Conflict is a constant in our lives. We have arguments with our partners over household chores, with businesses over a botched order, and, most frequently, within our own organizations. From a young age, many of us are taught that “good” communication means avoiding or defusing tension. We are taught to be “peacemakers.”
While there are many times that avoiding or defusing conflict may be the appropriate actions to take, navigating conflict is often more helpful. As a leader, always being a peacemaker can sometimes be a liability. As I mentioned in Value of Diversity: The Importance of the Dissenting Voice, when you ignore someone who disagrees, you run the risk of missing alternative ideas or areas of opportunity in your plans. If we avoid all conflict, we avoid the healthy debate that required to sharpen our ideas. To lead effectively, we should not focus solely on “conflict resolution” or “conflict avoidance.” We should be looking at conflict fluency.
Healthy vs. Unhealthy Conflicts
A few years ago, I saw a leadership team take a diagnostic test on conflict styles. It measured whether they were conflict-averse or conflict-prone. The test itself was not quite that binary, but what many of the individuals took away from the results were. There was also a lot of focus on how conflicts are resolved, and an underlying tone that all conflicts should have a resolution. But there is a key component missing in this equation: what is the nature of the conflict in question?
Conflict isn’t binary; it’s a spectrum. And it can be healthy in relationships (whether professional or personal) or it can be decisively unhealthy. We are all familiar with how conflict can be decidedly unhealthy.
- Painful words used to attack the person rather than the problem.
- Minimizing or dismissing others’ experiences or points of view.
- Reacting with hostility when a differing opinion is presented.
Obviously, this is not a conclusive list of unhealthy conflict traits. I’m certain you can add more to this list from disagreements and arguments you’ve had in your life. We all live unique experiences. However, what is often overlooked is that some conflict can lead to healthy results, and we should be encouraging the traits of this healthy conflict.
- A respectful debate where the focus remains on the merit of the idea and challenges posed.
- Using the disagreement to identify what each party prioritizes and what values are being pursued.
- Raising concerns and offering alternatives in order to create more sustainable solutions to the challenge.
Leadership & Conflicts: Using Disagreements as a Tool
Many resources exist to aid businesses and individuals with conflict management – how to resolve conflicts and keep the peace. A lot of these discussions focus on addressing the emotional regulation and mindful communication. These are certainly important topics! Know how to utilize these ideas can help you navigate challenging situations. But a leader who understands conflict fluency knows hot to utilize healthy disagreements to their advantage.
Now before we begin, please note that I am not advocating for creating workplace strife and pitting team members against each other. What I am advocating for is understanding that each person in an organization is an individual with different points of views, values, and priorities, which undoubtedly means that people will often not be in full agreement. Something that should be encouraged as corporate diversity.
A Common Scenario
A company is growing rapidly. A larger customer base means more work to be done. However, the business has limited resources to tackle the increased workload, and while they are willing to hire additional people, they want to evaluate all possible options.
- The Sales Team pushes for the “newest and greatest” features to stay ahead of the market and meet the client demand.
- The Technology Team wants to pause and address underlying technical challenges and platform stability.
- The Customer Support Team is facing a large increase in tickets and wants immediate fixes for current users.
In a conflict-averse culture, these three groups will work in silos, each secure in the knowledge that they know best, and the other teams don’t understand. They will complain between each other, and leadership teams spend their time placating their organizations while trying to find some form of middle ground that doesn’t cause too much strife.
In a conflict-prone culture, the teams often jockey for positions of power, pushing forth their ideas as the best solution for the business. They may minimize the perspectives of other teams, or convince themselves that they know better. This is the “smartest person in the room” challenge. I have seen organizations so focused on proving they are the “smartest people” that they ignore the simple solutions.
When we practice conflict fluency, the leader brings these groups together because they disagree. They recognize that each group reflects a core pillar of the business. By practicing healthy conflict, the teams can identify a broader portfolio of possible solutions, build a roadmap that highlights priorities, and surfaces possible drawbacks. Contrary to conflict-averse cultures, they don’t allow teams to complain and wallow in isolation. And unlike conflict-prone cultures, the leader will ensure all teams are given equal power, listening to alternative points of view.
