking back, I can now recognize that I instinctively cycled through several conflict styles. Hoping to collaborate, I listened carefully, believing understanding would build trust, and searched for compromise wherever I could find it. When comments became personal, I chose to avoid, holding my tongue because I didn't want the relationship to deteriorate further. Meanwhile, every response from the executives was designed to shut the discussion down rather than open it up—a steady stream of competing objections. I sincerely believed that if I explained the strategy well enough, everyone would eventually reach the same conclusion. Nothing was further from reality.
By 5 o'clock, I was emotionally exhausted. I quietly excused myself, stepped into an empty restroom, closed the door, and cried. Then I called my mother. "This is never going to work," I told her. "I made a mistake. I'm going to have to leave."
Conflict Intervention
My mother listened for less than a minute before interrupting me with the directness that only a woman from the Bronx can deliver: "Don't you dare let them push you out." So I washed my face, fixed my makeup, took a deep breath, and walked back into the conference room.
This time, I thanked everyone for their candid feedback. Then I said, plainly, "We will start the new safety initiative on Monday." No anger. No apology. No raised voice. I simply conveyed the decision.
That evening, we joined the CEO for dinner. I braced myself for the executives to tell him my plan would never work. Instead, when he asked what they thought of the strategy, they praised it. "It's exactly what we need," one of them said. I was stunned.
It would take years, and eventually a master's degree in dispute resolution, for me to understand what had happened that day. Those leaders weren't only evaluating the plan; they were evaluating me and my resilience. More importantly, I learned that my natural response to conflict wasn't always the response that the situation required. That realization became the beginning of a much larger journey into conflict, negotiation, and leadership.
Conflict as a Discipline
The meeting stayed with me, replaying in my mind more than I'd like to admit. Had I handled it differently than I should have? Was I too accommodating, too collaborative, or too willing to keep listening long after listening had stopped working? And why did a single, calmly declared decision accomplish at the end what 8 hours of discussion could not?
I realized my responsibilities extended well beyond implementing safety programs or arguing over hard hats and housekeeping. My real job was to influence culture, persuade operational leaders, and negotiate and resolve risks before they became claims, injuries, or lawsuits. Technical knowledge only got me so far. What mattered more was influence—the ability to navigate difficult conversations and understand what other people actually needed. If I couldn't influence people, I couldn't improve safety. If I couldn't navigate conflict, people could get hurt. That realization led me to enroll in Southern Methodist University's master's program in dispute resolution. Ironically, I went to graduate school expecting to become a better negotiator. Instead, I learned how people think.
Negotiation has been part of my career since I was 21. Working in insurance claims meant conflict wasn't something I occasionally encountered; it was the job description. Most people assume claims are about money. However, they rarely are. Money is usually the final agreement, but it's seldom the real issue. Behind nearly every dispute lies something deeper: Someone wanted to feel heard, someone wanted respect, someone wanted acknowledgment that something unfair had happened, or someone just wanted an explanation.
The longer I worked in claims, the more I realized that a successful negotiation depended far less on having the perfect argument and far more on understanding what the other person valued. Without realizing it, I was studying conflict long before I ever opened a graduate school textbook.
Why Self-Awareness Matters
As I moved into leading operational leadership development, I noticed that conflict rarely revealed a person's character so much as it revealed their habits. Regardless of title, experience, or technical expertise, most leaders instinctively responded to disagreement the same way, every time. The response wasn't necessarily intentional; it was familiar.
Faced with resistance, some leaders became more assertive, pushing harder to gain commitment; when that healthy assertiveness drifted too far without enough support for others, it became dominating—a high-challenge, low-support approach that shuts down dialogue instead of strengthening it. Others responded by gathering more information, convinced that additional facts or analysis would eventually produce the right answer. Some focused first on preserving the relationship, softening the conversation, or searching for a compromise. Others quietly withdrew, hoping time, circumstances, or someone else would resolve the issue for them.
None of these responses is inherently right or wrong; each can be remarkably effective under the right circumstances. The trouble starts when a natural tendency becomes our only strategy—when, without realizing it, we approach every conflict exactly the same way, regardless of the people involved, the stakes, or the outcome we're trying to achieve. That's the predictability trap: Our habitual response becomes so consistent that the people around us—and our counterparties across the table—learn to anticipate and manage it, long before we do.
The Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument gives us language for five distinct approaches to conflict.
The most effective leaders know when to use each one and have the self-awareness to recognize when their default style is no longer serving the situation. The goal isn't to master one style; it's to recognize when the moment calls for a different one. Leadership maturity comes from expanding our repertoire so we consciously choose the approach that best serves the situation, rather than simply reacting out of habit.
Task Conflict Versus Relationship Conflict
One of the most valuable lessons that I carried through my construction career was reinforced years later when I became certified in the Giant Worldwide Empowered program for women in construction. It came from Adam Grant's book, Think Again—not all conflict deserves the same label.
Dr. Grant distinguishes between relationship conflict and task conflict. Too often, we assume that because a conversation feels uncomfortable, the relationship itself is in trouble. In reality, many disagreements have very little to do with the relationship and everything to do with the task. Relationship conflict gets personal—it attacks motives, questions intentions, and erodes trust. Task conflict, by contrast, challenges ideas, assumptions, and methods. It asks, "Is there a better way to do this?" rather than "What's wrong with you?"
Throughout my career in construction, I've found that the healthiest leadership teams aren't the ones that avoid disagreement—they're the ones that debate ideas vigorously while continuing to respect one another. Healthy task conflict leads to better decisions because it forces us to examine assumptions, test alternatives, and consider perspectives that we may otherwise overlook. As leaders, our job isn't to eliminate conflict—it's to keep it from becoming personal. When we build an environment where people can challenge ideas without attacking individuals, conflict becomes one of our greatest tools for innovation, better decisions, and stronger cultures.
Bringing this Back to the Jobsite
For construction risk professionals, conflict is not a distraction from the work; it is the work. Every negotiation with a subcontractor, every disputed change order, every safety conversation on a site walk, and every claim discussion with an owner's counsel are all an opportunity to practice self-awareness. The next time that you feel your default response taking over—the urge to push harder, to give in, to walk away, or to keep gathering data—pause and ask whether that habit is serving the moment … or simply serving your comfort. That pause is where leadership begins.
References
Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann, Thomas–Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, Myers–Briggs Company.
Adam Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, Viking, 2021.
Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton, Getting to Yes, Penguin Books, 1981.
Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Jossey–Bass, 2002.
Amy Edmondson, The Fearless Organization, Wiley, 2018.
Five Voices leadership framework, Giant Worldwide.
Research summarized by Adam Grant and others demonstrates that teams with healthy task conflict and low relationship conflict consistently outperform teams that suppress disagreement or personalize it.
Opinions expressed in Expert Commentary articles are those of the author and are not necessarily held by the author's employer or IRMI. Expert Commentary articles and other IRMI Online content do not purport to provide legal, accounting, or other professional advice or opinion. If such advice is needed, consult with your attorney, accountant, or other qualified adviser.