Conflict is not the opposite of collaboration. It is often the proof that collaboration is real. The absence of conflict usually means someone stopped telling the truth. In the forge, heat doesn’t destroy material. It makes it responsive. What breaks steel is pressure applied before it’s ready, or even an impact without awareness.
I still struggle with conflict. As something to minimize. That my role as a colleague or leader was to maintain calm. That weight has made me hesitant to speak plainly. That protecting morale meant smoothing out tension instead of letting it reveal where the heat needed to be focused. But when we stop softening hard truths, something changes. Team don’t fracture. They align. Not around me. Around the work.
A conflict bubbled up during a strategic planning session. I presented data to support a new recruitment approach. A colleague called it short sighted and challenged the model entirely. I felt myself tighten, ready to defend. I almost launched into a rebuttal. Instead, I stayed silent long enough to hear what they actually feared. They weren’t attacking the data. They were flagging a risk that the model unintentionally reinforced a bias toward students already inclined to enroll. That concern forced us to redesign the logic and include friction-based weighting to identify students who hadn’t registered early indicators. The conflict didn’t derail the process. It pointed directly to the gap.
Heat without direction burns. Heat with intent forges.
There’s a specific kind of conflict that matters most. The kind where both parties care about the outcome more than being right. When that energy meets, pressure rises quickly. If neither retreats, the strike lands with impact. That moment decides whether the craft advances or shatters. The deciding factor is not who wins. It’s who stays present without escalating. Conflict handled well doesn’t feel passive. It feels engaged. Direct. Controlled enough to shape something. Heated enough to matter.
When I think back, the moments where I grew weren’t calm. They were uncomfortably direct. Someone told me the build was directionless. Someone else said a strategy ignored what students were actually feeling. In each case, I wanted to defend. When I resisted that instinct, I saw the truth under the blow.
Today, identify one point of conflict you’ve been avoiding. Step toward it. Don’t soften it. Don’t try to extinguish it. Approach it with the discipline of someone who understands heat is necessary. Let your spark speak, and let us know in the comments or DM me. What was that one thing? And what is this pressure trying to shape?
Let the warmth of your next breath stay long enough to remind you pressure itself isn’t the threat. Unaimed pressure is. Stand in heat with purpose.
And that’s The Ember Walk. The forge is yours now. Go make something worth the heat.
