Most boards have experienced it. Two members who cannot seem to get through a meeting without friction. Sometimes it is a disagreement that never got resolved. Sometimes it is a history that predates the board entirely. Whatever the origin, the pattern is the same. They clash, the room tenses up, and everyone else waits for it to pass.
The problem is that it rarely passes on its own.
Ongoing conflict between two members is not just uncomfortable. It changes how the entire board functions.
Other members start to self-censor. They avoid taking positions that might land them in the middle of the dynamic. Newer members learn quickly that certain topics are loaded and adjust their participation accordingly. The board starts making decisions around the conflict rather than through honest discussion.
It also eats time. A meeting that should move through five agenda items in ninety minutes can lose twenty minutes to a recurring clash that nobody knows how to stop. Multiply that across twelve meetings a year and the cost becomes significant.
And it drives good people out. The board member who joined because they care about the work, and who has no interest in being a spectator to someone else's conflict, will eventually stop showing up. Retention on volunteer boards is already hard. Unmanaged interpersonal conflict makes it harder.
The more interesting question is not why the conflict exists. It is why it continues.
On most volunteer boards, nobody has a clear mandate to address interpersonal dynamics. The chair manages the meeting. The bylaws govern procedure. But the space between two people who have decided they do not get along often falls through every available crack.
There is also an unspoken assumption that adults will sort it out. That two people who volunteered for this will eventually find a way to be professional with each other. That assumption holds in environments where behavior has consequences, where someone's job or paycheck is connected to how they show up. On a volunteer board, those guardrails do not always exist. Nobody is getting written up. Nobody is at risk of losing anything. Bad habits go unchecked because there is no structural pressure to correct them.
There is also a reluctance to get involved. Board members are volunteers. They did not sign up to mediate. Stepping into someone else's conflict feels risky, especially when both parties are still seated at the same table and will be for the foreseeable future.
So the pattern continues. Meeting after meeting. Everyone hoping it will resolve itself. It usually does not.
The chair cannot fix a relationship. But the chair can and should manage how that relationship plays out in the meeting room.
When a clash starts to develop, the chair does not have to wait for it to escalate. Redirecting early is always easier than intervening late. "I want to make sure we stay focused on the motion" or "Let's keep this to the agenda item" are not confrontational statements. They are the chair doing the job.
If the conflict surfaces as a direct exchange between two members, the chair can interrupt cleanly. "I am going to ask both of you to hold there. Let's hear from someone else and come back to this." That breaks the loop without taking sides.
What the chair should not do is ignore it in the hope that the meeting will just move on. Silence from the chair reads as permission. The rest of the board is watching to see whether the person running the meeting is going to hold the room or let it run.
If the same two people are clashing regularly, the chair or board leadership needs to have a direct conversation with each of them separately. Not a formal proceeding. Not a warning. A private, honest conversation that names what has been observed and asks what is driving it.
This conversation is uncomfortable. It is also necessary. Boards that avoid it are choosing the discomfort of ongoing disruption over the discomfort of a single difficult exchange. The math does not work in their favor.
The goal of the conversation is not to force the two members to like each other. It is to establish a shared understanding that the conflict cannot keep playing out in meetings. Whatever the history is, the board has work to do and the people in the room deserve a functional environment.
Sometimes one conversation is enough. Sometimes the underlying issue needs more attention, including a facilitated conversation between both parties with a neutral third party present, a clearer agreement about how disagreements get handled, or in serious cases, a conversation about whether continued board service makes sense for one or both members.
Board members who are not the chair are not powerless here, but they need to be thoughtful about how they engage.
The worst thing the rest of the board can do is pick sides. Even quietly. Even in the group chat after the meeting. Alliances form fast and they make the conflict harder to resolve because now it has grown beyond two people.
What helps is modeling the behavior the board needs. Staying focused on the work. Engaging with the substance of disagreements rather than the personalities involved. Refusing to participate in side conversations that keep the conflict alive between meetings.
A board that collectively decides it is not going to organize itself around two people's unresolved history is more powerful than any single intervention. That decision has to be made out loud eventually, by someone with the standing to make it.
Disagreement on a board is healthy. It is how good decisions get made. Two people who see things differently and can work through that difference in a structured, respectful way are an asset.
The problem is conflict that has stopped being about the work. When two board members are clashing because of ego, history or something that has nothing to do with what is on the agenda, the board is no longer functioning the way it should.
Naming that distinction, clearly and without drama, is usually where the path forward begins.
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