When Conflict Breaks Teams
Conflict isn’t a people problem. It’s a pressure signal. A systems-level look at how teams break under load—and what gets erased when it happens.
Your team is a distributed system.
And conflict is a signal.
In a team of five,
there are five brains.
And five models of reality.
(Conservative estimation.]
Conflict happens,
when reality models diverge.
Fragmentation in the making.
Conflict Lives In The Body
FUCK YOU!
Ever heard that in a meeting?
Ever said that in a meeting?
(I'm sorry, Cat.)
When tensions rise,
professionalism leaves the room.
And only nervous systems remain.
Tensions live in the body.
When nervous system load exceeds local regulation.
The prefrontal cortex goes offline.
The limbic system takes over.
The system fragments.
(Physics.)
Only survival adaptations remain:
Fight.
Flight.
Freeze.
Fawn.
..
TL;DR:
Reality pressure surfaces as conflict.
One way, or another.
Narratives As Social Lubricant
If narratives are a sense-making machine,
reality is the kid that sticks a wrench between the gears.
Just to see what happens.
— Nox (Discord User)
Narratives.
Because X happened,
Y is happening,
and Z will happen next.
— Nox (Discord User)
Narratives are a temporal structure.
A lens.
The brain,
trying to collapse
the non-linear complexity that is reality,
into a neat causal model.
Narratives work great.
Most of the time.
Until reality.. intervenes.
And intent turns into impact.
TL;DR:
All models are wrong,
but some are useful.
— George Box
Unmanaged Conflict Breaks Coherence
If fragmentation under load,
is lawful neurobiology,
then blaming individuals
is a category error.
A faulty narrative.
A fragmenting system:
- triages,
- compresses,
- survives.
And your meeting agenda
isn't gonna make the cut.
(Sorry!)
What remains?
Not alignment.
Not coherence.
Not nuance.
Just nervous systems.
Prehistoric neurobiology.
And potential for harm.
TL;DR: Unmanaged conflict = faulty narratives.
Regulating Leadership Demands Pattern-Awareness
Title-based authority fails under load.
And pressure
always
takes the path of least resistance.
(Physics.)
Who do you choose?
Your nervous system is overwhelmed.
You need to release pressure.
You're panicking.
..
(Human.)
The nervous system is a pattern machine.
It reproduces encoded patterns.
Especially under load.
Like fight, or fawn.
(I'm sorry. 😉]
TL;DR: Nervous system goes brrr.
Coherent Call-to-Action
Let's orient:
- Nervous systems reproduce patterns.
- Causal models (narratives) approximate reality.
- Under load the brain defaults to threat responses.
- Regulating leadership demands pattern-awareness.
..
When narratives diverge from reality, the gap becomes load.
Leadership's job is not to craft a narrative -
it's to collapse fragmented reality
into a shared coherent model.
(And enabling the team to align around that.)
How to maintain coherence under load?
Or put bluntly:
What does your team need, when shit hits the fan?
Awareness.
(Self-)Regulation.
Load-bearing language and structures.
Intrigued?
This work can be done deliberately.
Systemic Engineering is how I help teams and leaders
restore coherence in complex systems.
How you can reach me:
📧 alex@systemic.engineer
💼 on LinkedIn
Or sign up to get practice-oriented insight and ready-made structures.