PMETH

Conflict is critical to our teams.  It is really quite shocking to me how much people fear conflict and the lengths people will go to avoid conflict.  But real team members do not hold back from one another.  They do not choose their battles.  If they disagree with someone or have an issue with something, they say so!!  Because they trust each other and they know that they are not doing it for any reason other than the good of the company; the good of the decision.  They are not doing it to position themselves.  They are not doing it to make themselves look better.  They are doing it simply because it matters. 

One of the biggest problems facing our organizations today is that managers do not hold people accountable for their results and behaviors and the reason they don't hold people  accountable is because they fear conflict.  If people aren't held accountable, they are going to keep doing the same stupid things over and over again.  Conflict is critical to our organizations.   

Now, the thing is though, as a leader, how do we help people engage in conflict?  We have to demand debate.  Leaders of teams have to demand debate.  Meetings are a good place to demand debate.  If you are heading up a staff meeting at your company and you can tell that two people don’t agree about something important but they don’t want to say anything because they want the meeting to get out on time or they don’t want to ruffle anyone’s feathers, your job as a leader is to say, you two, I don’t think you are on the same page on this.  And they’ll say, no, no, no I think we are ok, we can find a middle ground.  It’s your job as a leader to say, no, I want to hear why you disagree.  And at first it is uncomfortable but by the end of the meeting 9 times out of 10 most people will come up to you and say thanks for making us talk about that because it had been hovering and we have been ignoring it. 

That’s one of the reasons people loath meetings because we’ve drained of the very thing that keeps us interested which is conflict.  We all have excuses for not wanting to engage in conflict whether we just don’t feel like it, or it’s really not in our character to do that, or you are afraid someone might get upset.  But part of being a leader, by the way, is to be slightly unreasonable.  Great leaders are slightly unreasonable.  It means they take people out of their comfort zones and they are going to be glad for it. 

People Make Extraordinary Things Happen! ^™