Our Head of Sales and Head of Operations have developed intense personal friction, blaming each other for missed targets and causing their departments to fight. How do we resolve peer conflict at the leadership table before it fractures company culture?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Cracks at the leadership table always manifest as canyons to the rest of the company. When sales and operations enter a feud, frontline employees mimic the behavior, leading to finger-pointing between pipeline generation and service delivery.

To resolve this, you must separate operational friction from personal incompatibility. Pull both leaders into a room with the Integrator and open the Accountability Chart. Look at the five primary roles defined under each seat. In nine out of ten cases, peer conflict stems from ambiguous handoffs between business development and fulfillment, not personality clashes. One leader thinks the other is responsible for scope validation, while the other assumes onboarding handles client expectations.

Take the dispute straight to the Issues List and use IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) to root out the breakdown. Require them to present concrete workflow examples rather than feelings. The Integrator must define where the handoff begins and ends, establishing clear measurables on the weekly Scorecard for each seat.

Once structural ambiguity is eliminated, hold both leaders accountable to your Core Values. Healthy conflict is about passionate ideological debate over business problems. Personal sniping and political posturing are toxic. Make it crystal clear that enterprise health supersedes departmental self-interest. If clear role definitions and a direct conversation do not stop the turf war, you do not have a communication problem; you have a personnel problem, and one or both executives must be replaced.