Stories without conflict have no tension. Stories without tension get no attention.
That’s the whole argument in two sentences, but let me unpack it because this is where most business communication falls on its face.
Conflict is the second requirement of effective storytelling (after character, before consequence). For a character to engage us, they need to have a problem worth caring about. This can be physical, mental, social or emotional — but it must be present. Without it, there’s nothing at stake, and without stakes, there’s no reason for anyone to keep reading, listening or watching.
Here’s the thing most people get wrong: they think conflict means fighting.
It doesn’t.
Conflict is the gap between what is and what could be. It’s the tension between who we are and who we want to become. It’s the moment in my origin story where I had clients around the world but was lying awake staring at the ceiling. Success on the outside, emptiness on the inside. That contradiction is conflict — and it’s far more compelling than a fist fight.
Think about the stories that stay with you. In The Shawshank Redemption, the surface conflict is a man wrongly imprisoned. But the deeper conflict — the one that actually moves you — is the tension between hope and despair. Andy Dufresne against the system, yes. But also Andy against the voice that says give up.
In business, we avoid conflict instinctively. We present ourselves as successful, capable, sorted. We lead with solutions. We scrub the struggle out of everything.
And that’s precisely why so much of it is invisible.
Because a story without conflict is just a press release. It’s blahketing. It’s noise that your audience’s attention filter was specifically designed to ignore.
The paradox is that sharing your struggle — the obstacles, the doubts, the failures — doesn’t make you look weak. It makes you human. And humans are wired to lean in when another human is in trouble. It’s how we’ve survived.
When you sit down to tell your story, don’t start with what you’ve achieved. Start with what you fought through. That’s where the energy lives.
Conflict is not the enemy of trust. It’s the engine.