Amy Gallo: Why Conflict Strengthens Teams Instead of Breaking Them

FranklinCovey On Leadership

FranklinCovey

Business, Management

4.6 • 215 Ratings

🗓️ 23 December 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Conflict is unavoidable at work—but avoiding it is often the bigger risk. Amy Gallo, bestselling author and Harvard Business Review expert, reframes conflict as a leadership advantage rather than a failure. She explains why resolving tension at the lowest level builds trust, how leaders accidentally undermine team culture by stepping in too soon, and why “feeling good” is the wrong metric for a successful difficult conversation. Drawing on research, real workplace scenarios, and her book Getting Along, Gallo offers practical guidance for navigating passive-aggressive behavior, insecure managers, and high-stakes disagreements. The conversation challenges the instinct to prioritize harmony over honesty and makes a clear case: teams that handle conflict well are stronger, more resilient, and more effective. Listen now to learn how to turn workplace tension into progress. Gain insight into your conversation style and learn how to navigate conversations authentically and effectively with our Difficult Conversation Assement: https://resources.franklincovey.com/c/tlg-difficult-conversati?x=j4G37p&lb-mode=overlay FranklinCovey’s world-class learning solutions—delivered Live-Online, On Demand, or Live In-Person—are designed to build exceptional leadership skills and enrich your culture at every level of your organization. To learn more, email us at info@franklincovey.com, visit franklincovey.com, or call us at: 1-888-868-1776

Transcript

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0:00.0	You also have to decide when are you going to intervene in conflicts that happen on your team?
0:06.6	Because this is something that I get asked all the time by senior leaders is I'm getting,
0:12.0	everything gets escalated to me. I become the decision maker. So as a leader, how do you make
0:16.7	clear that decisions, you know, difficult conversations, conflicts have to be resolved at the lowest
0:25.1	level possible. That is what's best for team culture because it sets the precedent that those two
0:30.0	people can actually have a difficult conversation, have a disagreement, and resolve it.
0:40.5	Hello and welcome to Franklin Covey on leadership. I'm your host, Will Hodling.
0:45.1	Today's guest is Amy Gallo. Amy Gallo is a best-selling author and journalist whose work
0:50.5	centers on navigating tension and conflict at work and how to build high-performing
0:55.4	teams and organizations. She is the author of Harvard Business Review's Guide to Navigating
1:00.6	Conflict and the author of the 2022 bestselling book, Getting Along, How to Work with
1:06.0	Anyone, Even Difficult People. She's also the host of the award-winning Harvard Business
1:10.7	Review podcast,
1:12.0	Women at Work. Amy Gallo, welcome to Franklin Covey on leadership. Thank you so much for having me,
1:17.0	Will. Wonderful. Very excited for today's conversation. Me too. So you have spent a lot of your
1:24.0	career focused on dealing with difficult people, with navigating conflict. So let's
1:30.3	start on the therapy chair with talking about your mother. But seriously, I'd love to start a little
1:35.6	more personal. What led you to this work? You've now spent a long time working on it. Is there
1:40.8	something formative in your experience growing up or in your early
1:44.4	professional experiences that has led you to commit and dedicate so much of your career to this
1:49.1	topic? Yeah. I mean, if you were my therapist, which I won't treat you like my therapist,
1:55.8	we could go deep into there's multi, you know, levels of things that probably influenced early on.
	...

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