Your Fear of Conflict Is the Most Expensive Blind Spot in Your Business
You’ve got the idea. You can see the move three steps before anyone else in the room. You know where this needs to go. And you’re holding back because the last time you brought something new to the table, you got the look.
The furrowed brow. The arms crossed. The “I don’t know about this.” And instead of pressing forward, you pulled back. Softened it. Tabled it. Told yourself you’d bring it up again when the timing was better.
The timing was never better. And the business stalled exactly where you left it.
You’re not avoiding conflict. You’re avoiding leadership.
Here’s what I see with almost every high-performing founder and executive I work with: they are wired to go first. First into the market. First with the idea. First to see what nobody else sees yet. That’s not ego, it’s a pattern. It’s how their operating system works. And it’s the exact thing that built their company.
But they haven’t fully owned it. They still want consensus before they move. They still want their team to “get it” before they commit. And they interpret resistance, which is inevitable when you take people somewhere they’ve never been, as a signal that the idea might be wrong.
It’s not wrong. They’re just confused. And confused people push back. That’s physics, not personal.
Resistance is not the problem. It’s the operating environment.
When you are consistently the person in the room who sees what nobody else sees, you have to stop being surprised when people don’t see it. That’s not a flaw in your team. That’s a feature of going first. The question isn’t whether resistance will show up. The question is what you do with it when it does.
Most founders do one of two things. They either bulldoze, force the vision through with sheer authority or they retreat. Both cost you. Bulldozing burns trust. Retreating burns momentum. And the business pays for both.
There’s a third option that almost nobody talks about, and it changes everything.
Shift from defense to enrollment.
Enrollment is not persuasion. It’s not selling your team on your brilliance. It’s bringing them into the story. It sounds like this: “Here’s how we got here. Here’s how this connects to our mission. Here’s why I think this matters. And here’s where I need your help.”
That last part is the leverage point. “How can you help me move this forward?” is one of the most powerful questions a leader can ask, because it shifts the team from spectators to participants. They stop resisting and start building. Not because you convinced them, but because you enrolled them.
Your staff is typically behind you. They chose to be there. They believe in what you’re building. They’re just not sure about the next step because they can’t see three moves ahead. That’s not their job. That’s yours. Their job is to execute once they understand the direction. Your job is to make that direction clear.
The real cost of fear-based leadership.
Here’s the part that should make you uncomfortable: every time you hold back an idea because you’re afraid of pushback, you’re not protecting your team. You’re protecting yourself. You’re protecting yourself from the discomfort of someone not immediately agreeing with you. And that instinct, that need for everyone to be on board before you move, is the single biggest bottleneck in your business right now.
You cannot simultaneously go first and need everyone’s permission. Those two things do not occupy the same space. One has to go. And if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you already know which one needs to stay.
The ideas you’re sitting on, the ones that make your team nervous, the ones that haven’t been done in your industry, the ones you keep softening to make more palatable, those are the exact moves your business needs. The friction you’re avoiding is the friction of progress.
So, here’s the question.
Where in your business right now are you mistaking your team’s confusion for opposition? Where are you reading “I don’t understand” as “I don’t agree”? And how much is that misread costing you, in speed, in execution, in the capacity of your entire operation?
You were built to go first. That part isn’t going to change. The only question is whether you’re going to keep apologizing for it or start leading like you actually believe it.
Video Transcript:
One of the things I coach about probably the most is the fact that once you understand you have a trait that is in excess, understanding how that. Integrates into your life, how it’s affecting your life in positive ways, how it’s affecting your life in negative ways. Anyways, I talk about that all the time.
Today, what I really wanna focus on is the fact that in knowing that information, you have to basically make different choices. Or live with the outcomes of what is happening. That’s really where you’re at. You either need to evolve or you need to acknowledge that you’re just choosing to stay stuck because now you know more.
And here’s my example, that’s so important. So this week I had a really direct conversation with a client about the fact that, and this is many of my clients as different thinkers as unconventional leaders. They often do things that no one’s done before. They’re often what I call first, you’re the first to do this thing.
You’re the first to do that. You’re, and when. At some point, you have to embrace that. If you are, if that’s how you are wired, if that’s how you come into this world, is an ideas person, a creative person, a leader, you’re running company, multimillion dollar companies. Obviously you’re a leader, obviously you’re doing these things.
At some point you have to acknowledge this is who I am and if this is who I am. If I am the type of person that at times is first. To do things is first to do there. Your fear of conflict is completely limiting your growth because guess what? When you are first. There’s a ton of conflict. People feel about that.
They don’t know how to respond. They’ve not seen this before. They’ve not dealt with that before. So their initial response is, I don’t know, and I don’t think so. But that’s not healthy for you. That’s not healthy for them. We need to, as a society, evolve. The market and the environment you live in needs to invol evolve.
That requires people that go first, and I’m talking to that group of people and what I’ve found is so often, one, you haven’t fully acknowledged that it’s not an ego thing, it’s just acknowledging, hey, this is really, I mean, we can look at a pattern of behavior. I tend to do this understanding that by being that type of person, everybody isn’t gonna understand.
People are going to resist. There’s definitely going to be things that slow you down and none of that can stop you from moving forward, and you need to get stronger, wiser, more confident in that. When you start to hear those things, you go, oh yeah, that’s right. This is the part where. I’m leading them into a space they don’t understand.
They’re confused. I can do this, I can do this for them, and I’m just first, it’s not their job to understand. It’s not their job to agree with me. All I’m asking of them is to follow, is to say, oh, this is a good idea. I’ll follow that. But it means you as a leader, once you know and understand, guess what?
