Steve thought his team was on board with the new governance structure. He had already listened to team members’ concerns, and he felt confident his plan was right. When Lilly approached him with an additional question about his rationale that occurred to her in thinking about it later and suggested a slightly different point of view and a few changes, Steve had no patience. In perhaps a stronger tone than he had intended, he declared, “This is how it will go,” effectively shutting down the conversation and leaving Lilly feeling not just unheard and undervalued but also angry.

In order for you and your organization to fully leverage the strengths of your team’s differences and create exponential value, you must first understand the roadblocks that quietly get in the way. We call these roadblocks “landmines.” Les, through his service in the US Army where he presided over the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosives Command, understands landmines in the most literal sense. Once you know where a landmine is, you can deploy what is needed to defuse it. Steve was likely annoyed with Lilly, weary of revisiting his plan, and confident in his rationale from past experience. But did he consider the impact his reaction would have on Lilly’s engagement? Likely not. Steve just stepped on that hidden landmine of certainty.

Like real landmines, these challenges are invisible until you stumble upon them. They can be triggered by something as small as a single word, a passing comment, or a seemingly harmless decision or, as with Steve and Lilly, a seemingly appropriate request for clarification or small enhancement. Like real landmines, once set off, they can cause outsized disruption, damaging trust, relationships, and performance. Just as a landmine holds enormous potential energy, human differences carry the potential for volatility if unmanaged. That same energy, when handled with skill, can be redirected toward insight, innovation, and stronger collaboration. Knowing where the landmines are is the first step to defusing them and channeling their power in ways that create value rather than destroy it. We have identified four landmines that stand in the way of the tremendous value- creation potential of leveraging workforce difference. Remember that the people on your team and in your organization come to you and you to them with a complex array of factors— personality, background, knowledge, biases, current mood— playing into how you and they go about working with and through others. You may need to be on landmine lookout on a moment- to- moment basis, as they are underground, and you may not often notice them before they create havoc. Bad news: we all run the risk of stirring up or prolonging the chaos these landmines create. They aren’t going away. As humans, we can only become more conscious of them and shift our behavior accordingly. Good news: being aware of the landmines is the first step toward uncovering what might be getting in your own way and in the way of others as you seek to harness value of difference.

Landmine One: Certainty 

As leaders, we have all been there. A situation when you believed you were right and others’ views were simply wrong. Executive team member Asher sees a need to focus planning discussions on making the next quarter’s numbers, yet his executive team colleague Jen wants to look further ahead toward a strategy that will better equip the business to achieve over the long term. Each strongly believes the other is wrong given the context of the situation. Chances are, you can think of a situation, conversation, or topic right now in which you deeply believe you are right and others with opposing views are wrong. 

The challenge of navigating human differences starts with the reality that each of us as individuals focuses on (or attends to) different parts of the context around us and then processes (con templates and comprehends) that information through different (or some would say, biased) lenses. We all see and experience the world of work differently, which influences our conclusions about everything and, therefore, our ability to manage difference. For Asher and Jen, it’s highly likely a near- term plan of reinvention is needed to make next quarter’s goals and a longer- term strategic plan is warranted to ensure the future success of the business. The issue is what to focus on now. 

Who we are, where we sit in the world, what we see, what we do or don’t pay attention to, what we believe is or isn’t important, what experiences we have or haven’t had collectively have impact on our conclusions about what is going on (our truth). Even people who share a common identity (of one race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious sect, geography, level of ability, education, among other dimensions) make sense of the world differently.

Subjective nature of right/wrong thinking 

One example of people reacting differently to the same situation, which received substantial news coverage, occurred when a final candidate for the superintendent of schools job at a Massachusetts school system referred to two women on the search committee as “ladies” and, therefore, had his offer revoked. Leaving aside whether you believe this term referring to women needs retirement, people legitimately viewed the candidate’s use of the term differently. Some came out in support of the conclusion that the term is “sexist,” and the candidate was “out of touch with the younger generation.” Others were shocked that this was even called out, assuming the candidate used the term out of respect. The same is true for every human: anyone who is trying to make sense of the world, identify others’ motivations, navigate the efforts of others to raise issues, motivate others, and understand another is influenced by the way they individually process information. 

Note that this has nothing to do with what is the actual or objective truth in the situation. It is based on each person and who they are, what they see in the situation, how they think it through. Of course, when people are in a strong relationship and the differences are not major, it is relatively easy to work through challenges. However, when relationships are not strong or the context is emotional and feels risky or raw, it is more natural to assume that the other side is wrong, and we are right. Because this meaning- making happens unconsciously, it feels hard to imagine that what we recognize, what resonates, is anything other than reality. Thus, when confronted with others’ views, it is challenging to react in any way other than with certainty, thinking, I know what I see and am right; therefore, the other person must be wrong. 

Since our brains process information quickly and unconsciously, an ever- increasing level of confidence of one’s own view and belief manifests this common “I’m right and they’re wrong” reaction. Driving things forward from a stance of “I’m right” can be efficient, until you leave others behind. So now, we not only have what organizational psychologist Chris Argyris called a “cycle of inference” (a conclusion reached based on evidence and reasoning) and later popularized in Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, but also, an even stronger cycle: one where differences, while somewhat seen by others, make it even harder to step out of self- justifying reactions. In the business world, this is both an opportunity lost (there is value to be found in those different views) and a recipe for lack of execution. Your confirmation bias prevents deeper consideration as well as the possibility of alternative positive outcomes. Lilly had a timing question on the reorg, given close- of- quarter numbers. Had Steve stopped to hear her out instead of shutting her down out of his own certainty that his path and the timing of it was right, he might have seen her point and avoided possible distractions that impacted the focus on sales goals. In essence, there is more than one way to view a situation. The more convinced you are of your own conclusion, the further you might be shutting off the spigot from which exponential value can flow.

You are not intrinsically motivated to not be right. You, like all of us, can point to many circumstances in which being right was rewarded or even crucial for the outcomes achieved. Being right feels good! Who doesn’t want to be right? Still, unconsciously or uncritically thinking others are wrong and you are right without stepping back and testing your thinking and listening to another’s point of view is a landmine ready to explode. Could Asher and Jen find a path forward for their planning? It’s very likely they could. But not if they each remain certain that the other is wrong and they are personally right. On a conscious, intellectual level, of course, we all understand others might harbor different views, but knowing it intellectually and behaving in ways that acknowledge that understanding and defuse the potential landmine— especially when for whatever reason the stakes feel high— are two very different things. 

Certainty interconnects with the three other landmines: Inconsistency (the gap between what you say you value and how you actually behave), Emotional Reactivity (the varied responses we have to the same stimuli, and Justification (the tendency to defend your behavior, which acts as fuel for the other three landmines and causes independent damage. Understanding the role of certainty as the primary landmine helps explain why the others gain such destructive power.

These landmines make clear why leading through difference is so hard. They pull us off course, erode trust, and drain performance. The good news is that awareness is the first step toward managing certainty and defusing this landmine. They help you see the traps before you step into them, recover quickly when you do, and prevent many from detonating at all. It starts with the most important muscle of leadership: self-awareness. When you understand your own thoughts, feelings, and reactions, you create the foundation for turning difference from a source of friction into a source of value. which can include better ideas, execution, and connections to stakeholders; faster problem-solving, and greater agility.

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted/adapted from All the Difference: Six Leadership Actions to Bridge Perspectives, Strengthen Teams, and Create Value by Susan MacKenty Brady, Stuart D. Kliman, and Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Leslie C. Smith. Copyright 2026 Susan MacKenty Brady, Stuart D. Kliman, and Leslie C. Smith. All rights reserved.