The Five Dysfunctions Of A Team #2 – Fear Of Conflict

“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.” ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In our last blog post we introduced “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni. We discussed Dysfunction #1, Lack of Trust. Today we will talk about Dysfunction #2, Fear of Conflict.

Is conflict ever positive? Teams that engage in productive conflict know that the purpose is to produce the best possible solution in the shortest period of time. Are people holding back? Are people on your team choosing their battles?

Teams that fear conflict:

1. Have boring meetings
2. Create environments where back-channel politics and personal attacks thrive
3. Ignore controversial topics that are critical to team success
4. Fail to tap into all the opinions and perspectives of team members
5. Waste time and energy with posturing and interpersonal risk management

Teams that engage in conflict:

1. Have lively, interesting meetings
2. Extract and explore the ideas of all team members
3. Solve real problems quickly
4. Minimize politics
5. Put critical topics on the table for discussion

I recently conducted an annual review with one of our key LWP team leaders, and we were talking about her growth over the past year. She made tremendous progress in her ability to take a stand and speak the truth, often with a fair amount of angst. We celebrated her willingness to “use her voice” in our company. She started laughing and said, “The first few meetings I was stunned; I used to go home and tell my husband, the team meetings are worse than any dysfunctional family supper table!”

This was an enormous personal victory; it meant we were on the right track. The health of any great company is solely dependent on its willingness to embrace “truth telling.” When a team is willing to truthfully engage in conflict with passion and forcefulness while having the sole intention of producing the best possible resolution, it will ALWAYS produce a strong game plan with the least amount of resistance, blame and pain.

One suggestion for overcoming fear of conflict is to extract buried disagreements within the team and shine the light of day on them. Another is to grant real-time permission to discuss what’s not working in the moment while allowing team members to coach one another not to retreat from healthy debate. Get comfortable with the idea that conflict always leads to growth.

We fool ourselves when our mantra is “avoid conflict at all cost. Put your head down and keep your mouth shut.” Conflict can never really be avoided. When we are unwilling to have the heated conversations and keep it all together, the conflict is really just in “silent stereo.” That means you never truly know the core reasons why you were not able to produce X or why so and so really quit. Trying to avoid conflict guarantees that the hidden conflicts will absolutely multiply while creating a team of snarling, wounded sufferers. The heart wrenching part is the stifling of creativity, production and excitement for the future, the thick air of lost hope.

What type of team are you leading: one of conflict crusaders or conflict avoiders?

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