In this episode, Elena Armijo explores the value of conflict with executive and leadership coach Mark Hunter, founder of Pinnacle Coaching and author of The Brink: How Great Leadership Is Invented. With three decades of coaching experience, Mark brings a grounded, practical lens to one of the most misunderstood leadership skills: learning to work with conflict instead of avoiding it.
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Elena opens with a coaching reflection that reframes conflict as a signal, not a failure. When teams treat tension as data, they gain access to what is often left unspoken, including unmet needs, misalignment, and values trying to surface. She also unpacks generative conflict as a capacity builder, an essential ingredient for innovation, trust, and cultural clarity.
With clarity and deep care for teams, Mark reframes conflict as a powerful leadership tool, especially inside executive teams where roles are designed to hold healthy tension in service of better outcomes. He introduces generative conflict as purposeful disagreement aimed at optimizing a shared goal rather than protecting ego. He outlines a grounded yet disciplined approach: start where the team is, understand how conflict currently operates through a listening tour, define what healthy conflict looks like, and name the willingness required to practice it consistently.
Elena and Mark examine the somatic dimension of conflict. Drawing from decades of leadership and team development work, Mark makes a compelling case that avoidance is often the true source of nervous system strain. When conflict is vilified or suppressed, tension accumulates beneath the surface. In contrast, when conflict is normalized and practiced with skill, it becomes regulating, steadying, and even energizing for a team.
This conversation invites leaders to build cultures grounded in trust rather than control, to replace reactivity with curiosity, and to cultivate the capacity to fight alongside each other in service of something greater than ego.
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This podcast was produced by the following amazing team:
Ulrich Wolvaardt, Audio Engineer
Aaron Boykin, Musician & Artist (Get updates about Aaron's music via Instagram)
Jo van Eeden, Project Manager
