Five Elements Of Creating Conflict-Competent Teams
/By Mark Batson Baril for Forbes Coaches Council, Jun 12, 2019
[Updated 12.2.2020]
Building great companies takes building great teams. And I believe building great teams takes conflict.
Wait, what?
For many leaders, this might be a tough concept to stomach, especially in times of heightened tensions and economic uncertainty. It’s understandable that most of us want to avoid conflict like the plague because it’s typically perceived as negative and disruptive. It can also, in more extreme cases, lead to costly resolutions.
But here’s the truth about conflict: It is a normal, natural occurrence that happens whenever two or more people are gathered to accomplish common goals. And it’s inevitable that somewhere along the process, people will bump heads. However, conflict doesn’t have to be a negative experience for your teams.
I have found that skillfully-managed constructive conflict can turbo-power creativity, innovation, productivity and growth.
Harness the power of constructive, creative conflict
The difference between a company with conflict run amok and one with innovative, block-busting, idea-bursting creative tension? Conflict competency. This is that elusive space where not only is conflict normalized, but also the concepts of competing ideas and cognitive confrontation are coveted within a team. Conflict competence is a management skill that can be taught and built into the structure and culture of any organization.
What does a conflict-competent company look like?
As a conflict adviser and organizational ombuds, I have witnessed firsthand the dramatic shifts an organization can make when conflict becomes a tool to use, rather than a thing to avoid. We recently took a tech startup team through the conflict-competency process. In anticipation of the startup’s rapid growth, team management sought to uplevel their ability to have good, safe exchanges of ideas and feedback.
The positive shifts became so noticeable on the team level that the founders and leadership wanted in, so we included them in the training and coaching sessions. They came away with a greater understanding of themselves when in conflict, and how to open themselves up to understanding others who were in conflict. This awareness allows leadership to head off possible disputes while giving air to the creative head-bumping that spawns innovation.
The company has built these new competencies into their systems of mentoring, management training and on-boarding. Creative conflict is now woven into the fabric of the company culture. As a result, the organization has grown; they have more people with a new outlook on what they are building and why. Leadership reports to us that a key value is an atmosphere of being able to come to work, challenge one another's ideas on a regular basis, and have that feel inclusive, natural and safe. Team members are energized, motivated, teams are cohesive and the whole organization is moving forward with their collective eyes directly on the prize.
Five Strategies For Becoming Conflict Competent
1. Live the idea that conflict is normal. This way, you get to control the outcomes. It's critical for your organization, top-down, to understand that disagreements can be a rich source of new ideas. That type of open communication and respectful exchange is safe and valued. Ask yourself, what is your teams’ outlook on conflict?
2. Analyze what your conflict style is. Conflict is a personal thing — ultimately, it’s about us. The way we approach relationships is affected by many factors related to our personalities, experiences and propensities. Many of these aspects have been categorized into common behaviors (and tools) that bring great awareness of what’s at work internally when we respond to others.
When you understand your conflict style, you can then have more control over your responses so that you can avoid a negative confrontation and choose a more productive response. Some common styles include: avoiding, accommodating, compromising, collaborating and competing. Do you have a go-to style you lean on heavily?
3. Know what “hooks” you. We all have behaviors that push our buttons, such as the person who dominates the conversation in a meeting, the employee who consistently misses deadlines (but always delivers great work), the manager whose tone when he delivers feedback makes us bristle, etc. When we understand that everyone (including you) has “hooks,” what our personal hooks are and what causes us to become hooked, we’re better equipped to choose a different response. This helps you to avoid suffering from the outcomes of your emotional, most likely conflict-sparking, reaction.
4. Practice giving and receiving feedback and critiques. Be mindful of your word choice, and when necessary, make a slight shift in your manner when offering and taking feedback. This can go a long way toward inviting a person to receive feedback in a useful way. Teach and adapt these communication skills in a way that feels comfortable to you and your team. Conflict-competent mechanisms for healthy critique and feedback can be built into the culture of the team or organization. To get started, ask yourself, what’s the secret to giving your top performer feedback they can hear?
5. Understand how to approach difficult conversations. It is inevitable for situations to arise that need resolution through a “difficult” conversation. Conflict competency reframes that description from something tough, negative and to be avoided, into something proactive and productive. A “meaningful” conversation is one that allows both sides to be heard, maintains trust and respect, and moves both parties to an acceptable solution. What is your theory behind having difficult conversations with good outcomes?
Training your workplace in conflict competency moves the company through sticky situations and potential negative conflict rabbit holes. It also results in harnessing the power of constructive, creative conflict to build a culture in which diverse relationships and bold ideas mix together, communication is respectful and lively, and new ideas and efficiencies emerge.
How are you preparing your team to engage with conflict?
Wondering how conflict competency would work in your organization? Contact Resologics about this and other constructive conflict issues at mark@resologics.com or 510.314.8314.
When we join a company, partnership or team, our expectation is that everyone involved will exhibit professional behavior toward us and each other. Instead, it’s highly possible that we may become one of the more than 60 million adults in the United States who are affected in some way by bullying behavior at work.
What kind of behaviors are we talking about? Our definition is any interpersonal behavior that causes emotional distress in others sufficient enough to impede their productivity or disrupt organizational functioning. It isn’t just a personality conflict — it’s a chronic pattern of disrespectful behavior.