How does a team go about developing the ability and willingness to engage in healthy conflict?
The first step is acknowledging that conflict can be productive, and that many teams have a tendency to avoid it. As long as some team members believe that conflict is undesirable and unnecessary, there is little chance that it will occur.
The rules of engagement is a great starting point, alongside understanding each others conflict profiles. Then begin mining for truth, engaging all opinions and ideas and keep going until you get the best decision or outcome for the team. This requires leadership, and your courage muscles need to be strengthened. If you really do feel this is out of reach for you, I recommend getting a coach or engage with a team facilitator until you all feel comfortable doing it. I promise you, it is worth it.
You can discover your own conflict responses and preferences by taking your own assessment. View a sample report here
Consider the importance of engaging in conflict from the points below:
A Team That Fears Conflict:
- Has boring meetings
- Creates environments where personal attacks thrive
- Ignores controversial topics that are critical to team success
- Fails to tap into all the opinions and perspectives of team members
- Wastes time and energy with posturing and interpersonal risk management
A Team That Engages in Conflict:
- Has lively, interesting meetings
- Extracts and exploits the ideas of all team members
- Solves real problems quickly
- Minimizes politics
- Puts critical topics on the table for discussion
Reflection
How does your team deal with conflict?
Would you consider your team conflict as healthy?
What do you think could be preventing productive conflict?
Can you think of any benefits of encouraging healthy conflict?
and remember...
- Healthy conflict in teams and relationships requires trust. When you trust one another you feel safe to share your ideas, thoughts, opinions and express how you feel.
- Conflict, whether healthy or unproductive will ALWAYS feel uncomfortable. Knowing it has a purpose that is beyond your feelings of discomfort will help guide you through it.
- Rules of engagement give the members psychological safety and must always be discussed as a team.
- When healthy conflict occurs, it doesn't break relationships, it makes them stronger.
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