Most people avoid conflict. That instinct is understandable — disagreement is uncomfortable, and keeping the peace feels easier in the moment. But there’s a meaningful difference between conflict that damages relationships and conflict that strengthens them.
Tom calls it positive conflict, or professional friction. And in his experience working with business owners across a wide range of industries, the willingness to engage in it thoughtfully and intentionally is one of the clearest markers of a leader who is still growing.
Not Every Disagreement Is Worth Having
The first thing to understand about positive conflict is that it requires discernment. Not every difference of opinion needs to become a conversation, and not every conversation needs to become a debate.
Part of developing this skill is learning to recognize when something is worth engaging on. Some things genuinely don’t matter. Others do. The ability to tell the difference, and to reserve your energy for the moments that actually count, is itself a form of leadership judgment.
The Mindset That Makes It Possible
Positive conflict only works if you enter it with a specific mindset: the honest acknowledgment that you don’t have all the answers.
That sounds simple, but it runs counter to how many leaders operate. When you’ve built something, developed expertise and earned the trust of clients and employees, it’s natural to default to confidence in your own perspective. The problem is that confidence, left unchecked, can close off the very conversations that would help you improve.
If you engage in friction already convinced you’re right, it isn’t really a conversation — it’s a performance. The point of positive conflict is to remain open to the possibility that the other person has something worth hearing, even when it’s difficult to hear it.
Growth Requires Willingness
In Tom’s experience, the most common obstacle to growth isn’t a lack of information or opportunity. It’s the unwillingness, or the unawareness, of the need to grow at all.
Some people recognize areas where they could improve but aren’t motivated to do the work. Others don’t yet see the gap. Both situations lead to the same outcome: staying where you are while the business, the industry and the people around you continue to move.
The leaders who grow consistently are the ones who stay genuinely curious. They ask questions, invite pushback, and don’t confuse being challenged with being attacked. And when a conversation gets difficult, they lean in rather than shut down.
Keeping It Constructive
None of this means approaching every interaction as an opportunity to argue. The “positive” in positive conflict matters. The goal is to surface better thinking, not to win. That means staying composed, listening before responding and keeping the focus on the issue rather than the person.
When those conditions are in place, professional friction doesn’t damage relationships and, instead, it deepens them. The people you can disagree with productively are often the people you trust most.
What This Looks Like in Practice
At Dunn CPA Firm, we work closely with business owners on decisions that involve real stakes like financial structure, tax strategy, business planning and long-term goals. Those conversations aren’t always simple, and the most valuable ones often involve some degree of friction.
We don’t shy away from those moments. When something in a client’s approach needs to be reconsidered, we say so. Not because we’re always right, but because that kind of honest engagement is what a real advisory relationship looks like.
Growth in leadership, in business and in any meaningful relationship requires the willingness to stay in the conversation, even when it gets uncomfortable.
I have to engage in professional friction or positive conflict is another way to say it. It’s the only way you could grow in any relationship. You have to be willing to engage in positive conflict. And it doesn’t mean every single thing in your life you have to go through positive conflict. I tell my wife that all the time this isn’t worth disagreeing with me on. Who cares? Save it for when it matters.
But yeah, it kind of starts with, you know, you got to have the energy to end the judgment to know.
When something is worth engaging in positive friction or conflict.
And then you have to have the mindset that you don’t know everything. The reason why you’re engaging in the positive conflict is you got to realize you don’t know everything.
And then you have to be then willing to want to grow.
Want to grow.
And I would say, you know, that is probably the number one weakness that I run into in other people.
Is they’re unwillingness to want to grow or complete unaware of the awareness of the need to grow.
Just in all areas of their life.
But yeah, and I think to emphasize the positive part of conflict or friction, always keep it positive.
But don’t, yeah, when it makes, when it’s worth it, go for it. That’s how you’ll grow and learn.
