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Using descriptions from participants of ten Australian Football League (AFL) Club boards, the authors offer a rare, in-depth account of board member perceptions of interpersonal relationships between board members and the relational conflict evident. These findings suggest that interpersonal behaviours related to egos, social awareness, transparency and trust, ultimately leads to dysfunctional conflict.

This paper examined the leadership influence on board dysfunctional conflict using the concept of authentic leadership (AL). The authors dismantled board member interpersonal dynamics to explore whether AL may alleviate the issues associated with dysfunctional relational conflict.

In addition, we highlighted the President has a key leadership role, whereby if they are characterised by AL attributes, they can facilitate higher levels of trust amongst board members and ultimately minimise board fragmentation.

Practically, our findings assist boards to identify some of the behavioural antecedents to dysfunctional relationships, therefore assisting leaders to attenuate their influence on board fragmentation and improve board functioning.