Holding the Tension

As social trust declines and polarization seeps into workplaces, schools, and civic institutions, the questions of when and how to support or encourage interpersonal disagreement within organizations have become increasingly fraught. Avoiding disagreement can create a temporary sense of ease, but this is often an illusion that hinders long-term trust, resilience, and organizational success. On the other hand, engaging in disagreement is not without risk. In polarized contexts, disagreement can quickly escalate into conflict, with negative consequences including team dissatisfaction and weaker organizational performance. What’s more, because organizations are foundational to society, the way they handle disagreement shapes civic life beyond their walls, strengthening or weakening trust, democratic norms, and civic engagement.

In the face of these tensions, many leaders and practitioners still lack the language, structures, and skills to navigate disagreements productively when they inevitably arise. This article series, presented in partnership with the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University and informed by core civic studies frameworks, brings together scholars, attorneys, leadership coaches, and social impact advisers to share ideas and frameworks that can help social sector leaders engage constructively with disagreement and conflict, with the goal of building organizational and civic strength. Drawing on scholarship in these areas, contributors define interpersonal disagreement as a difference in how people interpret situations, priorities, values, or goals. While disagreement is necessary for conflict, conflict includes emotional distress or behavior that impedes people’s ability to achieve their goals. 

With these definitions in mind, the articles elaborate on three premises:

1. Approaches to disagreement that don’t take organizational dynamics into account are counterproductive.

2. Organizational structure and cultures are upstream of and often shape interpersonal tensions.

3. Constructive disagreement requires that all members, not just formal leaders, have the skills to create space for and engage dissent in context-aware ways.

Beyond the possibility of greater efficiency and productivity, the articles show how constructive disagreement and the ability to identify and address conflict before it becomes destructive are essential to sustained social cohesion. They also emphasize individual and relational capacity, treating disagreement not as a failure to avoid, but as a source of information, and a catalyst for integrity, learning, and collective resilience.