By: Don Maranca
Have you ever had a conversation with a friend who got a divorce and was surprised, especially since they never fought as a couple? In other words, they never expressed any conflict. After a season of annual planning with my clients, the healthiest leadership teams I see are the ones who openly engage in healthy conflict. Healthy relationships invite conflict discussions to works towards a solution for the greater good of the relationship.
Does your team engage in healthy conflict? Are your meetings lively where people get passionate about the topics or boring with the encouragement of the status quo? Are critical topics put on the table for discussion or are they swept under the rug to avoid rocking the boat? If more of the latter, your team may be holding back from engaging in healthy conflict for better team health.
Opening Up For Healthy Conflict
Part of our process in TAB and EOS is flushing out issues that are keeping the team from achieving the vision. As a leader in your organization, you have to set the stage to allow for conflict. To identify real issues, follow these 2 practices.
1: Give Permission – When meeting with your team, they have to know explicitly that you have given them permission to be completely open and honest about things. When the owner hasn’t given verbal permission in my client sessions, I ask, “Do we have your permission to be open and honest?”
2: Ask Questions – Don’t assume silence is agreement. You have to draw things out of their minds. Ask questions such as:
- What does everyone think about this . . . open and honest?
- What is really holding us back in being a better team/company?
- I value your opinion. What is really on your mind that you’re holding back?
Facilitate Towards a Solution
Once issues are on the table, don’t let it fall on deaf ears. Prioritize them and work towards a solution using these 2 practices:
1: Follow a simple issues solving process called IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) as specified in EOS. This helps make the issue go away forever so it doesn’t keep repeating.
2: If the issue isn’t crystal clear, follow the Ladder of Inference model created by Harvard Business School professor Chris Argyris. Dino Signore Ph.D distilled this process in a recent conference I attended into 3 things to process facilitation of an issue:
-
- Observation – state what you observed
- Inference – state what you heard in terms of assumptions and conclusions
- Questions – ask questions on the accuracy of the observation and inference
Environment of Trust
In order to have the culture of openness and honesty that encourages healthy debate, read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. He is the expert on Team Health. In his mind, “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”
Last word – You have to be genuinely interested in hearing others’ input, otherwise it will be apparent that you’re just asking for the sake of asking and not willing to do anything different. Thus, further breaking down the trust level that invites conflict, as Lencioni references in his book. Just be prepared to hear things that may be uncomfortable but it just may be what the organization needs to get to the next level. It’s part of growing and developing healthy relationships with your team.
Don’t let an unexpected divorce happen in your team!
Take the Organizational Checkup to gauge the health of your company! For more information on creating a healthy business lifestyle, read about the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS).