CONFLICT OR COLLABORATION IN LEADERSHIP – MUST I CHOOSE?

Norman Randall, managing director of Randall Consulting, explains how a little bit of conflict can go a long way towards achieving team success.

Imagine how much better you could lead your team and how much more successful they would be if you and they could see where some of the pitfalls and traps lay in working together as well as what the strengths were that make them effective.

Teams in organisations and what makes them successful or unsuccessful fascinate me. Over the years I’ve worked with many teams in hundreds of organisations in diverse sectors and I always look for one factor as a key indicator of effectiveness – there is much to be learned about management and leadership styles from the way in which people handle conflict. Let’s explore this a little further.

The dictionary defines conflict as the ‘opposition of incompatible ideas, expectations and wishes in a person or group of people’. How does such an opposition arise?  Well, first of all it’s important to understand that perception is selective. This means we see what we want to see and what a person sees or experiences is real and true for that person. In other words, perception is reality!

Translated to business this will mean that different people responsible for different parts of the operation may see the same challenge from totally differing points of view, hence their demands on the finite resources available (time, money, people, equipment, raw materials etc.) to do what the organisation sets out to do could be in conflict. Simply put, how one team member sees a problem and its possible solution might be quite different to how another sees the same challenge and the way around it.

The research about teams and teaming tells us that there are phases that teams must go through before they become truly productive. To attempt to skip any of these steps, to hurry them up or fail to pay them sufficient attention is to invite trouble later on. And whether we are comfortable about it or not there will always be a point at which the team’s members conflict with one another, before some consensus is reached and a common way forward agreed.

The team leader who understands this and can manage conflict productively will build a stronger team with more satisfying and successful outcomes. Getting the team into dialogue with itself to explore differing viewpoints starts to produce new and exciting possibilities for problem-solving. Yet many team leaders somehow fail to grasp the true value of conflict – the engine that generates the creative tension to drive the team forward to success. They are scared of it and either fail to deal with it in any meaningful way so that it becomes destructive, or attempt to smooth it over in the mistaken assumption that conflict in a team must be a ‘bad thing’.

In my experience where there is no conflict in a team there is no change, no progress - none of that creative tension I mentioned earlier to stimulate innovation. The team members are so comfortable with each other that there is never any challenge to a point of view. But the same is true where there is conflict that is out of control, ie when things become entrenched and personal – the team can never move ahead. 

Now, the way a team leader (CEO, Chairman, production supervisor – whoever they are and at whatever level) handles conflict under pressure depends very much on their own natural inclinations for dealing with potential challenge, dissention or argument. There’s a range of possible responses, none of which are necessarily wrong and none of which are necessarily right. It’s a ‘judgement call’ as they say, to choose the correct response as the situation demands. The key consideration for any leader contemplating how best to handle conflict is the importance of the relationship. Do you meet conflict with competition – ‘my way or the highway’ or do you ignore (avoid) it altogether? Do you accommodate it or find some way of compromising (give a little, gain a little)?

How then is it possible to allow conflict and yet get a team to meet its goals? The key to this conundrum is to manage the conflict in such a way that maintains and builds the relationships within the team, whilst at the same time enhancing the opportunities for team playing and collaboration. Effective team working actually needs some conflict - the heady mix of tension (the energetic, creative kind) and team working is a recipe for success.

Steven Covey in his seminal work ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ talks about creating ‘synergy’, where 1+1 = 3! At the heart of this is collaboration. You don’t have to choose between one or the other, between conflict or collaboration – an effective leader knows that some conflict, properly managed, drives the business forward - and at the same time, good team relationships can still be maintained. It’s possible to calculate where a team is in its preferences for team working and its strengths and limitations in the team-work cycle. You can also audit people’s personal conflict management responses.

Forewarned is forearmed – and the flexible leader can adjust his or her leadership style to the individuals and the circumstances.

For more information about how Randall Consulting can help your business team become more effective, please contact Norman Randall on 0115 911 0050 or by email: info@randallconsultingltd.com