Stop Calling It a Personality Clash. It's a Leadership Problem.
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Lately, I've been hearing the term "personality clash" used more frequently to explain why executive collaboration is stalling.
On the surface, it sounds reasonable. Tidy, even. Two people just don't get along, so the team struggles.
But after two decades coaching senior leaders through organizational friction, I've learned that personality is rarely the actual culprit.
What gets labelled as a personality clash in the C-suite is frequently a leadership problem.
Or could it be a failure of interpersonal chemistry? A mismatch of working styles?
Perhaps. Those differences do exist.
But at the C-suite level, leaders are expected to operate beyond personal preference.
They are entrusted with enterprise outcomes precisely because they can regulate themselves, adapt across styles, and collaborate under pressure.
When they cannot, the issue is no longer chemistry. It is capability.
A “personality clash” is just the symptom. The underlying issue is typically a gap in leadership maturity — individually or systemically.
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Why "Workplace Harmony" Is a Trap
There is a persistent myth in organizational culture that people need to like each other to perform well together.
It sounds humane. Progressive, even.
But in practice, chasing harmony creates the opposite of what leaders actually need:
Difficult conversations get avoided to preserve the peace.
Accountability gets diluted because no one wants to ruffle feathers.
Performance issues get misdiagnosed as interpersonal problems instead of structural ones.
When leaders over-index on "getting along," they inadvertently signal that comfort matters more than results.
High-performing teams know better.
What's Actually Driving Executive Conflict
When I work with leadership teams experiencing friction, the root cause is rarely a Myers-Briggs mismatch. It's missing clarity in three specific areas:
Unclear or Competing Goals: Two talented executives pulling in different directions because the actual priority was not named. Strategy without hierarchy is just noise.
Blurred Roles and Decision Rights: When it's not obvious who owns what—and more importantly, who decides what—every handoff becomes a high-stakes negotiation.
Assumed Expectations: What you think is obvious about a project is often invisible to the person sitting across from you. We pay for this gap in rework and resentment.
When these fundamentals are missing, differences in working style start to feel deeply personal. What appears to be a personality clash is often just two competent individuals
navigating a poorly designed system.
The Leadership Problem Diagnostic Table: What's Really Going On?
Over many years of working with leadership teams, I've noticed that the same complaints keep surfacing. Here's how to translate them into something you can actually fix:
You're Calling It... | But The Root Cause Is Likely... | The Question to Ask Your Team |
"They just don't communicate well." | Unclear handoffs. No one defined who needs to know what, and when. | "Where does information currently get dropped? What's the cost of that delay?" |
"Their working styles are too different." | Ambiguous decision rights. One person wants speed, the other wants consensus—because no one specified who decides. | "On the last three decisions, can everyone name who had the final call? If not, that's our problem." |
"There's tension between departments." | Competing goals. Sales is measured by revenue; Operations is measured by cost. The system is designed for conflict. | "What's the one goal we'd all be willing to sacrifice some of our own metrics to achieve together?" |
"She's not a team player." | Unstated expectations. You assumed "collaboration" meant attending meetings. She assumed it meant co-creating every deliverable. | "What does 'good collaboration' actually look like in practice this quarter? Let's write it down." |
"He's too defensive in reviews." | Unclear definition of 'good'. If people don't know the bar beforehand, feedback feels like an attack. | "Before the next review, can everyone state what success looks like for their role? Let's align on that first." |
Performance Is Built On Respect, Not Likability
You don't need your leadership team to be best of friends.
You're not running a social club; you're running a business.
What you need is professional respect—the kind built on:
Trusting each other's competence without needing constant oversight.
Honoring commitments reliably, even when it's inconvenient.
Challenging ideas rigorously without making it a referendum on character.
This is what functional executive teams actually run on. Not warmth. Not chemistry.
Respect for the work and each other's ability to deliver it.
The best leadership teams I've seen aren't the ones where everyone likes each other. They're the ones where people know exactly what they're accountable for, trust that others will do their part, and can disagree without the room going cold.
What High-Performing Teams Do Differently
High-performers don't rely on good vibes. They rely on ruthless clarity:
A shared, well-defined goal that every team member can recite without checking their notes.
Clear accountability so there's zero ambiguity about who decides what and who executes what.
The ability to disagree productively—separating ego from issue.
