A couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to sit down with a great group of leaders to discuss healthy conflict. We debated some of the best practice approaches to creating the right healthy conflict to keep growing and challenging one another.

• Start with curiosity and ask questions that create dialogue on the topic.
• As a leader, highlight and praise the behaviors in discussions that showcase healthy conflict to reinforce what’s expected.
• Don’t surround yourself with yes people – set expectations in everyone’s role no matter what their title is they are expected to participate in healthy conflict to help the team grow.

These along with numerous other best practices showcase an approach to promote healthy conflict to challenge one another and help elevate the team.

The dialogue was great but as I’ve been reflecting on the topic, I see one area that I’m questioning whether I’m pushing myself hard enough on. For healthy conflict to be maximized there needs to be diversity of thought and perspective. If I’m being truthful with myself, I’m not sure if I bring in enough diversity of thought to create good conflict.

At work I’ve been leading the same team now for an extended period and wonder if I’m bringing in enough disruptive thoughts and perspective to generate the healthy conflict we need to grow and develop as much as we should be.

In my health and wellness journey am I bringing in diversity of thought and education on the right foods to eat, recipes to try, or types of workouts I can evolve to? Am I too settled on past truths of what work and not challenging to grow?

Taking time to reflect on what diversity of perspective we’re bringing into the different areas of our lives can potentially be the positive disruptions we need to keep growing. It’s easy to get settled in, especially if things are working. But balance is only momentary. When we invite in diversity of perspective to generate more healthy conflict within our dialogue, we can challenge one another to keep evolving. The world around us won’t slow down so it’s on us to find ways to positively disrupt ourselves to keep growth up and to the right.

One of my favorite moments of 2025 was reaching out and engaging with a writing coach. I have been working on a book for quite some time now and after what felt like the millionth time going through and editing my draft, it was time to get some disruptive outside perspective. My coach has helped me see a way to re-imagine my work that had gotten stale. It may sound strange, but he helped me release from being held to my old versions and take my key ideas to re-imagine the flow, structure, dialogue, and much more. His diversity of thought has now helped me see such a better path forward to carry out my message.

If there’s one thing I hope these 2-3 minutes of reading this will do is empower you to reflect on what diversity of thought you’re bringing in. Ask yourself if you’re having positive disruptive conversations that can come with healthy conflict. It’s typically not our human behavior to go searching for this healthy conflict but the risk of settling in and getting comfortable has its risks too. Growing and adapting to the rapid change around us is not an easy task but healthy conflict can bring in the challenging dialogue we need to consider other perspectives and thoughts.

Take your step: focus on one area of your life you prioritize. Take just a few minutes to reflect on what diversity of thought you’ve brought into this part of your life lately. Have you settled on the same voices for too long? Consider what other diversity of thought and perspective could be brought in to challenge where you’re at right now and where the opportunity to grow can be.