Beware of the Silence
Perhaps the most dangerous form of conflict is the one you never see or hear. Silent disagreement occurs when team members agree in a meeting but vent in the hallway (or privately behind closed doors, team chats, etc.). This most commonly occurs when people fall to the perils of “group think” or when they fear voicing their opinion. Perhaps they fear voicing their opinion due to confidence. Or they have seen a senior leader lose control when someone disagreed. Maybe they’ve been reprimanded for a simple, but inconsequential, failure.
There are ways to challenge this silence.
- Ensure you are creating an environment that promotes different points of view – even those that you may not agree with!
- Practice the concept that every idea is at least worth a healthy discussion.
- Notice who is not voicing disagreement, and consider why.
- Are they naturally introverted? Perhaps a quiet sidebar will draw out their opinion, rather than in a group setting.
- Is there someone with more “power” in the room? Do you have a front-line employee in the room with a lot of c-suite executives? They may fear voicing their opinion. Remind everyone (politely) that rank does not matter in this discussion. You hire people to be experts in their respective roles, and each role has a voice.
Pre-Mortem: An Exercise to Surface Silent Disagreements
One tactic you can utilize to look for hidden arguments is to ask your team to conduct a “pre-mortem” on a proposed solution or change. Much like a post mortem analyzes “what went wrong,” the pre-mortem helps teams think of “what might go wrong?” Present the proposed solution, but tell your teams to imagine that it is six months to a year down the road. Paint a picture of the project being a spectacular failure. Ask your team to provide creative ideas of why it failed and what went wrong. Don’t ask them to brainstorm solutions, only the things that went wrong and the repercussions. This could be a loss of customers, intense dissatisfaction among employees, too much rapid coding that left critical errors in the product, etc. By phrasing this as a creative brainstorming exercise for everyone, you provide an “out” for people who don’t want to be “the only person disagreeing.” Understanding what might go wrong can help you explore additional paths that may lead to a more robust solution.
It can be challenging to identify silent disagreement, particularly if you are a high-ranking leader in your organization as people are often less confident around senior leaders. But it is important to give a voice to the silence, rather than letting that disagreement spill outside where it can become toxic.
Recognizing and Managing Power Dynamics
Power dynamics play a role in any conflict, and usually not for the better. As a leader, you must stay aware that you wield a form of power. Your participation in a debate may sway the outcomes, whether you want it to or not. If you direct the conversation too much, and you may silence differences in opinion that you need to hear. Speak up too little, and you run the risk of a debate becoming counter-productive as people jockey to be the key decision maker.
While healthy conflicts are easier when people of equal authority are in the room, there is a lot of value in including those who may have a lower level of perceived power. As I mentioned, expertise comes from all places. Your newest programmer, or your front-line customer service employee may have critical insights that a CTO or or CCO could miss. As a leader, you must navigate these positions by using your influence to facilitate the discussion and surface solutions.
- Know when to exercise authority: If the discussion starts to veer towards unhealthy conflict, it is your responsibility as a leader to utilize your authority to call a halt. This could be by redirecting the discussion, taking a break to let emotions cool, or even being the deciding voice between opposing viewpoints.
- Are you wanted or needed? It is easy when conflict arises for people to say that they’ll escalate it and let the boss decide. While sometimes this leadership intervention is indeed needed and warranted, there are other times when this becomes the “easy button.” Beware of joining every dispute, even as a facilitator. You want to aid the team in finding beneficial solutions, but you cannot be present every single time people have a simple disagreement.
Conflict fluency is not something we think about daily. And while conflict is often uncomfortable, it is inevitable. It is up to you as a leader to model the behavior for your team that leads to healthy disagreements and resolutions that benefit your organization. Don’t immediately try to stifle every argument, but instead learn to ask what is causing the disagreement. Dig to find out the underlying cause and identify how to navigate through it. With practice, you can begin to build conflict fluency.
