Coaching Your Team Through Conflict
No team avoids all conflict. A bit like the married couple who “never fights”, a team without conflict is likely an unhealthy team. Good teams deal with conflict. Great teams engage in healthy conflict to better the team as a whole. As the leader, if your team is not dealing with conflict you have a serious problem, and might just very well be you. It should be noted that this conflict is not aggressive, or mean-spirited. If conflict in the team is hurtful, or behind the back of others, then it is not healthy. Angry conflict shouldn’t be a part of a great team. Engaging in healthy conflict is vital to a healthy and high-functioning team. As the leader, you are the coach for your team in dealing with conflict the right way. Here are a number of steps to help you coach your team through conflict.
Set Ground Rules
Establish a basic set of engagement rules when it comes to working through a conflict as a team. These rules could be fully unique to your team. They should always include a commitment to not criticize the person. No personal attack should be allowed. They could include an expectation that everyone speaks. Maybe one that doesn’t allow talking over, or during, someone else’s time. The rules need to be simple and apply to everyone. No more than five probably. The goal is a good balance that allows for spirited discussion while respecting each other. Too many rules will squash healthy debate.
Create a Process
Chances are, your team is not made of professional conflicters. A process that guides the times of engaging in healthy conflict will help them learn how to manage it and move forward together. It can align with the rules you use, or be generic steps that you all know will need to be walked through. The final step in the process has to be a decision. It doesn’t have to be unanimous and it may have to be tabled and returned to later. But the process isn’t over until a decision is made and everyone is prepared to support that decision going forward. It is wise to come together, perhaps on a yearly basis, to evaluate the decisions that have been made and determine continued courses of action.
Encourage Collaboration
Okay, this one might need to read “Force Collaboration.” Not every problem is going to need group work. But for significant decisions it is good for a team to break into smaller units and work through parts of the solution. Create sub-groups and assign parts of the problem. Have them work through ideas for solving it. Even have a group that is intentionally thinking through the negative side of the decision. Assign them dissension as a task. Again, remember the rules. No personal attacks. However, a group should look at the potential negatives of the decision as well.
Build Trust
Consider this more of a subpoint in the discussion. Trust is paramount to healthy conflict. The members of the team must trust that disagreement is not dislike AND they must trust that their leader will stick to the process and rules. If you, as the leader, can’t handle disagreement then trus success will always elude you. Building trust allows the group as a whole to move forward together. Disagreement does not automatically mean that person is right, or wrong. It is a different perspective. A voice that is heard, even if not ultimately decided to follow, is a voice that will support the group decision. No trust, no real team.
Model Authentic Curiosity
Use great questions strategically. Seek to clarify the various points. Ask for more detail. Ask for the background and reason for that frame of reference. Purposefully seek to understand rather than dismiss. Be curious rather than judgmental. Model hearing out the ins and outs of an opposing viewpoint without critique. Show the team what it should look like. Be willing to see and accept the other point of view as the better option. The criteria for the best course is not simply your course. Truly great leaders recognize that great ideas can and do come from others. True curiosity will allow you to see and hear those ideas through intentionally healthy conflict.
With time and practice the team can become great through the healthy engagement of conflict. Working through these moments together will strengthen the whole. Failing to do these things well will weaken the organization and its leadership. The point here is not to engage every decision into a strategic conflict session. Many many decisions can be had through empowering the team to make low to mid-level decisions on their own. Strategic conflict should happen with the big vision and mission based decisions. Stifling conflict creates blind spots in your leadership that will eventually bring failure. Don’t limit yourself, or your team, by failing them in times of needed conflict. Coach them effectively through it.