Fear of Conflict

Quick reference

• 00:04 Hello, I'm Ray Sheen.
• 00:05 Let's look at another of the five team dysfunctions, fear of conflict.
• 00:10 I'll begin by describing some characteristics of team conflict.
• 00:15 Let's start by acknowledging that there is productive conflict and
• 00:18 destructive conflict.
• 00:20 We spent an earlier session discussing how to create positive conflict resolution.
• 00:24 A point I would like to make now is that positive conflict helps individuals to
• 00:28 grow and relationships to strengthen.
• 00:31 Productive conflict is about concepts and ideas, not personal attacks or
• 00:35 personal characteristics.
• 00:37 The conflict about ideas will sharpen the thinking and
• 00:40 understanding of both parties.
• 00:42 Each team member will gain a greater insight into the other's perspectives.
• 00:46 The goal of the conflict resolution then becomes to find the best organization or
• 00:50 business solution, not to secure personal points over the other individual.
• 00:54 Overcoming the fear of conflict can sometimes be difficult
• 00:58 because many of us have been taught, since we were children, not to fight or argue.
• 01:03 We often come to view conflict as a failure in a relationship,
• 01:06 rather than as a means to strengthen the relationship.
• 01:09 Of course, everyone believes that their opinion is right and
• 01:11 that the other person is wrong, or at least, misguided.
• 01:15 Avoiding conflict to understand the ideas and concerns and
• 01:18 then seeking a win-win resolution will just delay the team decision.
• 01:22 Until the conflict is resolved, at least, one team member is not
• 01:26 supporting the team direction and this will lead to a degraded team performance.
• 01:31 Resolve the conflict to restore the team's unity of purpose.
• 01:36 To bring this dysfunction of fear of conflict into sharper clarity, let
• 01:40 me contrast teams that fear conflict with those that engage in productive conflict.
• 01:45 When teams engage in positive conflict, they have lively and interesting meetings.
• 01:49 The ideas and
• 01:50 opinions of all team members are extracted and the best ideas come to the forefront.
• 01:55 This results in the team solving real problems and doing that quickly.
• 01:59 Another characteristic is that team politics are minimized.
• 02:02 Team members don't need to work behind the scenes to gather support for
• 02:06 their ideas so that they can rollover any opposition in a team meeting.
• 02:10 Instead, all the ideas are freely and
• 02:12 openly debated without the debate turning into personal attacks.
• 02:16 As a team develops a track record of using positive conflict
• 02:20 to resolve real problems, the team members are more likely
• 02:23 to continue to bring real critical problems to the table for discussion.
• 02:28 Now let's contrast that list with the list associated with teams that fear conflict.
• 02:33 For one thing, the team meetings are boring.
• 02:35 This is because there's nothing of importance discussed or
• 02:37 resolved at the meeting.
• 02:39 Instead, there are numerous back channel meetings and
• 02:41 political alliances formed by team members so they can get the support for
• 02:45 their opinion or idea to steamroll over any opposition.
• 02:49 Often, this is done by personal attacks on those with different opinions
• 02:53 in order to hopefully silence them or destroy their credibility.
• 02:57 While all this background maneuvering is going on, critical team decisions
• 03:01 are ignored because the issue won't be debated until one side has already won.
• 03:06 When the issue is already brought out to the open, other opinions are not requested
• 03:10 or they're ignored if provided, since the solution was already predetermined.
• 03:15 It's no surprise that in this type of environment,
• 03:18 team members are more concerned about their personal power and posturing and
• 03:22 threatening others to maintain that power and
• 03:24 trying to avoid the risk of erosion of personal power from attacks by others.
• 03:30 Obviously, the picture I painted about the fear of conflict is not good, so
• 03:33 what could be done to overcome this problem?
• 03:36 First, let's acknowledge that conflict will happen.
• 03:38 We don't all think exactly alike and have exactly the same experiences.
• 03:43 Therefore, we will likely have different ideas and opinions or
• 03:46 reach different conclusions about the best way forward in any given situation.
• 03:51 Let's further acknowledge that positive conflict is good and healthy for a team.
• 03:55 It will lead to better team decisions and stronger team relationships.
• 03:59 We discussed some of this in the earlier session on resolving team conflict.
• 04:03 Some of the tools that I've used over the years to encourage teams
• 04:07 to use positive conflict are experiential team activities.
• 04:11 The team members must face a challenge and
• 04:13 listen to each other's ideas in order to find the solution to the challenge.
• 04:17 Another technique that the team leader or a facilitator can use is called mining.
• 04:22 In this case, the team leader seeks out conflicting opinions or ideas and
• 04:27 has the team consider them in order to improve the overall team decision.
• 04:31 Along the same lines is giving team members real time permission
• 04:35 to discuss and challenge any ideas.
• 04:38 The challenge should not be a personal attack but
• 04:40 rather focus on the concepts and ideas.
• 04:42 Giving team members permission to disagree can keep them engaged when they might
• 04:46 otherwise remain quiet thinking the decision has already been made.
• 04:51 Of course, we can use the personal tests like Meyers Briggs or
• 04:54 DISC that we mentioned in the previous sessions.
• 04:57 These tools help team members understand why they might disagree and
• 05:01 that their opinions and insight is needed by they team,
• 05:04 even if their recommendations are not completely accepted.
• 05:07 Finally, the Thomas Kilmann model of different modes for
• 05:10 negotiation has often helpful for team members to understand
• 05:14 that they can disagree with each other and lead to a better solution for the team.
• 05:17 Of course, this was also addressed in an earlier session.
• 05:21 Teams that fear conflict often become overwhelmed by team
• 05:26 politics as important issues are not publicly addressed.
• 05:31 Fortunately, there are number of ways to overcome this fear.
• 05:35 When this is your team's dysfunction, start using some of these tools.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.