2 min lesson
Three flavors of conflict, three different moves
Use two rows in "Three flavors of conflict, three different moves" to state the practical decision rules.
Step 1 of 2
Three flavors of conflict, three different movesMatch the move to the conflict
- Conflict type
- In the room (a panelist pushes)
- The move
- Hold your view with reasoning; concede gracefully if they're right
- What it signals
- Truth-seeking, intellectual honesty
- Conflict type
- Customer (hard truth needed)
- The move
- Name the truth, protect the relationship, give a path forward
- What it signals
- Customer obsession with a spine
- Conflict type
- Internal (Sales vs. CS, customer vs. roadmap)
- The move
- Surface the shared goal and trade off explicitly toward it
- What it signals
- Cross-functional humility
| Conflict type | The move | What it signals |
|---|---|---|
| In the room (a panelist pushes) | Hold your view with reasoning; concede gracefully if they're right | Truth-seeking, intellectual honesty |
| Customer (hard truth needed) | Name the truth, protect the relationship, give a path forward | Customer obsession with a spine |
| Internal (Sales vs. CS, customer vs. roadmap) | Surface the shared goal and trade off explicitly toward it | Cross-functional humility |
Customer conflict is the heart of the ADM job. The renewal is on the line precisely because you have to tell a VP of Engineering that adoption stalled and the reason is their phased rollout sequencing, not the product.
"Their CTO wanted to blame low adoption on the tool. The data said otherwise: the teams who'd configured .cursor/rules and run the enablement sessions were at 70% weekly active, the ones who skipped onboarding were at 12%. I showed him both cohorts in the EBR and said the rollout design was the gap, not Cursor. He didn't love hearing it, but we rebuilt the plan together and the account renewed and expanded."
That answer works because the spine and the obsession are both visible. You didn't soften the truth to keep him comfortable and you didn't deliver it as a gotcha. You brought data, owned the joint plan and the number moved.