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Healthy Conflicts Move You Forward

There’s a difference between debate and fighting, and only the former is healthy.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   04/14/2010

Our leadership team just returned from its quarterly off-site meeting, and I’ve been digesting and activating the decisions we made. These meetings are always productive–we quickly reach decisions that might drag out for weeks in the office. Strange as it may seem, I think what makes these sessions work is the passionate debate.

Debate. Well, maybe I should be more descriptive. We disagree. We argue. We speak up. We’re heard. We move forward. Healthy conflict is one hallmark of an effective meeting. I also believe it has a vital role to play in marriage, and I’ll argue with anyone who disagrees.

Here’s why I believe in healthy conflict: For 22 years, I’ve led meetings with all sorts of team dynamics in play. And I’ve noticed that really passionate, engaged people speak up and argue their points. Being heard is important to those who are truly engaged and invested in the outcome. I’ve also watched people who avoid the heat (and discomfort). It’s not that hard; they simply disengage. They don’t fight, but they don’t engage. They are simply checked out–not married to the goals, you might say. Not committed.

I’ve also been a part of horrible business conflicts where participants get ugly, personal and so emotional they can’t focus on the true discussion points. I’ve witnessed name-calling and people storming in and out of rooms, slamming doors and raising voices. These encounters leave blood on the floor and relationship damage that lingers long after the details of the disagreements have been worked through. That’s just plain old fighting. And it hardly ever works.

But disagreeing, arguing, works. It’s the natural outcome of commitment and passion. Teams that aren’t afraid of a healthy debate make decisions far more effectively and efficiently than those that avoid conflict, as Patrick Lencioni noted in his book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.

In his book, Lencioni names “fear of conflict” as a dysfunction because healthy conflict is required for relationships to grow. According to Lencioni, teams that fear conflict have boring interactions, create more back-channel politics and personal attacks, ignore the tough topics that are often critical to success, fail to tap into the perspectives of all team members, and waste time and energy. Healthy conflict, on the other hand, leads to lively meetings that extract all opinions, solve problems quickly, minimize the politics and put critical topics on the table.

Because my husband, Martin, and I spend so much of our lives working together with others in the room, we have developed a pretty good ability to argue effectively. In business, you just don’t have the option of screaming and yelling. Developing a controlled, just-the-facts approach to arguing revealed to Martin and me that the more emotional tactics we might have deployed at home weren’t very effective, but certainly had the potential to hurt.

When we do lose it and fight nasty, one habit we’ve developed is to say, “We’re on the same team here.” This little code phrase helps us both remember that if one of us loses, we’ve probably both lost on some level.

All Parties Have to Be Heard

We’ve never been shy about a good, healthy debate over the dinner table or in front of our children, because we are by and large pretty good about sticking to the topic and reaching an agreement. Sometimes it’s a compromise, but not always, because research has found that having your views truly heard and considered is as important as the final outcome. So sometimes, one of us loses. But always, both of us are heard.

This is imperative in a good relationship. The only thing accomplished by storming out and maintaining cold, stony silences is to prolong the issue and leave room for real damage. The tension and emotion from a good, healthy argument can be uncomfortable. But it doesn’t cause any real, lasting damage to a relationship.

One tool that many businesses use is the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument or the TKI. This instrument helps people define their responses to conflict to determine how they behave most often: competing (assertive and uncooperative), accommodating (unassertive and cooperative), avoiding (unassertive and uncooperative), collaborating (assertive and cooperative) or compromising (moderately assertive and cooperative).

Understanding these ways of dealing with conflict can help you have a conversation about how you might work toward collaborating or compromising in an argument rather than competing, avoiding or always accommodating (which can lead to underlying resentment).

Two questions to ask yourself if you find the discussion getting heated:

1. Are the right people in the room? In other words, is this appropriate at the dinner table in front of the kids? Am I dragging people into a disagreement they don’t need to be a part of?

2. Is this the right time for this? Sometimes setting a time to discuss a disagreement can help both of you come together in the spirit of collaboration and compromise rather than aggression. This is also helpful if one of you is angry or unhappy, but the other isn’t aware of that. Confronting someone with a disagreement can be risky if he is not ready or able to listen or be listened to. Set aside time, and you’ll be able to work out the problem more easily.

So don’t shy away from conflict. It’s the natural outgrowth of a passionate, involved relationship. Just remember that most people will compromise or work toward a solution that works for all if they truly feel heard and respected along the way. That’s something we want at home as much–or more–than at work.