Leadership Profile Case: Team Conflict in a Slow-Change SME

Fictional name: Maya (real name changed)
Role: Legal Manager in an SME, leading a team
Challenge: recurring team conflict in a slow-change environment
Goal: understand her behavioural strengths, blind spots, and environmental influences—so she could improve team dynamics without carrying the team on her shoulders

Details have been adjusted to preserve confidentiality.

The situation

Maya leads a legal function with direct reports inside an SME where change typically moves slowly: people rely on legacy ways of working, informal power dynamics matter, and stability is often prioritised over speed.

In that context, team conflict rarely shows up as overt confrontation. It shows up as friction: misalignment, silent resistance, escalation loops, and the leader spending disproportionate time “holding the system together.”

Maya’s question wasn’t “How do I motivate my team?” It was more precise:

• What is my leadership operating style—and how is it affecting the team?
• What am I doing (often unconsciously) that keeps conflict alive?
• Why am I constantly tired—even when I’m performing?
• How do I lead this team better without needing everyone else to change first?

Why now

Two things converged:

1. The conflict pattern became persistent rather than episodic.
2. The personal cost increased: Maya felt drained, as if she was absorbing both operational complexity and interpersonal tension.

That combination is a risk point for high performers—especially in slow-change environments—because leaders often respond by overfunctioning: doing more, carrying more, buffering more. It looks responsible. It also becomes unsustainable.

What type of leader is she?

This profile clarified Maya’s leadership “signature” in business terms:

• Influence-led, directional leadership: She guides people toward clarity and decisions without needing to impose authority.
• Fast decision clarity under pressure: She can cut through ambiguity quickly—particularly in complex, high-stakes moments.
• Strategic communication: She can mobilise stakeholders when her logic is understood and her intent is visible.
• Resilience under pressure: She holds direction when the environment gets noisy or uncertain.

Her growth edge wasn’t capability. It was cost: what it takes to lead well in an environment that quietly trains leaders to carry more than their role.

What she learned (the outcomes that mattered)

1) Her influence was bigger than she realised

Maya already knew she had responsibility. What she hadn’t fully seen is how much her presence, pace, and standardsshaped the team climate—even when she wasn’t consciously “leading.”

This was a key reframe: she stopped seeing herself as a neutral manager trying to fix a team, and started recognising herself as a system shaper. That shift matters, because once influence is visible, it becomes manageable.

2) The environment was influencing her—without her noticing

The slow-change culture had trained subtle behaviours:

• tolerating ambiguity longer than necessary
• compensating for inertia by personally carrying alignment
• absorbing friction to keep stability

Because this conditioning happens gradually, leaders often interpret the resulting fatigue as “I need to be stronger,” instead of “This system is making my strengths expensive.”

Maya’s clarity here was simple and powerful: the environment was pulling her into patterns she didn’t choose.

3) She understood why she felt constantly tired

Her tiredness wasn’t only workload. It was load type:

• constant monitoring (reading the room, anticipating reactions)
• conflict containment (buffering, smoothing, preventing escalation)
• responsibility creep (“if I don’t carry this, it won’t hold”)

Once she could name the mechanism, she could design around it. Energy stopped being a personal failing and became a leadership variable.

4) She reframed her role: “I’m not here to carry the team”

This was the most important boundary shift.

Maya realised she had been operating as a conflict buffer—taking on more emotional and operational weight to reduce tension. The short-term effect is fewer explosions. The long-term effect is leader depletion and a team that never fully owns alignment.

Her new stance: be the conflict leader, not the conflict container.
That means creating conditions where the team can resolve, not absorbing what the team should learn to hold.

5) She learned what “people are different” actually means—operationally

Maya already believed people are different. The profile made that difference specific.

She stopped interpreting behaviours as “motivation” or “attitude” and started seeing operating mechanics: energy capacity, resilience patterns, decision processing, risk posture, and self-worth dynamics (especially around recognition).

This is where team conflict often lives: not in bad intent, but in mismatched mechanics and unspoken expectations.

The Differentiator: a practical “Difference Map” for leading people without profiling everyone

You don’t need an in-depth profile for each team member to lead differences well. You need a shared language for how people operate.

Here is what Maya used as a lens to re-approach her team:

Maya left with a small set of operating rules—simple, but high leverage:

For Maya, this table unlocked a new approach: she could hold her standards and direction without forcing sameness, and without interpreting differences as “problems.”

The practical shifts she implemented (without needing others’ full profiles)

• Mandate-first leadership: clarify ownership before stepping in strongly.
• Criteria-first decisions: communicate the criteria before the decision, not just the decision after.
• Boundary language: stop absorbing alignment; redistribute responsibility to the team.
• Pacing discipline: sprint/recovery rhythm; no permanent intensity.
• Conflict stance: structure it rather than buffer it (expectations, roles, follow-through).

These moves are not “soft”. They are governance and performance design.

Testimonial

“This profile made my impact visible: how I influence the team, how the environment was shaping me, and why I was running on empty. It helped me shift from carrying conflict to leading through structure and boundaries.”

If this sounds familiar

If you are leading in a slow-change environment and team conflict is draining your energy, the path forward is rarely “do more.” It is usually: make your operating style visible, make differences legible, and redesign your stance and boundaries.

If you want to explore a Leadership Profile for yourself or a key hire, book a call.