Two people on your team who don't get along. It sounds like a personality clash. It's actually a cost.
Every meeting they're both in gets slower, because people are managing the tension instead of doing the work. Decisions get run past one of them first, quietly, to avoid setting the other one off. Other team members start choosing sides, or checking out altogether.
And the two people at the centre of it? They're spending energy defending their position instead of doing their job.
It doesn't stay contained to the two of them, either. The rest of the team feels it. People start filtering what they say in meetings, depending on who's in the room. Some quietly become the go-between, passing messages so the other two don't have to speak directly. Others just switch off, doing the minimum and staying out of it, because getting involved feels riskier than staying quiet. Over time, more of the team's energy goes into managing the atmosphere instead of doing the work.
None of that shows up on a spreadsheet. But it shows up in missed deadlines, in good people quietly job-hunting, and in a team that's stopped bringing you problems early, because raising anything feels like more hassle than it's worth.
Unresolved conflict isn't a soft issue. It's a business one.
The mistake most leaders make is waiting. Waiting to see if it blows over. Waiting until someone makes a complaint. Waiting until someone resigns and it's already too late to do anything about the two people at the centre of it, or the team that's been absorbing the fallout for months.
If you've noticed something is off between two people on your team, that's the moment to act, not the moment to hope it settles itself. Bringing in a conflict coach at that early stage costs a fraction of what it costs to lose good people, rebuild trust, or manage a formal complaint after the fact.
Don't wait until it's a crisis.