Learning Why Some Disagreements Don’t Become Personal

When I was in college, I watched the TV series The West Wing. Characters would get into intense, sometimes heated disagreements about high-stakes issues. Voices were raised. They’d argue over fundamental principles. And then, often in the very next scene, those same people would work together civilly, almost as if nothing relational had been damaged.

At the time, I was skeptical. I wondered whether that kind of behavior actually happened in real workplaces, or whether it was reserved for a rare group of exceptional people who somehow made it into positions of power.

My early professional experiences only confirmed my doubts.

In the roles I held early in my career, disagreements rarely ended cleanly. Conversations moved on, but the underlying issues often did not. Meetings would conclude, decisions would get made, and work would continue, yet the tension from those interactions showed up later in how people spoke to one another, what they chose to discuss, and what they avoided.

For a while, I assumed that unresolved tension was simply part of working with others.

Some years later, when I was in graduate school, I found myself rewatching episodes of The West Wing. By then, I was studying organizational communication, and I started to wonder whether what I was seeing had less to do with television and more to do with how some people learn to manage themselves in moments of disagreement. Maybe the characters were able to argue intensely and then reconnect because they were better at regulating their emotions and keeping ideas separate from identity, qualities often associated with emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995).

If emotional intelligence was the key, why did I see emotionally intelligent people struggle in situations similar to those I had witnessed earlier in my career?

The change in my thinking came when I worked for a supervisor who showed me a different way of communicating. 

We could passionately disagree on decisions. Meetings could get intense. Voices were occasionally raised. And yet, when the meeting ended, the relationship felt intact. We could smile, joke, and collaborate without any sense of lingering damage.

What made this possible was not just how conflict was handled in the moment. It was what happened well before conflict ever arose.

I remember walking into this supervisor’s office with a clear agenda, ready to move through a list of tasks. Almost without fail, he would pause and ask a simple question: “How are you doing today?” Iit was clear to me that he really wanted to know.

It sounds small, but it built trust in low-stakes situations, which we then drew on when the stakes were higher.

That question moved the interaction from getting through a list of tasks to a chance to connect. This supervisor was signaling that the relationship mattered independently of the task at hand. Over time, those moments built trust when nothing was at stake. And that trust became the foundation that made disagreement possible later.

In hindsight, this was what I hadn’t accounted for earlier in my career.

Disagreeing without making it personal is a learned skill. And like many skills at work, it depends on the environment in which it is practiced.

Research on workplace conflict helps clarify why this matters. Task conflict, disagreement about ideas or approaches, can improve decision quality. Relationship conflict, conflict that feels personal or threatening, tends to harm trust and performance (De Dreu & Weingart, 2003). One of the strongest predictors of which type of conflict emerges is the level of trust already present in the relationship (Simons & Peterson, 2000).

When a strong relationship foundation exists, disagreement is more likely to be experienced as safe and work-focused rather than personal. When it does not, even mild pushback can feel risky.

This is why emotional intelligence alone is not enough. One person can regulate their own emotions, choose their words carefully, and invite repair. But one person cannot unilaterally create trust in the moment. That trust must already exist, and it is built through consistent signals that the relationship is important beyond what needs to be accomplished.

Leaders play an outsized role here, often without realizing it. They model how to debate ideas and how disagreements end. People pay close attention to what happens immediately after someone pushes back, challenges a decision, or raises a concern, and when they see disagreement followed by respect and continued connection, they learn that speaking up does not carry a lasting cost. Over time, those exchanges shape whether people view disagreement as part of the work or as something to avoid (Edmondson, 1999).

Looking back at my college-era skepticism, I now see The West Wing differently. The show made conflict look easy, but what it really showed was that the characters had established strong relationships built over time. 

A useful question, then, is not just how you handle conflict when it appears, but what kind of relationship foundation exists before it ever does.

If you want disagreement to feel less personal, the work begins now, in moments when nothing is at stake. Ask a question. Show interest. Build the foundation you'll need when tensions rise.

References

De Dreu, C. K. W., & Weingart, L. R. (2003). Task versus relationship conflict, team performance, and team member satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(4), 741–749.

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional Intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Books.

Simons, T. L., & Peterson, R. S. (2000). Task conflict and relationship conflict in top management teams. Academy of Management Journal, 43(1), 102–111.