By Kathryn Deen, PAR

Conflict is not the enemy in associations — a broken conflict system is. When disagreement gets avoided, rerouted into side conversations, or handled by the wrong people, teams lose momentum, opportunities stall, and revenue suffers. Associations that get better at surfacing tension, involving the right voices, and resolving issues fairly are better positioned to make smart decisions, move swiftly, and grow with confidence. 

Conflict Is a Revenue Issue

Conflict and culture scientist Jamie Notter encourages leaders to stop treating conflict as a people or personality problem. Instead, he frames it as a systems problem that shapes how decisions are made, who gets heard, and whether good ideas survive contact with organizational life.

“Conflict isn’t the problem,” Notter says. “The problem is your system. Can it handle the conflicts you have, and does it nudge people into the behaviors that make conflict actually work?”

That framing matters for association teams because so many revenue decisions are cross-functional by nature. Sponsorship, membership, marketing, product, finance, and IT touch the member and partner experience. When those groups are misaligned, the cost shows up in delays, mixed messages, bad launches, and missed deals. 

Five Patterns That Quietly Undercut Growth

Notter identifies five ways conflict conversations commonly go sideways:

  1. Teams avoid the conversation entirely. Leaders set a bold target, staff privately doubt it, and no one directly challenges the assumptions. 
  2. Then comes the “meeting after the meeting,” when decisions that looked settled in the room get renegotiated in hallways or side chats. 
  3. The wrong people are left out — often the people who will have to implement the decision later. 
  4. Old resentments hijack the conversation and turn a decision into a replay of past frustrations. 
  5. The issue appears resolved, then resurfaces weeks later because the underlying system never changed.

“Even if you get a good plan on paper, the resolution comes back from the dead because the system never changes,” Notter says.

This is where conflict becomes expensive. A sponsorship offer gets approved before the implementation team weighs in. A pricing change gets debated in detail while the bigger market strategy goes unresolved. A member-facing campaign gets launched before marketing, membership, and data teams agree on the message or process. 

What Good Conflict Looks Like

The goal is not to have less conflict; it’s to have better conflict. The damage comes from weak systems that cannot route conflict productively.

“Good conflict feels real and alive,” Notter says. “It’s not always comfortable, but it produces better decisions, stronger relationships, and bottom-line results you can see.”

Change consultant Skot Waldron makes a similar point about discomfort and resistance: “We have to be dissatisfied enough … The discomfort of my current situation is not as uncomfortable as the change is going to be, so I'm not going to worry about it … Until that discomfort is high enough in the current situation, nothing's going to change.” 

Good conflict helps teams name that dissatisfaction openly and turn it into momentum, instead of letting quiet frustration stall decisions in the background.

In practice, good conflict means the right issues get surfaced at the right time with the right people. It means teams can challenge each other without getting stuck in drama or avoidance. It means decisions end in resolutions people see as effective and fair.

Four Levers Leaders Can Use

Leaders can strengthen conflict systems through four levers, Notter says:
  1. Process is about how work actually happens. It includes meeting agendas, decision workflows, and how teams surface issues before they become expensive.
  2. Governance is about the rules: which conflicts matter most, when they should be escalated, and how fairness gets defined.
  3. Capacity is the skill side, such as difficult conversations, listening, feedback, and negotiation.
  4. Accountability is measuring whether the system is actually producing better outcomes.
Notter makes clear that training alone is not enough to solve the problem; processes and governance are critical.

Practical Next Steps

For leaders who want to act now, Notter offers a simple place to start:

  1. Draft three criteria for deciding which conflicts deserve priority. He suggests options such as financial impact, strategic impact, and member or customer impact. 
  2. Add one recurring question to key meetings: Who else should be in the room before this decision moves forward?
  3. Define basic escalation rules. What should teams solve themselves? What belongs with leadership? What needs a cross-functional group instead of another round of updates? 

These small changes create clarity quickly.

Tara Puckey, MBA, FASAE, CAE, CMP, executive director of the Radio Television Digital News Association, encourages leaders to pay special attention to critics, former members, and lapsed partners. 

“You really want to see the transition between what initially excited them about your organization and then where that went wrong, how that went wrong, and how you lost them in that space,” she says. 

That kind of insight can turn painful relationship breakdowns into the raw material for better conflict systems and smarter strategic choices.

The larger shift is cultural. Leadership is no longer just about making bold calls as an individual. Increasingly, it is about designing systems that help the organization think, adapt, and execute better together. For associations trying to build stronger revenue engines, conflict is not a side issue to smooth over. Handled well, it becomes part of the infrastructure that helps business performance and mission success grow together.

Additional Resources