The leader who wants to be liked: what conflict avoidance costs

“It’s nothing serious, we’ll manage somehow.”

The team leader says this in a meeting when two colleagues “forget” to send each other the figures for the third time that week. Everyone in the room knows it won’t be “somehow”. Everyone knows that within the hour one of them will come to the leader privately to complain about the other, and that the other will do the same tomorrow. And everyone knows the leader will nod to both, say they understand, and do nothing. Because they don’t want the atmosphere to turn sour. Because it matters to them that people like them.

A leader who wants to be liked is not a bad person. Often quite the opposite: warm, attentive, helpful, a good listener. People like telling them what is bothering them. But this piece is about the price the team pays — and, in the end, the leader too — when conflict avoidance becomes a way of leading. I will look at it the way I look at a family: as a system in which every role carries something and every silence drains away somewhere.

When “it’ll be fine” is the most expensive sentence on the team

Conflict in a team is not a fault in the system. It is information. It tells you that two needs, two ways of working or two views of the same task have not been brought into line. When a leader smooths a conflict over before anyone has even put it into words, the information doesn’t disappear. It simply moves — into the body, into the corridor, into emails with too many people copied in, into the café after work.

How much it matters what a leader does with this is shown by large studies of the workplace, too. In its 2015 report on the state of American managers, Gallup estimated that the manager accounts for at least 70% of the variance in engagement between teams. In other words: two teams in the same company, with the same pay and the same rules, can work in completely different climates — and much of that difference rests with the person leading them. The leader is not just one more member of the team. They are the one who decides what may be said in it.

A kind leader who avoids conflict sends a very clear message, even if they never say it out loud: here, we don’t talk about problems. People learn this rule faster than you might think. After a few weeks everyone follows it — even those who came from teams where things were different.

Why the kind leader keeps putting it off

Behind conflict avoidance there is almost never laziness. Underneath it is fear, often a very old one. Fear that the conversation will get out of hand. That someone will get angry or burst into tears. That the leader will come across as harsh, unfair, “like the boss I used to hate”. And deepest of all: fear that people will stop liking them.

This fear has its own logic. Avoidance brings immediate relief — the tension in the chest eases, the meeting ends peacefully, the day moves on. I wrote about how avoidance works in anxiety in Anxiety and avoidance: why avoiding helps you today and harms you tomorrow. In leadership the mechanism is the same: every postponed problem is relief today and a bigger problem tomorrow. Only now it isn’t just you paying the interest, but everyone who works with you.

Many leaders describe the same inner scene: they know what needs to be said, they even have the sentences ready, and then, at the very moment they should say them, they feel their throat tighten — and they say something softer. “Maybe you could be a bit more careful.” “I know there’s a lot on.” Somewhere between the head and the mouth, the message melts.

What the team pays: uncertainty

In the psychology of leadership this style has a name that doesn’t sound particularly flattering: laissez-faire, or “let it be”. It describes a leader who formally holds the position but doesn’t respond when problems arise — doesn’t decide, doesn’t step in, doesn’t set a boundary. For a long time it was treated as neutral, as an absence of leadership that neither harms nor helps.

Norwegian researchers Anders Skogstad, Ståle Einarsen and colleagues showed in 2007 that this is not the case. Employees who described their managers as passive and unresponsive reported more role ambiguity (not knowing exactly what is expected of you), more role conflict (two people expecting opposite things from you) and more conflict with colleagues — and this in turn was linked to greater psychological distress. A passive leader, then, is not an empty space. It is a space that others fill, often those with the loudest voice or the fewest scruples.

Here is the irony that kind leaders find hard to hear: a team led by someone who wants to be liked often doesn’t feel loved, but abandoned. People who work honestly see that those who don’t face no consequences. People in conflict are left alone with it. And people who would like to know where they stand never find out, because the leader tells everyone that everything is fine.