These teams spend less energy managing feelings and more energy executing. They're not more comfortable than other teams. They're just clearer.
Here's how the energy allocation breaks down:
Team Type | Energy Spent On... | Energy Left For... |
Dysfunctional Teams | Decoding each other's intentions, managing hurt feelings, revisiting the same disagreements, covering blind spots. | Very little. Exhaustion sets in by Wednesday. |
Functional Teams | Clear handoffs, direct challenge, rapid recovery from missteps, shared ownership of outcomes. | Execution, innovation, strategic foresight. |
High-Performing Teams | Ruthless prioritization, pre-mortems, active clarification of who decides what, celebrating competence. | Anticipating the next horizon, developing successors. |
Adapted from Katzenbach & Smith's "The Wisdom of Teams" (HBR Classic) and observed patterns in my coaching practice.
The Cost of Misdiagnosis
In my work with senior teams, I've observed a consistent pattern: when leaders invest heavily in "personality fixes" without addressing structural clarity, the relief is always temporary.
The Pattern I've Observed:
Months 1-3: A brief bump in morale. People feel heard.
Months 4-6: The same conflicts resurface. Nothing has actually changed.
Months 7-12: Cynicism sets in. The team becomes harder to lead than before.
The teams that consistently sustain high performance are those where the leader shifts investment away from managing feelings and toward designing clarity—goals, roles, decision rights, and handoffs.
Observed pattern across leadership teams, 2020-2025.
How to Catch What Falls Through the Gaps (Before It Becomes a "People Problem")
Even with clear goals and defined roles, friction will happen. The question is whether you have a system to catch it before it solidifies into a "personality clash."
Watch the Handoffs. Most friction lives in the white space between roles. If you're seeing repeated delays or quality issues where one person's work ends and another's begins, that's not personality—it's unclear ownership of the in-between.
Listen for the Code Words. When your team starts using phrases like "communication issues" or "working style differences," translate that immediately. What specifically isn't being communicated? Which part of the working style is actually impeding progress?
Track the Pattern, Not the Incident. One conflict might be personal. Is t
he same type of conflict happening across multiple people? That's your operating system talking. If three different talented people have struggled with the same stakeholder, stop looking at the people. Look at what that role requires that you haven't made explicit.
The leaders I coach who handle this well build regular checkpoints that force clarity gaps to surface early:
Weekly 15-minute "What's Stuck" conversations: Name obstacles without solving them yet.
Monthly Decision-Rights Audits: Not performance reviews, just "who actually decided what this month?"
Quarterly Role Clarity Sessions: Each person states what they think they own, and the team confirms or corrects it.
Boring? Maybe. But it catches the small clarity gaps before they turn into big, expensive people problems.
A Question for Senior Leaders
The next time "personality clash" shows up on your team, pause before you initiate coaching or mediation.
Ask yourself first: What have I not clarified or reinforced as the leader?
And then ask the harder question: What am I seeing in this person that might actually be about how I prefer things done?
Often, the most effective intervention isn't about "fixing" the people. It's about fixing
structure they're operating in.
Have you been explicit about:
What is the actual priority when two strategic goals compete?
Who has final decision rights on key initiatives?
What "good" looks like in this specific context?
If you haven't made these things explicit and reinforced them consistently, the friction you're seeing isn't personal—it's predictable.
The Bottom Line
Liking each other is optional. Professional respect is not.
Your team doesn't need to be comfortable to perform well. They need clarity, trust in competence, and a shared commitment to the work.
Stop trying to make your leadership team like each other.
Start making sure they know exactly what they're accountable for and have the structure to deliver it.
The "culture" you're trying to fix is usually just a system you haven't designed yet.
Is friction on your leadership team masking a design problem? Let's work together.
About Coach Wendy Wong
Coach Wendy Wong is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and founder of PETADIRI, a leadership development firm serving clients across Asia. With 30 years of corporate experience spanning family-owned conglomerates, multinational corporations, and high-growth startups, she specializes in leadership acceleration, culture transformation, and succession planning systems. Her work focuses on cutting through corporate jargon to deliver practical, results-driven development that prepares leaders for the complexity of modern Asian markets.
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Start your leadership development journey today and watch your organization thrive!
Start your leadership development journey today and watch your organization thrive!
