The Conflict Over Workplace Conflict

Practically every workplace training company has a course on how to deal with workplace conflict. They tell us that conflict blocks team performance. We learn that a team storming phase is a period of high conflict that hurts performance while a team performing phase—a period of low conflict—produces optimal performance.

If this explains everything about conflict, a team should perform well whenever members are in complete agreement. Teams should commit to zero conflicts because any conflict would be bad for the team.

The problem is, high performing teams don’t work that way, so there must be more to it. Herein lies the conflict about conflict.

High performing teams are by their nature highly collaborative and driven to improve. They constantly look for ways to get things done faster, cheaper, and better for the customer. This involves questioning decisions, confronting problems, and challenging current practices. In other words, conflict.

These actions require somebody to disagree with something or somebody else. After all, how is it possible to challenge a work system or practice without identifying a conflict between what is and what should be? There has to be a disagreement between what’s happening and what needs to change.

If things change, somebody is likely to be uncomfortable about it. That’s a good thing. A new opinion, and the discomfort it often causes for those affected, helps people to reconsider their beliefs or assumptions and make difficult changes for the better. These disagreements that spawn innovation and produce discomfort are, by definition, conflicts—healthy conflicts.

Managers who fail to understand this often close the door to innovation by over-controlling the work environment. They shut down every hint of disagreement and possibility for change that makes somebody uncomfortable. These are fear-driven, compliance-creating workplaces. They ensure that forces supporting the status quo far outweigh those pushing change.

This is why the problem in most organizations is not that we have too much conflict at work but rather that we don’t have enough of it. And when we don’t embrace healthy conflict, we miss out on the innovation and high performance it can produce.

With that in mind, these three simple leadership practices can help you encourage and enjoy more abundant, useful conflict from your team:

1. Encourage diversity of thought and authentic conversations.
2. Teach team members to seek alternative views and even argue the other side of a proposed course of action.
3. Show your team how to respect alternative views and build on others’ ideas so disagreements lead to understanding and collaboration rather than hardened positions and arguments.

These practices will help your team experience more healthy conflict. Instead of stilted discussions, they will learn to engage in spirited deliberations, confront barriers to high performance and improve team results.

So, stop seeing disagreements as conflict that’s bad for your team. Instead, embrace the conflict. Without it, you can’t innovate. With it, the possibilities are endless.

Kevin Herring is co-author of Practical Guide for Internal Consultants, and President of Ascent Management Consulting. Kevin can be contacted at kevinh@ascentmgt.com.

Ascent Management Consulting is found at www.ascentmgt.com and specializes in performance turnarounds, leadership coaching, and appraisal-less performance management.