Triangles: where the conflict nobody names goes

In family therapy we know a phenomenon described by Murray Bowen: triangulation. When the tension between two people is too great to bear directly, they pull a third person in. Instead of talking to the father, the mother complains to the daughter. The father allies with the teenager against the mother. The tension between two is spread across three and becomes more bearable — but stays unresolved.

A workplace works in a very similar way. When a leader doesn’t put the conflict between two colleagues on the table, they become the third point of the triangle. Each of the two comes to them separately. Each receives understanding. The leader carries two stories that don’t fit together and nods to both, because they don’t want to disappoint anyone. Over time the triangles multiply: colleagues choose allies and camps form — the piece Office coalitions is about exactly that.

Relational family therapy, in which I am training, emphasises that a system always finds a way to express what cannot be said. If conflict isn’t allowed to show itself in a meeting, it shows itself in delays, in forgotten messages, in sick leave, in good people suddenly leaving. A leader who wants peace doesn’t get it this way. They only get a quieter, more diffuse unrest that is much harder to address.

Psychological safety is not the same as being nice

When leaders hear the term psychological safety, they often take it as permission for what they are already doing: being kind, not burdening people, looking after the atmosphere. Amy Edmondson of Harvard, who introduced the concept into team research in 1999, defined it differently: as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking — asking a question, admitting a mistake, saying “I disagree”, pointing out a problem.

Edmondson stresses repeatedly that psychological safety doesn’t mean simply being nice to each other, and doesn’t mean low expectations. A team in which nobody dares to say that something isn’t working, because it would spoil the atmosphere, isn’t psychologically safe — it is merely polite. Safety shows itself precisely at the moment when something is uncomfortable and can still be said, and nobody is punished or pushed out for it.

So the paradox is this: a leader who is afraid of conflict creates a team in which conflict is something to be afraid of. People learn from the leader’s behaviour that problems are not something we bring to the table. I write about how to give a clear message without the relationship falling apart in How to give difficult feedback without the relationship falling apart.

Where the need to be liked comes from

The need to be liked is not a flaw. It is one of the most human needs we have. The trouble starts when it becomes a condition — when a person feels all right only if everyone in the room is pleased with them. At that point they are no longer leading a team, but constantly taking the temperature around them.

This pattern often begins early. In families where conflict was dangerous — where an argument meant shouting, days of silence or the threat that someone would leave — a child learns that their job is to keep the peace. They become the one who smooths things over, comforts, notices a bad mood before anyone else and tries to fix it. As adults, these people are often exceptionally empathic and pleasant to be around. But once they take on a leadership role, the same skill starts to get in the way: now their job is, at times, to disappoint someone.

I wrote more about how this stance develops and why it holds on so firmly in People-pleasing: when your worth is in other people’s hands. In leadership there is one more layer: a position changes relationships, even when you don’t want it to. People no longer tell you everything, laugh at your jokes a little more than they otherwise would, and your kindness carries a different weight. The piece How power changes relationships is about this. A leader who wants to remain “one of us” has to accept that this is no longer entirely possible — and that this is all right.

How such a conversation might sound

The conversation below is a composite, not a real person. It shows a moment many leaders will recognise: when what lies beneath the avoidance begins to open up.

“I know I should tell Matej that his delays are wrecking everyone’s deadline. But every time he comes into my office, I say something else.”
“What happens inside you just before you would say it?”
“I get hot. I think he’ll be offended. That he’ll tell the others I’ve changed since I became the boss.”
“And if he really did say that?”
“Then I’d be the one who spoiled the atmosphere. At home I was always the one who fixed it.”
“Maybe your job is different now. To bear someone being unhappy with you for a while — and still stay kind.”

This short scene holds the essence: it isn’t that the leader doesn’t know what to say. It’s that their body and an old role tell them it is dangerous. That is why advice along the lines of “just tell them” doesn’t help much. What is needed is a space where the fear can be looked at up close, and some practice in small steps.

Exercise: the conversation you keep putting off

This exercise is for a leader who knows there is at least one conversation on their desk that they keep postponing. You can do it today, in ten minutes, with pen and paper.

