Leader (athlete) vs. Leader (executive) Conflict: How Athletes Can Lead Up & Executives Can Lead Down
Last week, WNBA basketball star Angel Reese of the Chicago Sky found herself in a difficult position following an interview with the Chicago Tribune, in which she criticized her teammates and organization:
"I'm not settling for the same s--- we did this year. We have to get good players. We have to get great players. That's a non-negotiable for me. ... I think the priority is being able to convince [free agents] that this is an organization that is going in the right direction."
The leadership at the Chicago Sky did not take kindly to her public criticism of her teammates and the organization. In response, the Sky suspended Reese for half of the next game, stating:
"We are committed to accountability so our players can stay focused on playing basketball. This matter has been handled and resolved internally, and we are moving forward as a team."
Click here for a full breakdown of the scenario.
So how do Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky move forward from this breakdown in communication? Better yet, how could they learn from this conflict to forge a stronger team?
The Four Competencies of Conflict Navigation
Columbia University Professor Peter Coleman, an expert on constructive conflict resolution, has discovered through his research that there are four key competencies to successfully navigate conflict:
Self-awareness and self-regulation - Managing your own emotional reactions to stay calm and think strategically
Strong social-conflict skills - Including active listening, balancing assertiveness with collaboration, and recognizing personal biases
Situational adaptivity - Adjusting your approach based on the type of conflict and cultural context, knowing when to engage directly or step back
Systemic wisdom - Taking a big-picture view to address deep-rooted, recurring conflicts by understanding complexity and learning from experience
Self-awareness forms the foundation for successfully navigating conflict. Reese, who frustrated her teammates and organization, certainly was not exhibiting self-awareness when speaking to the Chicago Tribune, nor when failing to de-escalate the conflict by admitting wrongdoing. However, she does have extensive experience in this high-performance environment to recognize that there is a bigger-picture view to consider when improving the team around her.
Perhaps Reese had reached a critical threshold of frustration because team executives were not actively using strong social-conflict skills to provide a forum for her to be heard or to find opportunities to collaborate in building a stronger team. At the highest levels of sport, a team's most impactful athletes have an outsized influence on the direction and success of a team—and it is incumbent upon administrative leadership to weigh and validate this influence. In the absence of this validation, it can lead to a breakdown of communication and, ultimately, trust.
Leading Up: How to Challenge Authority Tactfully
So how do you tell your boss they might be wrong in their approach—as Reese was attempting to achieve, but fell short of doing effectively?
This would be difficult in any work environment considering the existing power dynamics—the team has an outsized influence on Reese's career and paycheck. In the article "How to Tell Your Boss They're Wrong—Tactfully," author Rebecca Knight highlights the work of several conflict experts on how employees can successfully share their opinions without risking their position in the workplace.
Robert Bordone (a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School) and Joel Salinas (a neurologist), co-authors of Conflict Resilience: Negotiating Disagreement Without Giving Up or Giving In, and executive coach and author Melody Wilding of Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge, provide a framework for how employees can successfully navigate disagreeing with their boss without compromising their position:
Manage your stress response: It is hard to push back on your boss, as we are often taught to respect and defer to authority. Recognizing that challenging your boss might lead to stress will help you manage this response and approach disagreements more thoughtfully.
Disagreement helps everyone: When you challenge your boss's position, it doesn't only benefit you—it helps the entire organization, or in this case, the entire team. You can earn trust by speaking up and helping leaders understand the day-to-day operations they may no longer be directly exposed to.
Read the room: When pushing back on your boss, you need to come across as a "trusted advisor" rather than someone pushing a critical agenda. Having a sense of the "temperature" in the room will impact the success of your disagreement—is there room for sensible feedback, or is the business (or team) in crisis, making pushback unwise?
Timing is critical: When you decide to disagree with your superior, timing matters. If you are frustrated with your boss, addressing the disagreement in that moment might lead to more confrontation. Waiting until cooler heads prevail can have a more positive effect. For Reese, voicing her frustrations through the media rather than addressing them directly with her team demonstrated poor timing and choice of forum.
Understand your leaders: When addressing a disagreement with supervisors, understanding their organizational priorities and leadership style can help you navigate how to best address disagreements. Being aware of a leader's values and how they engage with other colleagues can provide you with a sense of how to best introduce an idea that runs counter to the prevailing narrative. Informally mapping these environmental patterns can give you a better sense of how to approach a situation.
Curiosity primes the conversation: Can you ask questions that seek to understand why an organization's leadership made certain decisions? This can help set up a conversation for understanding rather than conflict, demonstrating that concern for the organization is coming from a place of curiosity rather than disagreement.
Speak to best interests: When disagreeing with a leader, call upon "best interests"—that is, your point of contention is based on improving the overall organization, not just serving self-interest. This can be further supported by acknowledging vulnerability, indicating a willingness to expose your position at the risk of improving the whole.
Compromise can support collaboration: When approaching disagreement, being prepared to compromise on your position can ensure that future conversations remain a possibility and that difficult decisions can come from a place of collaboration rather than isolation.
Moving Forward: Leading Up and Leading Down
Reflecting on the conflict between Reese and the Chicago Sky, both have an opportunity to transform this conflict into a catalyst for stronger leadership and team culture. Reese's frustrations likely stemmed from genuine concerns about team performance and direction—valid issues that deserve thoughtful consideration. However, her approach through public criticism bypassed the collaborative process that could have yielded better outcomes.
Moving forward, Reese could leverage her influence as a star athlete by first building trust through private conversations with leadership, demonstrating the systemic wisdom to understand how organizational change happens effectively. She could use her platform to advocate for team improvements while showing situational adaptivity—knowing when to voice concerns publicly versus privately, and how to frame her message as a collaborative partner rather than a critic. By developing stronger social-conflict skills, including active listening to leadership's constraints and challenges, Reese could become the kind of athlete-leader who elevates both individual and organizational performance.
The Chicago Sky, for their part, could benefit from creating formal channels for star players to contribute to organizational decision-making, recognizing that their most influential athletes have valuable insights into team dynamics and competitive needs. When both sides approach conflict with the four core competencies—self-awareness, social-conflict skills, situational adaptivity, and systemic wisdom—they can transform potential breakdowns into breakthroughs that strengthen the entire organization.
At IntelliSport Analytics
We believe strong culture is not a happy accident—it's the product of deliberate, informed choices. With our tailored approach to people analytics, we help teams and organizations bring clarity to their culture and provide the tools to shape it strategically.