I’m kind of a, at times, I’m a first person in these environments. You have to have the confidence to lead the team through that. That means that fear of conflict that you have, you gotta put that on the shelf and say, you know what? This isn’t conflict. This is just them learning, asking questions, and wanting to come with on the journey.
I’m first my role, but I really recognize for myself even my role as being a first in a variety of areas is to just. Hold space for other people to catch up is to educate, is to enroll. When you shift from resistance, oh my gosh, they’re not agreeing with me. Oh my gosh, am I, is this idea not that great?
Once you shift out of that and stop. Worrying about yourself, your own ego, your own lack of self-confidence, your own worthiness. Once you step out of that, then you can step into sales and enrollment with your team, with other people, with the market, we can shift into that. How do I enroll them in this process?
How do I invite them to be successful with me? How do I get. Have them behind me a hundred percent. ’cause your staff is typically behind you a hundred percent. They’re just not sure on the next steps. They’re not, they have no idea how you got where you’re taking them. They definitely don’t see that. ’cause that’s why you are the leader.
That’s why you are the founder. That’s why you are one of those types of people that goes first. And in doing that, there is a need to step up in your leadership in a different way and take that onus. Of being first, of needing to enroll people. Not being surprised when people resist. Not being surprised when people actually, at times sa work very hard to sabotage you.
’cause they don’t understand, so they just assume things and stick you in a bucket. It’s been happening my entire life and when I talk with my clients. It’s hap to them their entire lives. So instead of pretending like this is a pattern that isn’t happening, recognize it is a pattern that’s happening, that’s going to continue to happen.
’cause you’re not going to slow down anytime soon. That’s not your intention. That’s not what I want for you. I want you to keep going, but I want you to keep going. Framing it differently for yourself when you hit some of that conflict, when you hit some of that fear, when you hit. Those types of barrage of questions.
Why are we doing this? This, I don’t know. I’ve not seen this before. When you get that look from people, it’s like, hmm, seen that before. Now you know, you just need to shift your internal dialogue to say, oh, that’s right. I’m gonna take them somewhere where they haven’t been before. We’re gonna do a first type of thing.
I need to enroll them. How do I do that best? The best way to enroll people is one to tell them the story. You know what I was, here’s how we got to this place. Here’s how this isn’t going against your values, it’s going against your beliefs. Going against everything that we’ve done. Here’s how this actually is directly under our mission and vision for the company, and here are the ways I could really use your help in moving this forward.
Can you help me? That’s enrollment. How can you help me? What would you, what do you see out of this that we could do differently to get it launched out? How can we reach our cluster customers faster, quicker, and meet their needs? What have you been hearing from customers that might go with this that maybe we can expand on this?
And I’ll tell you my client’s face, as I explained this to him, he was. Bewildered and a little bit and went, what? So I’m first, he goes, but that feels like I’m being cocky. And I said, no, you can be, if you’re gonna run around and have I’m number one shirt and be listen to me, I’m always first I, you know, like I come up with all these great ideas, this, that’s great.
You’re gonna need to definitely have that ego and that, um, energy if you’re gonna go out and get investors and so forth. Totally. But if you’re not in that type of position, your ego can relax. Your confidence does need to be behind this, but you need to lead from a different space. You cannot lead from a space of fear.
You just, you can’t. Once you step into a space where I know this is where we need to go, and no one’s gone here before, anywhere around them, they’re not gonna quite understand this. That is when you lead from, you find your confidence, you find your. Assertiveness and you, and you instill that in them. You bring that to the conversation.
Say, no, I know you haven’t seen this before. That’s okay. That’s okay. I get it. And here’s how we’re gonna work with that. Trust me, you’re, you’re gonna see this as being a huge advantage. So I’d love to hear about your stories and understanding. I hope this has shifted you. I hope you can understand if you are a different thinker, if you are an outside of the box thinker, an unconventional leader, you’re doing this all the time, but when you go at it with resistance, meaning, oh, I don’t want conflict involved and I want everybody to like my idea, those two things actually cannot hold space at the same time.
That’s the reality of it. And so you are holding back your ideas. You’re holding back actually the business’s progress. When you think that these two things can be in the same space at the same time, they actually can’t. What can be in that space is. Great new ideas, things that need to happen. We are moving forward.
Yes, you haven’t seen them before. I get it makes you a little nervous. I get that you don’t know exactly how we’re gonna make all this happen. And trust me when I say that, we will. And part of how come we are going to is because you are part of my team and you help to make that happen. I want you to lead differently.
I want you to see yourself differently. You do not have to shift your ego, you do not have to change up a lot of things, but you definitely have to owe. The fact that you do that and people want to follow you, they are inspired by your visions, your ideas. That’s why you are, and the position you are in and understand at times.
Other people may not understand that at all, and in those moments you reach out to other people that are first types of people building things, those types of things. And then you just smile every once in a while and be like, oh, catch up. It’ll be okay. I’m JoyGenea unconventional leadership coach.
Champion for those leaders that are firsts type of people. I want your success in so many ways. You are leading the world in incredible manners, and I want you to keep that up and have the immense confidence necessary to do that. If I can help you in any way, please feel free to have a free coaching session with me.
If right now is not the right time, follow me here. Definitely follow me on any of the platforms that I’m on, and let’s continue to grow you as a leader and as an unconventional leader. Someone who’s thinking outside the box and doing things that make people go, huh. And then, oh, ’cause you’re pretty incredible.