Hi friend,
I talk with executive directors — some of the most brilliant, strategic, and talented women of color I’ve ever met — on a regular basis, and so often, I get asked these same questions:
How do we know if our thing is bad enough?
What “counts” as a conflict, and what’s just a minor disagreement?
And most critically:
How do we know for sure if this is an abuse of power, a learned manifestation of a racist capitalist nonprofit industrial complex in action — or if it’s actually just a woman of color in a position of power saying no?
I’ve found that in many organizations — from scrappy nonprofits to elephantine foundations, from cultural institutions to big tech — we don’t actually have great working definitions of conflict, harm, and abuse.
And without those definitions, without shared frameworks to help guide us, our first reactions can dictate the outcome — whether we’re turning a disagreement into an existential and sociopolitical crisis, or whether we’re underplaying actual harm until it’s too late.
(And remember: our first reactions? Biologically wired, not logically wired.)
When they get this distinction wrong, I’ve seen organizations turn themselves inside out, hemorrhage all their best staff members, lose critical funding — even cease to exist altogether.
the three definitions I teach
When I facilitate conflict workshops, I always start with adrienne maree brown’s framework from We Will Not Cancel Us. They give us three distinct but overlapping categories to help us practice discernment:
Conflict = “Disagreement, difference, or argument between two or more people. Can be personal, political, structural. There may be power differences, and there will most likely be dynamics of privilege and oppression at play. Conflicts can be direct and named, or indirect and felt. Conflicts rooted in genuine difference are rarely resolved quickly and easily. Conflicts can be held in relationship and/or group through naming both the differences and the impact of the differences, facing the roots of the issues, and honest conversation, especially supported conversation such as mediation.”
Abuse = “Behaviors (physical, emotional, economic, sexual, and many more) intended to gain, exert, and maintain power over another person or in a group. When abuse is present, professional support, space, and boundaries are needed.”
Harm = “The suffering, loss, pain, and impact that can occur both in conflict and in instances of abuse, as well as in misunderstandings steeped in differences of life experience, opinion, or needs. Harm is what needs healing—working with individual healers, therapists, and in community to understand where the hurt is and what it would look like to not be ruled by it.”
Notice what brown is naming: harm happens within both conflict and abuse. And/but — conflict itself — even conflict across power dynamics and hierarchies — conflict itself is not always harm, and it’s not always an abuse of power.
the practice of discernment
We’re going to explore some nuance here together — walk with me for a moment, will you?
Most of what we’re dealing with in organizations is conflict — genuine difference between people with legitimate needs, often involving power dynamics and hierarchies.
A real disagreement about strategy, next steps, timelines, budget allocation. Often, there’s an underlying question of who gets to make which decisions and why. Almost always, there’s something underneath to untangle: beliefs, values, hopes, dreams — the way we each think the world should be.
These tensions are rooted in different life experiences, different relationships to power, different visions of what equity or justice or excellence looks like.
These conflicts create harm. They cause pain, they surface old wounds, they land on people differently based on their histories and their identities. Sometimes, they can escalate into abusive dynamics.
But the presence of harm doesn’t always mean someone is abusing their power.
And this is where I hold my beloved clients with so much tenderness, where I see us losing our way sometimes in justice-centered organizations —
Sometimes, I see organizations in which we treat every instance of harm as evidence of abuse. Every moment of pain as proof that someone has weaponized their power to control or dominate.
And don’t get me wrong! I’ve met my fair share of abusive leadership — I too am a woman of color who rose through the ranks in the nonprofit industrial complex, the public sector, and corporate America.
But I also want us to hold nuance, to practice discernment, to be precise in our diagnostics and our interventions.
where we get stuck
Here’s the trap I keep seeing:
When we flatten everything into “harm” or “abuse” or even just “a casual disagreement” we lose our ability to practice the thing brown says conflict requires: holding genuine difference in relationship.
If a leader sets a boundary and someone experiences that as painful — is that harm? Maybe. Is it abuse? Sometimes, but not always. Is it conflict? Probably.
If two people disagree about how to center racial justice in their work, and both feel unseen by the other — is there harm? Yes. Is there abuse? Sometimes, but not always. Is there conflict? Absolutely.
The question isn’t whether harm is present.
The question is: what is the nature of what we’re navigating, and are we willing to be in principled disagreement** together?
the work of differentiation
If it’s conflict rooted in genuine difference: we practice staying in relationship. We build structures for decision-making. We get clear on roles and authority. We learn to hold tension without collapsing into accusation. We learn how to be okay with each other, even when we disagree — and we learn how to find and communicate our lines and boundaries well. We practice the hard, slow work of naming differences and their impacts, facing the roots of our disagreements, and having honest conversations — ideally with support (like a conflict midwife — hi!).
If there’s harm that needs healing: we tend to it, alone and in community. We work with therapists, healers, and conflict midwives to understand where the hurt is, and what kind of wound it is. We recognize that harm is inevitable in every relationship, and that every person is capable of great harm as they are of great joy. We repair what we can, and we grieve what we cannot.
If there’s abuse happening: we intervene. We escalate with professional support and facilitated or midwifed plans. We do not try to love-and-light our way through (although we may choose to engage with restorative and transformative justice practices). We protect those being harmed, and we stop trying to mediate a power dynamic that’s designed to control. We learn the ways in which living under an imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy ingrains abusive behaviors throughout many of our institutions and behavioral patterns.
The work isn’t to eliminate harm.
The work is to understand what we’re actually facing — and to respond with the kind of precision that honors everyone’s humanity.
what I’m curious about
So here’s what I want us to practice together:
What would it look like to treat discernment as a skill we build, rather than a judgment we make?
When pain shows up in your organization, in your team, in your movement spaces — how can you ask: How can we find the shape of this? Is this conflict we need to hold? Is this harm we need to heal? Is this abuse we need to intervene on?
Can we practice staying curious a little longer about our own and each other’s experiences?
If you’re reading this with a hand to your chest, cortisol flooded, a current tangle waking you up in the predawn light before your alarm hits — or if you’re finding yourself in the daily numbness, worn down and worn out by a long-drawn out situation — your organization might need the urgent support of a conflict midwife. Book your free inquiry here.
And if you’re not in an active conflict situation but your team needs to practice these skills together — I teach organizations how to practice discernment, ask each other better questions, and work through disagreement without tension — so you can do your work together, better. One participant said, “it oddly makes me breathe easier — it felt so good to be so seen.” Bring me in to your team here.
