In any high-performing team — whether on the battlefield, in the boardroom, or in daily life — priorities will inevitably conflict. Projects compete for limited time and resources. Teams face clashing demands. Requests will come down from above that may be ambiguous or unclear. And leaders are the ones who must make hard calls and decide how do you deal with conflicting priorities.
The difference between success and failure is how you lead in those conflicts. If you wait for perfect clarity or to prioritize what’s important, you waste precious time executing. At Echelon Front, we’ve seen leaders struggle with these conflicting priorities across all different industries, roles, and organizational levels. But no matter what direction these priorities are pulling us, the solution is the same. You need to lead.
Here’s how to handle conflicting priorities: detach the overwhelming emotions, identify the highest priority, and climb the ladder of alignment to find consensus.
Step One: Detach from the Chaos
When priorities clash, emotions take over. You get overwhelmed by the pressure and confused about the first course of action. The pressure is on because you want to do everything, fix everything, and please everyone. There’s a sense of urgency, but you have to take a pause and detach.
Detachment is a powerful tool to gain clarity in high-pressure situations. Rather than acting out of emotion, take a pause and a breath. Rather than emotionally shutting down, mentally step back from the conflict. Breathe. Look at the situation objectively from a different vantage point.
Ask yourself: What’s actually going on? What’s driving the perceived urgency? What’s at risk if you do nothing for 60 seconds and just assess?
Detachment allows you to move from reactive to strategic. When you stop reacting to the pressure, you can lead and identify how to deal with conflicting priorities. This momentary pause can prevent costly mistakes by giving you objectivity. Only once you have detached can you prioritize and execute.
Q: How do you handle conflicting priorities?
A: When you notice conflicting priorities, acknowledge the inevitability of your emotional reaction and detach from the stress. Take a moment, a breath, and step back to evaluate what the most important priority is. Then, you can lead and identify how do you deal with conflicting priorities.
Step Two: Prioritize and Execute
You can’t fix everything at once. You can’t serve every stakeholder equally. You can’t do five critical tasks simultaneously and expect a good outcome. If you spend all your time fighting multiple fires, you’ll never make meaningful progress towards putting out the flame.
You have to identify the highest priority task, solve it, and then move forward to the next.
Ask yourself:
- What’s the most immediate threat to mission success?
- What priority will give the biggest return on investment?
- What will create the biggest impact if resolved first?
Once you’ve identified the highest priority, then execute. Communicate the plan and priority to the team. Accomplish the task. Then, reassess and repeat. This process is the foundation of how do you manage conflicting priorities in leadership settings.
This principle is one of the core Laws of Combat from Extreme Ownership, and it’s what separates reactive leaders from effective ones. Even if it doesn’t eliminate the complexity, it gives you a tool to manage it. How do you deal with conflicting priorities when they’re all urgent? You prioritize so that you can execute as quickly as you can. Because if everything is a priority, nothing truly is.
Step Three: Climb the Ladder of Alignment
Let’s say the conflicting priorities come from above or across the chain of command. When two departments or leaders are giving you direction that doesn’t align, how do you deal with conflicting priorities?
You climb the Ladder of Alignment.
Jocko Willink established this framework so leaders can ensure their teams are headed in the same direction. Creating and maintaining alignment is hard, but it’s necessary in order to straighten out conflicting priorities.
Every high-performing team has to be aligned on three core components: mission, vision, and values. Mission is what the team wants to do; vision is what the team wants to achieve; values are what the team believes.
If two priorities conflict, alignment likely broke down somewhere on that ladder. One team may be executing on what they thought was the goal, but the strategic context shifted. Maybe a department’s tactics clash with another’s because the intent was never clearly communicated. Tiny gaps can become big problems, but only if they go unaddressed.
Conflicting priorities don’t mean the team needs to be in conflict. Detach and identify the highest priority: maintaining solid team relationships and accomplishing the mission. Then, climb the ladder by revising the organization’s shared mission, vision, and values.
Step Four: Communicate the Priorities with Clarity
Once you’ve deconflicted priorities and aligned, your team is looking to you to communicate these clarifications.
Simplify the priorities. Continue to implement the Ladder of Alignment and root these decisions back into the mission, vision, and values. If there are any gaps in information or clarity, take ownership by creating clarity where you can. Great leaders don’t pass the confusion down. They filter it by simplifying the most important priority and grounding their team in the mission.
Use decentralized communication where possible. Align laterally with peers. And when in doubt, anchor everyone back to the mission. That’s what creates trust, even when the plans and priorities shift.
Q: How to manage conflicting priorities?
A: Communicate the highest priority with the team. Simplify your communication by referring back to the organization’s mission, vision, and values. If they understand, they can take action and execute the plan.
Final Thought: Conflicting Priorities Reveal Leadership
Priorities will conflict, pressure will rise, and emotions will be overwhelming. So, how do you manage conflicting priorities in real time? Start by clearly identifying and communicating the most impactful task. These are the moments when your leadership is tested, when you can prove to align the team and point them in the right direction.
Detach. Prioritize. Align. Communicate.
These leadership principles are proven to deconflict the highest-intensity moments on the battlefield. Here at Echelon Front, we’ve helped organizations across all sectors and sizes climb this Ladder of Alignment, solving internal disagreements and progressing their teams forward. If you’re ready to help your team do the same, lead by learning how do you deal with conflicting priorities so you can accomplish the mission.
