Fight, Flight, or Freeze? There’s a Better Way to Handle Conflict
You’ve heard it before, probably from a well-meaning coach, teacher, or TED Talk: “When conflict arises, people default to fight, flight, or freeze.”
It’s catchy. It sounds smart. It explains a lot about human behavior. But here’s the problem: it keeps us trapped in survival mode, especially at work, where most conflict isn’t life-threatening but is definitely culture-killing if left unchecked.
Let me be blunt. In the modern workplace, fight, flight, or freeze are all losing strategies. They might help you survive a bear attack, but they’ll wreck your leadership credibility, destroy psychological safety, and derail your team’s performance.
And yet, this is exactly how most professionals, especially leaders, respond to tension:
- Fight: You escalate. You dominate. You steamroll opposition, because “strong leaders make tough calls.” But what you actually do is shut people down, create fear, and breed compliance instead of commitment.
- Flight: You delay. You deflect. You avoid hard conversations, hoping the issue will resolve itself. Spoiler: it won’t. You just create a backlog of unspoken frustration and confusion.
- Freeze: You stall. You go quiet. You numb out. You say nothing in the meeting, and pretend everything’s fine. This is what creates “nice” teams that smile in public and rage in private.
Let me ask you something, have any of these responses ever actually solved a conflict in your workplace? Have they helped your team grow? Built trust? Strengthened culture?
I doubt it.
Because these responses aren’t designed to help us connect. They’re designed to help us survive. And leadership, real leadership, isn’t about surviving. It’s about transforming.
What if There’s a Better Option?
There is. It’s not flashy. It’s not instinctual. And it’s not easy. But it works.
It’s called Face It. Together.
This isn’t a slogan. It’s a strategy. And it starts with rejecting the myth that conflict is inherently bad. Conflict is not the enemy. Avoidance is. Defensiveness is. Control is. But conflict itself? Conflict is just the moment when two perspectives rub against each other hard enough to reveal something deeper.
Handled well, conflict does something no kumbaya session ever could: it sharpens clarity, deepens relationships, and fuels innovation. But only if we move from reaction to intention.
Here’s What Principled Leaders Do Instead
- They pause the impulse. Great leaders don’t go with their first reaction. They take a breath, ask themselves what outcome they really want, and choose a response that aligns with it.
- They lean into discomfort. Yes, conflict is messy. But principled leaders don’t run from it, they engage it with courage and curiosity. They create space, not pressure.
- They listen to understand. Not just to reply. Not to win. They ask better questions: “What’s at stake for you here?” “What am I not seeing?” “How can we get through this stronger than we started?”
- They seek synergy, not surrender. This isn’t about giving in. It’s about moving forward with both strength and connection intact.
- They model vulnerability. “I may have missed something.” “This is hard for me, too.” “I want to get this right, not just be right.” These phrases aren’t signs of weakness—they’re signals of trustworthiness.
So Why Don’t More Leaders Do This?
Because it’s easier to fight, flee, or freeze. Those responses don’t require reflection. They don’t require empathy. They don’t require growth.
But they also don’t build anything worth keeping.
The truth is, most of us were never taught how to engage conflict well. We were rewarded for control, praised for decisiveness, promoted for certainty. And now, those very traits are what hold us back from leading teams that trust us.
Let’s call this what it is: leadership malpractice.
If you’re still leading with intimidation or avoidance, you’re not leading. You’re reacting. You’re stuck in survival mode, and so is your team.
And survival mode doesn’t scale. It doesn’t build culture. It doesn’t create legacy.
What’s at Stake?
You lose your best people, not because they can’t handle pressure, but because they can’t handle you.
You create a culture of silence, where people smile, nod, and disengage the moment they walk out of the room.
You destroy innovation, because nothing creative ever comes from fear-based obedience.
But you can fix it. It starts with saying:
“We don’t do fight, flight, or freeze here. We do face it, together.”
The Bottom Line
You’re not being hired to control people. You’re being called to lead people through the tough stuff. That’s what leadership is: not dominance, not comfort, not silence, but clarity in the storm.
The old models are broken. The new models are waiting. And the only thing in between is the courage to face it.
Together.
