Unlocking Your Team’s Full Potential: Healthy Conflict

September 23, 2024

Here is an uncomfortable truth: Conflict is inevitable in any team unit. Take a family for instance. No matter how happy and harmonious a family is, conflict is bound to happen. Why? Because when decisions affect multiple people – whether they are key parenting decisions or figuring out what’s for dinner – we simply do not always agree.

We should expect disagreements. Too often, these turn into arguments and fighting. But the truth is, there is a better way.

By approaching conflict in a healthy way, we not only avoid ugly spats with hurt feelings, we also can make better decisions and grow stronger as a team. Mastering healthy conflict on a team at work is not easy, but it is well worth it. Let’s talk about how to approach conflict by first discussing what happens when teams avoid conflict.

What Happens When We Avoid Conflict?

Because conflict can be unpleasant, the natural urge is often to avoid it altogether. The problem with this tendency is simple: Even though avoiding conflict may keep us inside our comfort zone, the underlying disagreement is still festering there. When conflict is not addressed in a healthy manner, one of three things is likely to happen:

The issue lies dormant for a while and comes back up later, in which case the conflict is simply delayed.
The issue lies dormant forever and is never revisited. When this happens – especially when it occurs repeatedly and over a long period of time – the people involved may grow bitter with each other and their teamwork decays.
One person surrenders to the other position simply to move past the issue without conflict. Of course, we should always be open to changing our minds if there is sound reason. But if a team chooses the easy way out and forgoes discussion, they may fail to find their way to the best possible resolution.

In any of these situations, working through the conflict would have been better for the team’s cohesion.

Healthy Conflict Starts with Trust

When conflict happens within a team that lacks trust, people are left feeling angry and hurt. People often have strong opinions and passion. When things get “heated”, it feels more like team members are attacking each other.

Does this mean we should avoid strong opinions and passion? Absolutely not. Particularly when the stakes are high, the best decision depends on the opinions and passion of everyone on the team.

While having healthy conflict on a team is not easy to achieve, the path to get there is quite simple. A high-functioning team depends on trust between members.

On the surface, this may sound like the need to honor commitments and expect that our teammates will do what they say they are going to do. This is dependability, which is a kind of trust that is certainly important in a team – but not the kind of trust that conflict requires to work through.

What matters more in healthy conflict is vulnerability-based trust, the mutual understanding and belief that all members of the team truly respect each other and care most about what’s best for the team.

Another key difference is that a trusting team attacks the problem, not each other. If the team lacks vulnerability-based trust and its leader does not put it front-and-center, conflict is a dangerous territory to enter. At the risk of contradicting the earlier point of the importance of embracing conflict, if trust doesn’t exist on the team, don’t embrace conflict – yet. Building trust must be the first priority.

Practical Conflict Resolution

Once a team has enough trust among its members to start facing conflict with one another, it is helpful to have some tools in your belt to assist.

Simple methods of comparison like pros and cons charts and Venn-diagrams can be used to see two or more ideas side-by-side. These exercises can help fully explore the problem and its possible solutions. They can turn a conflict into a magnificent collaborative moment for a team.

Another approach to conflict is to role-play arguing the other person’s position. Done well, this can force each person to invest a piece of their mind in that opposing argument. Hopefully, each member finds some perspective they wouldn’t understand if they stayed in their own shoes.

Mediators can also be effective by helping to translate messages and make room for everyone’s voice in a conflict, even as a tiebreaker. One-way mediators should certainly not be used as a substitute for trust.

Conclusion

In his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie wrote, “When two partners always agree, one of them is not necessary.” The point is, conflict and disagreements are not just inevitable. They are evident on a team with fully-rounded perspectives.

Conflict is certainly a tightrope walk. We should approach conflict with extreme care, otherwise it can frustrate and offend people. But when a team with mutual trust amongst all members approaches conflict, they can truly unlock the greater sum of its parts and tackle issues with a higher level of impact than before.