We need a more comprehensive solution that gets at our mindset and culture around conflict. Even if we do help them muster the courage to surface conflicts, the sheer volume of difficult conversations that’s required soon exhausts most people. But conflict aversion is so strong that a nifty new skillset isn’t enough to get people raising contentious issues. Unfortunately, I seldom see these skills put to use. We’ve relied on books, articles, and programs to give employees the right words to say to work through conflict constructively. We have treated the lack of productive conflict as a skills gap. Up until now, our solutions haven’t been up to the task. My reputation suffered more for pointing out an error than his did for making one. I had only been working for three months when I was chastised by a senior person for giving direct feedback to a colleague who had been making errors in reports to clients. Third, once we enter the workforce, we’re rewarded for getting along with colleagues, and perceived poorly if we rock the boat. Second, we’re socialized to be polite (did you have a grandma like mine who was fond of saying, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all?”). One reason for that is that we’re biologically wired to get along with those in our in-group. The problem is that your team likely lacks both the skills and the mindset to use conflict productively. Paying down the conflict debt on your team is critical, but it won’t be easy. Conflict debt can be as minor as withholding the constructive feedback that would allow your colleague to do a better job and as profound as continually deferring the strategic decision about when to scale your new product line. ![]() Conflict debt is the sum of all undiscussed and unresolved issues that stand in the way of progress. The result is that most of us find our teams up to our eyeballs in conflict debt. Rather than working through the conflicts that will help our organizations move forward, we duck, dodge, and defer them. ![]() Does your team tend to dilute resources over far too many projects so that none get any traction? Do you stay safe in your siloes, but lose the opportunity for the cross-pollination that creates innovation? Are your plans full of risks and assumptions that go unspoken for fear of starting a fight? Can you think of an example in your organization where the failure to work through a conflict productively is holding the business back? You and Your Team Series Conflict Conflict avoidance is bad for business, too. It’s not just engagement that suffers when you sweep issues under the rug. The ability to get issues on the table and work through them constructively is critical to having a healthy culture. ![]() Avoiding conflict means that it’s not safe to express dissent or frustration, which means stress and resentment build. Avoiding conflict means tolerating poor performance, which means other employees have to pick up the slack. Avoiding conflict means that you fail to make difficult trade-offs required to prioritize, which leads to overwhelming workloads. Instead, I see the greatest engagement challenges in organizations that eschew conflict. In an era where we exalt employee wellness and happiness, we’ve started to think of conflict as antithetical to engagement. It’s not surprising that your team is avoiding conflict. Other examples include executives allowing priority lists to balloon for fear of saying “no” to anyone managers creating unfair and inefficient work-arounds rather than dealing with an unproductive team member and employees letting their frustration and resentment toward one another fester rather than working through it. One clue that your team is avoiding conflict is if the least bit of discomfort in a meeting causes someone to suggest that you “take it offline.” This, of course, triggers the meeting-after-the-meeting phenomenon - another hallmark of a conflict-avoidant culture. Have you noticed your organization becoming so focused on building a happy, engaged workforce that your leaders are becoming profoundly conflict-avoidant? I see examples of this all the time.
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