Why you should encourage conflict as a leader
And 5 tips to make conflict a driver of success rather than a necessary evil
Conflict.
When you hear this word, what comes to your mind?
Argument, fight, division, friction, contention, dissent, violence, war. I could carry on, but you get the gist of it. Conflict is a word with a negative connotation.
Steve Jobs used to say “I don’t really care about being right, I just care about success”. I, on the other hand, as most human beings I suppose, do care about being right and definitely don’t like being wrong.
Today I am going to tell you the story of how I moved from being competitive, self-centred and always wanting to be right as a kid to being able to not only manage conflict but to create healthy environments for teams of people where conflict is used as a fantastic tool to achieve better decision making, commitment, accountability and ultimately great results.
I am an only child. I grew up being used to always being the first of the class, praised by my teachers and spoiled by my parents. As a result, I grew into someone who felt the urge to always be right and didn’t like being wrong at all. As a young adult, I found it difficult to admit my mistakes, especially when my emotions were involved.
When I started my career as a software engineer though, I had to learn to put my ego aside. I have always been working in teams. I learned to replace I with we and to take ownership even of things I didn’t do, but someone else in the team had done. In conflict situations, I learned to aim for the best possible outcomes for the team rather than thinking about winning and being right.
As I moved into leadership, in conflict situations I wasn’t just one of the parties anymore, but I now was expected to solve conflicts even when they were between other people and I wasn’t directly involved. I coached the people I managed using my own learnings, for example overcoming your own ego and avoiding defensive behaviours.
As a leader, I learned the importance of emotional awareness in conflict management. When not properly understood and managed, emotions can be amplified during conflicts and get in the way, resulting in the worst possible outcome.
Growing into a more experienced leader, I’ve read and studied about high performing teams and I’ve learned a lot from my own experience. I have moved from simple conflict resolution to creating a team culture where healthy conflict is not just managed but actually encouraged. Disagree and commit is one of the principles we advocate for at Gousto, my current company. It’s about encouraging diverse opinions and points of view; engaging in healthy debates; striving to find the best solution to the problem at hand for the greater good of the success of the team; ultimately committing as a team, regardless of whose ideas are picked.
In order to create that kind of environment, I personally start by focussing on the level of trust within the team. One of my points of reference is the author Patrick Lencioni who describes in his famous book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” the five most typical problems that prevent teams from being successful using a pyramid structure. You have to start tackling them from the bottom up if you want to lead to great results. The first and the second ones are absence of trust and fear of conflict; basically you need to have an environment where people know they can trust each other before they’re willing to engage in healthy conflict. If unsolved, these 2 dysfunctions lead to lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results. Only when they have the chance to say what they think can people fully commit to the decisions made, take accountability for their work and ultimately achieve great results¹.
To wrap up, these are my 5 tips when it comes to conflict management:
- Remove your ego, there’s no winner or loser, what matters is getting to the best possible outcomes as a team.
- There’s no need to be defensive and to counter-attack, conflict is not a war.
- Learn to actively listen, try to understand where the other people are coming from, trust you will have an opportunity to say your opinion without interrupting them.
- Equally, listen to yourself and your emotions, try to understand what’s going on inside you before reacting instinctively.
- As a leader, start by creating an environment of trust, where people are willing to share their opinions and engage in healthy conflict and nobody is afraid of being wrong or making mistakes.
But, how do you create an environment of trust? Where do you start?
Start with vulnerability, be vulnerable as a leader, set an example, show that it’s ok to be wrong and make mistakes, ask for feedback and show that you’re willing to improve. We’re all fallible human beings after all. If leaders can show their vulnerabilities, the rest of the team will follow.
On this very topic, Oprah Winfrey said:
Failure is a great teacher. If you’re open to it, every mistake has a lesson to offer.
How do you manage conflicts? If you want to share your tips, please reply in the comment section!
[1] The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni
