What are the Positive Effects of Conflict in the Workplace?
We have all in our lifetimes experienced conflict. It’s a fact of life and in the workplace, it is inevitable.
If I were to ask you what the positive effects of conflict were in the workplace, you may look at me like I had lost my mind. Surely positive conflict is a bit of an oxymoron?
Well, I’m here to tell you that conflict done well, is what can give you the upper hand in creating highly performing teams – and guess what happens if you have a highly performing team? That’s right, you have a highly performing business. So its in your interests to listen to this and start re-thinking what you think you know about conflict.
The basic thing to be absolutely clear here, is that productive conflict is about ideas and solutions. It is not about attacking another person. We aren’t interested in mind-games, manipulation, politics or any of the other crap we see going on. We are talking about simply getting to the best possible solution in the fastest time possible.
Different people have different approaches to conflict, largely driven by behaviours that they have been nurturing throughout their lifetimes and like many behavioural elements, we probably don’t notice them happening or think about why we react the way we do. Noticing how you react is the first step to understanding this – the next (and harder) part, is when you feel yourself reacting in a destructive way, is to stop. Stop and check yourself and put your best foot forward with your productive tendencies.
Those people who can handle conflict in a healthy way have managed to free themselves of the temptation to react, catch themselves, and then work towards developing new habits. This doesn’t happen overnight and it takes a lot of work and practice, but people are messy and we know that all of this great work takes effort. But it’s worth it in the longer term.
How can your team engage in conflict rather than fear it?
The first step is to acknowledge that conflict can be productive. Most people go out of their way to avoid it, but by allowing ourselves to reframe it, see it as a creative tool for problem solving, then we can get much further along the productive conflict route.
You then need to agree what behaviours are and are not acceptable. This is best done as a group decision and different teams will have different tolerances for different behaviours. Is it ok to raise your voice? Maybe – but perhaps we need to caveat that we also need to make sure other people have space to be heard. Is it ok to be outwardly emotional? If it works, then yes if it doesn’t, agree what that looks like. Is swearing OK? Maybe not, in which case get a swear jar… whatever is going to work for your team. All of these things should be put on the table and agreed – and people need to be kept accountable to that agreement.
What does productive conflict look like?
It looks like a team that are happy to voice their opinions even if there is a chance others aren’t going to like what they say. It’s a team that as they hold their meetings, ask each other what they think and look for other people’s opinions. When feathers DO get ruffled, it’s addressed, right there and then, not ignored and left and that means that there are no elephants allowed in the room. The elephants, the elephants grandmothers and the fluff in the elephants pockets are all discussed.
When you can have this level of healthy debate in the workplace, people can put forward their views without fear of recrimination. Diversity of thinking can really have a chance to start looking at new and creative ways of solving problems. Meetings can be lively and productive, not boring wastes of time, and any posturing, politics, manipulation, jibes or repercussions can be firmly shown the door.
I think that all sounds rather exciting. That sounds like a positive, healthy and inclusive workplace to me. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of a team that could engage in positive conflict?
Positive conflict – not an oxymoron – just a better way of learning how we can work together.