When you think of a toxic work culture, what comes to mind? Screaming bosses? Fierce competition? Endless arguments? Not me. In my experience, if there’s one telltale sign that a culture is in decline, it’s not shouting.

It’s silence.

“We’re polite to death,” a client recently told me. “Nobody says what they actually think. We smirk and nod in meetings, then spend the next week in sidebar conversations complaining about what we just agreed to.”

Sound familiar?

We've been conditioned to see conflict as dysfunction. That challenging means being difficult. That truly great teams don’t have these uncomfortable clashes.

But the absence of conflict isn't a sign of a healthy, high-performing culture—it's a red flag for low psychological safety and high avoidant behaviors. The costs are high too: time wasted, focus lost, and value sacrificed on the altar of comfortable complacency.

It turns out the presence of conflict, processed proactively, is the hallmark of a transformational team.

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“Know that you cannot meaningfully agree until you have meaningfully disagreed, and that disagreement requires honest assessment of ourselves and our conditions.”

—Autumn Brown, Holding Change​

US X THEM

Fighting The Good Fight

In our work of leading change, conflict is a given. In transformational times, we humans will naturally sort ourselves into camps of us vs. them—acquiring vs. acquired teams in a merger, tenured employees vs. new hires in a turnaround, leaders vs. staff in an RTO mandate.

But it’s also a gift. Conflict is where our perspectives bump up against the views and ideas of others and, if we’re doing it right, become more expansive as a result. When practiced intentionally, conflict grows us personally and professionally, deepens our connections, sharpens our solutions and elevates our impact.

So how do we fight the good fight? Let’s start by identifying what kind of conflict we’re in: task conflict or relationship conflict.

Task conflict is about the what and the how, centering on ideas, approaches and decisions.

This is the kind of conflict we actually want to have more of—it yields better solutions, creative breakthroughs, and stronger outcomes. But often we avoid it because we’ve confused it with (or are worried about sparking) relationship conflict.

Relationship conflict is about interpersonal dynamics, personalities and communication styles. It's mostly about the who, as relationship conflicts tend to make people into problems.

We want to do this less, but even relationship conflict serves a purpose, surfacing important truths about how we work together. Bruce Tuckman’s 4 stages of team development map a progression from forming to storming to norming and finally (maybe) performing. Every high-performing team goes through storming—which is characterized by conflict. In fact, the only way to reach performing is to go through that conflict. Not over it, under it, or around it. Through it.

That’s why, challenging is one of three essential practices of transformational leaders. (The other two are coaching and co-creating—more on those in August and September). Without it, we can’t create the conditions for our teams to achieve a purposeful vision together.

storming haiku

on sunshine alone
green things will wither and burn
we all thirst for rain

In Practice: From Us vs. Them to We (Starting with Me)

We’re fighting the good fight when we can engage in task conflict while maintaining—or even strengthening—our relationships. This is what it means to challenge gracefully, and here’s the secret: It has much less to do with what somebody else says or does, and pretty much everything to do with how we show up.

I’ve developed this step-by-step SPACES practice to help teams elevate their conflict from relationship to task, from reactive to creative.

Ok Reader, it’s your turn. Think of one conversation you’ve been avoiding—either with a team member, colleague, or even in your personal life. Something that matters but feels difficult. Or perhaps it’s more general: a relationship that is asking to deepen through a graceful challenge.

And practice with the first three steps of SPACES. You don't have to have the conversation yet, just notice what shifts when you approach conflict from this foundation. (I call it taking yourself to the SPA. 😉 It works!)

If you’re ready to fight the good fight, without destroying your relationships in the process, join me on July 11.👇 You'll apply SPACES to a conflict in your own work/life and I'll share how my "polite to death" client put it to work with her peers during a contentious restructuring—and unlocked new solutions that fast-tracked their momentum.

Trust me, you're going to want to take this one back to your team. (Yes, you can also hire me to train your team on SPACES.)

July Mini-Retreat: The Good Fight - Challenging Gracefully

Ever notice how the most important conversations are often the ones we avoid? Whether giving difficult feedback, questioning a decision, or addressing conflict head-on, challenging others takes courage—and skill.

July’s Mini-Retreat invites you to transform your fears of confrontation into creative collaboration. You'll learn to challenge in ways that strengthen (not strain) relationships, and speak up without shutting others down.

Friday, July 11, 2025​
5 - 6:30 p.m. GMT
12 noon - 1:30 p.m. ET
9 - 10:30 a.m. PT

Reminder: Mini-Retreats are free for RadiantLeader.co members, who can RSVP here. 💛

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Big news, y’all: Radiant Change Book + Course

🥁 Drumroll please... I'm writing my first book! The working title is Radiant Change: 10 Truths for Living and Leading in Transformational Times. It will be a simple guide, equal parts concrete and contemplative, to how change really works, and how to show up with intention and create real impact in an increasingly complex world.

I'll keep you posted as the process of writing and publishing this little book unfolds. RadiantLeader.co members will get first access as beta readers, so join the membership if you'd like to see and offer feedback on early excerpts—I'd love to feature your change wisdom in this slim volume (as I keep calling it to myself). Otherwise, you can have it in your hands in 2026.

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Can't wait that long? If you need to lead real change now and want to apply these insights asap, you can register for the Fall 2025 cohort of my ARC Change Leadership Lab, which invites you to apply the 10 Truths of Radiant Change to a real change you're leading in your organization or community.

Find out why ARC has been called "a course for leaders looking to do big things," "a fresh and super-pragmatic approach that equips you to work with complexity," and "a master class on change." It will change how you lead change forever.

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Onward together.

Kristen Lisanti
​Radiant Change​
​Training Leaders to Transform Cultures