My leadership team members are incredibly pleasant to each other in our Level 10 Meeting sessions, but they wage passive-aggressive wars through Slack and CC emails. How do I force them to address this conflict directly?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This is artificial harmony, and it is highly toxic. When your team is polite in meetings but aggressive in digital channels, they are avoiding the vulnerability required for healthy conflict. They are playing status games instead of solving problems. First, ban the practice of using email or Slack to resolve interpersonal or departmental disagreements. Establish a ground rule: if an issue requires more than two back-and-forth messages, or if there is any emotional tension, the digital conversation must stop immediately. The parties involved must pick up the phone, hop on a video call, or meet in person. Second, bring this behavior directly into your Level 10 Meeting. If you see a passive-aggressive email thread, do not ignore it. Drop it directly onto the IDS portion of your agenda. Call it what it is. Frame it not as a personal attack, but as an obstacle to team health. Use the concepts from Daniel Coyle's book, The Culture Code. High-performing teams build safety by allowing people to speak raw truths without fear of retaliation. When you highlight these digital sidebar wars in a structured meeting, you break the pattern of safe avoidance. Force the two parties to walk through the issue in front of the team using the IDS process. As the leader, you must model the behavior by remaining objective and unsentimental. Do not allow them to retreat into politeness. Once they realize that passive-aggressive digital behavior will be dragged into the bright light of a live meeting, they will either start resolving issues directly or stop creating them in the first place.