What to Do When Your Leadership Team Doesn't Like Each Other
Team conflict isn't a problem. Acting childish is.
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Year One Revealed Something She Couldn’t Ignore
She’s a high school principal who just closed out year one. She inherited her admin team rather than building it. Relational, observant, the kind of leader whose North Star is simple: are kids happy to be in this building? Year one was for watching and learning. Year two is for the gas pedal.
But before she can floor it, she has to deal with what year one revealed.
One Innocent Question Blew It Open
Graduation went beautifully. Smooth ceremony. No angry parent emails. A win by every measure.
Except one.
The admin team had planned to go out for drinks afterward. A team thing. Then a family emergency pulled her home, so she skipped it.
The rest of the team still went. Almost all of them. They just didn’t tell one AP.
It surfaced days later, by accident. She asked her APs an innocent question — did you guys end up going out? — and watched one face fall.
You didn’t text me?
Then came the tears in her office. Not about one missed night. About what it signaled.
When she talked to the others, their defense was ready: she excludes us all the time. We get it, it’s crappy. But here’s why we felt this way first.
An admin team that isn’t unified. Members who don’t all like each other. A year of quiet resentment, finally out in the open.
And the team stays together next year, so none of it can be waved off.
She Did the Right Things. She Still Felt Like She Caused It.
Guilt, mostly. She’s the one who asked the question. In her mind, the conflict came out because of her.
And she’d already made smart moves. She met with each person privately before they talked to each other. Helped each one see the other’s side. The conversations happened. They went well-ish.
The Question That Changed the Whole Story
The first reframe was about the guilt: don’t feel bad this came out.
For a team to perform at its highest level, buried conflict has to surface.
Was the moment awkward? Sure. But she didn’t create the problem by asking a question. The problem was already there, doing damage in the dark. A portion of the team made a choice, as adults, and that choice had consequences.
She just turned the lights on.
The second beat came from something she’d uncovered in those private conversations. The two who felt excluded all year (the ones with the ready-made defense) got a simple question from her:
“Have you ever told her she makes you feel this way?”
Well... no.
So they wanted her to be a mind reader.
A whole school year of feeling excluded. Zero attempts to say so. Then one night of payback, justified by grievances the colleague had never once heard.
And the standard she set for them is the one worth stealing.
You don’t have to be friends. You don’t have to be friends at all. But you have to have a positive working relationship.
No pettiness. No score-keeping. Talk to each other.
What This Means for Your Team
Surfaced conflict beats buried conflict. The awkward moment isn’t the wound. It’s the start of the repair. If your team looks harmonious because nobody says the hard thing, you don’t have harmony. You have a delay.
