Embracing conflict makes for better teams and better outcomes

Reading my daughter’s last report card, I scanned the areas where she excelled and where she needed work. Of particular note, she was given an ‘E’ for collaboration. I immediately asked her why she failed to work with others—it seemed inconsistent with her behavior at home. I read on and the teacher had the following comments:

• Accepts various roles and an equitable share of work;
• Responds positively to ideas, opinions, values and traditions of others;
• Builds healthy peer-to-peer relationships through personal interactions;
• Works with others to resolve conflicts by building consensus to achieve group goals;
• Shares information, resources, expertise and promotes critical thinking to solve problems

‘E’ stood for excellent and the comments read like a template of good teaming. It’s exactly what I would have hoped for my daughter. It is exactly what I suck at. Actually most adults suck at it, too! Why? So I asked my daughter what she liked about working with her classmates. She said, “Because it’s fun.” And? She continued, “We get to talk and share and laugh and we all work toward something together and we all get the same mark.” Do you like working with everybody? “No” Why? “Because not everyone wants to work and they don’t listen.” I probed her for a bit more insight which gave me the idea of this article.

According to my daughter, the crux of collaboration is when people of different expertise come together in a supportive way to achieve a common goal for which they all will benefit. And conflict is the result when any one or more of these four elements is absent. The thinking is remarkably simple—even for an adult to understand! So why do we suck at it? It’s probably because adults make it personal and our egos get in the way.

 

The older we get, the more we are used to doing things in a certain way. Our reflexive and habitual thinking has been to dismiss an idea or a person as being wrong simply because they don’t agree with us.

 

The older we get, the more we are used to doing things in a certain way. We also have baggage with and more to lose. Our reflexive and habitual thinking has been to dismiss an idea or a person as being wrong simply because they don’t agree with us. This attitude simply forecloses any new thinking and solutions to existing problems; it also leaves us ill-equipped to deal with new problems. Children, comparatively, have little to lose and everything to gain. They simply seek collaboration for the pure joy of creating something together that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to do on their own. The fact that they are rewarded with new learning experiences and friendship for punching through struggles are actually reinforcements for embracing opposing ideas. At this age, the judgment of outcomes or end product is minimally considered compared to the effort of the engagement. In other words, even if they fail to achieve their objective, the lessons of teaming have already been learned. Not every engagement will end in success but that doesn’t deter them from trying. That is the moral.

At the workplace, it’s easy to lose track of these elements with limited resources and a rushed timeline. The fear of missing deadlines is so great that sometimes we sabotage our own efforts by interfering with the forming-storming-norming-performing model as proposed by Bruce Tuckman for collaborative group development. As a middle-manager, I receive pressure from above and then task the team to produce. In the drive for progress (and profitability), we often sacrifice consensus, common goal and cater to the highest stakeholder. The team is subsequently recognized unevenly and all the fun has literally been sucked out of it. Before the team knows it, we are thrown back in for another cycle. There’s no time for a celebration and even less for a postmortem. It’s called work for a reason; people don’t wake up in the morning and commute to fun!

I will try to approach it from my daughter’s uncomplicated perspective. I will even strenuously courage junior team members to throw seniority to the wind, to voice their opinions and let the team iterate. Sound opinions can withstand arguments! If it’s good, it will become better. If not, it will be known quickly and little time would be wasted. Let’s see how successful it will be to focus on the group and set aside personal agenda. If the team wins, it can lit all members—like a rising tide. I love the simplicity of my daughter’s thinking. Heck, work might actually be fun!