1. Write down the conversation you’re putting off in a single sentence. Not the story, just the fact: “Matej’s delays in sending the figures push back the deadline for the whole team.” If it won’t fit into one sentence, that is already information — perhaps you yourself don’t yet know what the problem is.
2. Write down what you fear will happen. Quite concretely: that he’ll be offended, that he’ll cry, that he’ll say you’re being unfair. Then next to each fear write what you would do in that moment. It often turns out that the fear lies less in the consequence than in not knowing how you would bear it.
3. Write down what it costs if you say nothing. To whom? To you, to him, to others in the team. Who is already paying the price of your silence without talking about it?
4. Prepare a single opening sentence. Not the whole conversation. For example: “I’d like to talk about something I find uncomfortable to raise, because I care about you and about the team.” The first sentence is the hardest; once it has been said, the body often eases.
5. Set a day and time. Put it in your calendar as a meeting, not a reminder. After the conversation, write down what actually happened — and compare it with what you feared in step two.

The exercise doesn’t make the conversation pleasant. It makes it possible. And every conversation you have shows your body, little by little, that tension is not a catastrophe. You’ll find a short explanation of how to state your position clearly and respectfully at the same time in the knowledge base under assertiveness.

When a leader starts opening the conversations they used to put off, the team usually doesn’t fall apart. At first it may be a little thrown, because it isn’t used to clarity. But then something unexpected often happens: trust in the leader grows. People sense that there is someone who will stand behind an agreement when things get hard.

Where this view doesn’t apply

I want to be fair to the other side too, because the idea that a leader must “open conflicts” can quickly turn sour.

Not every delay is avoidance. Sometimes it is wise to wait for emotions to settle, to gather the facts, to talk to both people separately before sitting them down together. The difference lies in whether you are preparing for the conversation or retreating from it. The first has a deadline; the second doesn’t.

Not every conflict is yours. A leader isn’t obliged to resolve every bit of friction between adults. If two colleagues don’t like each other but work together properly, sometimes it’s best to leave it that way. There’s more on telling a conflict that needs intervention from one that doesn’t in the knowledge base under conflict.

Sometimes the problem isn’t you but the system above you. A leader who has no authority to change anything, or whose decisions are regularly overturned by senior management, isn’t avoiding conflict out of fear but out of real powerlessness. In that case, the conversation you’re putting off may be one with your own manager.

And becoming strict is not the answer. A leader who has been too lenient for too long sometimes swings to the other extreme and suddenly becomes harsh, which frightens the team even more. The goal isn’t less warmth, but warmth that can withstand uncomfortable sentences. I describe how high standards without warmth affect people in A perfectionist at the head of a team.

And what about the leader?

A leader who avoids conflict is often very tired. They carry the stories of everyone who comes to them privately. They carry unspoken sentences that they turn over in the evening. They carry the feeling that the team may not respect them, and the guilt of knowing they ought to do something. And at the same time they have nobody to talk to about it — the piece Lonely at the top is about this.

If you recognise yourself here, don’t judge yourself. The ability to sense people and keep the peace is valuable; it simply needs to be widened by the capacity to bear other people’s displeasure. That is a skill that can be learned, and it is often less a matter of technique than of an old role you carry with you. In therapy, including relational family therapy, you can look at where that role comes from and what would happen if you set it down a little. It also helps to look calmly at where your boundaries lie — at work and at home.

What to remember

• Conflict avoidance brings the leader brief relief, and the team uncertainty, triangles and a quieter, more diffuse unrest.
• Research shows that passive leadership isn’t neutral: it is linked to more role ambiguity and role conflict, and to employee distress.
• Psychological safety doesn’t mean niceness, but that uncomfortable things can be said without punishment.
• The need to be liked often has its roots in a family where the child was the one who kept the peace.
• The goal isn’t less warmth, but warmth that can hold a sentence others don’t want to hear.