A solution-focused culture grows when leaders treat conflict as the starting point for a better answer and point the conversation towards what happens next. The question in the room becomes what it will take for the collaboration to work again. That attitude starts with the leader, long before it shows up in any values statement.
Conflict comes with working together, because different personalities bring different perspectives. The video above opens with a scene from the working life of a managing director in the service industry: walking into the management meeting with a sharpened knife in your pocket, armed against every argument and ready for a war of words.
A solution-focused culture is the everyday habit of a team or organisation to raise conflicts openly and resolve them together, with an eye on the future. It gets worn in over many conversations, until a positive, forward-looking way of handling conflict feels normal.
For leaders, conflict is information: it tells you where interests or expectations are drifting apart. Suppress it and you lose the information. Escalate it and you usually lose the other side’s trust.
In a 1999 study of work teams, Amy Edmondson found that teams learn more when members can raise mistakes and concerns without fear of being embarrassed. She called this psychological safety, and a team needs exactly that room to work through conflict in the open.
The knife in the video stands for a familiar kind of preparation: collecting arguments and anticipating attacks. In the meeting, it turns into an exchange of blows, with both sides defending their positions.
A war of words usually produces a winner and a loser, and the loser starts gathering ammunition for the next round. So the conflict stays in the room, just quieter. There are better ways.
The better way starts before the meeting, with one question to yourself: What should be better after this conversation than before it? If you’ve got an answer, you walk into the room differently.
Unresolved conflict throws sand in the gears. Worse, it costs the company gains it could have made.
Decisions get postponed because two division heads can’t agree. Information starts travelling only through official channels, and people quickly learn which topics are better left alone.
That’s why building a solution-focused culture pays off. Every conflict that reaches the table early and openly costs less than one that keeps running in the background for months.
The attitude takes shape in the conversations leaders have. I see four habits in leaders who handle conflict well.
Goal before argument: Before the conversation, they decide what outcome they want. The arguments come afterwards.
Interests behind positions: In the conversation, they ask what matters to the other person about their position. Underneath there are often interests that fit together more easily than the positions do.
Own your share: Naming your own contribution to the conflict makes it easier for the other side to do the same. It takes a moment of courage and often saves a whole meeting.
An agreement with a date: The conversation ends with a concrete next step, a name and a deadline. Follow-up happens at the next meeting, without reproach.
How an organisation turns this into binding ground rules and builds trust is the subject of Conflict management: What leads to a constructive conflict culture. That one looks at the whole company’s conflict culture, this one at the individual leader’s attitude.
Conflict is a prompt to work out better solutions. Two forward-looking questions work particularly well for me. The first, “How would we know the problem is solved?”, makes the goal visible.
And the second puts the goal in the diary: “What’s the smallest step we can take by the end of the week?”
Questions like these move attention from the past to the future. Blame loses its weight without anyone having to ban it.
A solution-focused culture starts at the top. Teams watch closely how their leaders deal with disagreement and take their cues from it. In my work with top managers and leadership teams, the clearest changes happen where senior leadership takes the first step.
There’s a limit, though. Some conflicts are about scarce budgets or power, and a good conversational attitude rarely settles those on its own. Then someone has to make a decision.
Solution focus also mustn’t turn into a layer of harmony that covers up real differences. A conflict that gets “solved” too early tends to come back.
It’s the habit of a team or company to raise conflicts openly and resolve them together, looking forward. The guiding question is what should work better from now on.
Conflict management covers the rules and processes an organisation uses to deal with conflict. The culture describes the attitude leaders and teams bring into those conversations. Good rules only work when the attitude fits.
Before your next difficult conversation, decide what should be better afterwards. And close it with a concrete next step and a date.
Further reading on hofmann.coach: Difficult conversations: 15 ways leaders get the best outcome · About Cristian Hofmann, executive coach · Leader as coach: How trust and standing grow in your team · Co-leadership: How two leaders at the top make it work
Note: This article was first published on 04.07.2023 and was revised and expanded in October 2026.
Cristian Hofmann is an executive coach in Zurich and Schaffhausen (MAS Coaching & Supervision BSO, Forbes contributor). Over more than 20 years he has coached more than 1,500 leaders: CEOs, executive boards and leadership teams in Switzerland, with measurably agreed goals and, on request, pay-for-results. More about Cristian Hofmann.
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