Conflict: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
What is the difference between artificial harmony, healthy conflict, and aggressive attacks? In this episode, Traci and Rob discuss the second of Patrick Lencioni’s five dysfunctions: unhealthy conflict. They explore the benefits of healthy conflict and share some exercises that can foster healthy conflict on your team.
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Transcript
Rob:
So I've been working in tech for almost 20 years now, and I've been on a lot of different teams at a lot of different kinds of organizations. I've worked in big enterprise, I've done a lot of consulting. And for the last 12 years, I've kind of run my own company. And there's been a lot of good teams and bad teams—and maybe that's not the best way to put it—healthy teams and unhealthy teams and the way they deal with each other.
And one of the things that I've had to kind of unlearn or relearn is this idea that harmonious teams are always healthy and that teams that have a lot of conflict are inherently unhealthy. And what I think that I've learned over these years is that some of the best, most effective teams I've ever worked on had a really healthy amount of conflict and had a lot of ways that they worked through things and came up with the best idea, and really challenged ideas and not people.
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Traci:
Healthy conflict is essential if we want to have highly productive, highly innovative teams. And you're right, a lot of times, we don't realize it. Like we're living on a harmonious team or everything seems like everybody's getting along really well. And so we think, "Oh, that must equal healthy, because we're not hearing any debate or we're not hearing any conflict.” And that feels safe, but it might not be, to your point, the best team or the best version of the team, the healthiest version of the team we can have.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think the other thing that I think about is the teams that have, in my past, that have the least amount of conflict actually had the least amount of diversity and differences in the team members. It wasn't so much that we were all the same person stamped out and it was easy to agree because there was a monoculture around that and there wasn't some, in some cases, the trust required to be able to have that conflict and have those ideas out.
Traci:
Yes. And trust is what we talked about last time. And if you can't tell, folks, we're going to be talking about healthy conflict today as we continue our discussion on Patrick Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team. And we loved talking about trust last week because it's the foundation, it's so important. And as we enter into talking about healthy conflict, we realized that we can't have healthy conflict if we don't have a team that has trust, if the environment hasn't been created in order for us to have the conflict we're talking about.
And healthy conflict is a productive, passionate, unfiltered debate around the issues of importance for a team. So it's not conflict in the aggression form, like an aggressive,lacking empathy, going at each other kind of conflict you have when you are in a not trust-filled environment. But we're also not talking about what we mentioned before, which is a complete lack of conflict, like an artificial harmony that we have in a team. We need conflict because we have to push each other outside of our comfort zones.
When we're outside of our comfort zone, we are making our best decisions as a team. And like you said, when we are lacking diversity or we're lacking people who can push us there, we start to say things to each other that we feel like we'd want to hear. So we start saying to each other sort of, "Oh, let's just say what we feel like is the right thing to say," instead of saying what we really need to say. And so often, I hear people walk out of meetings and be like, "Ugh, why didn't anybody say that? Or why didn't I say that? Or why didn't we just go where we needed to go to really get through this?" We just keep avoiding, avoiding, avoiding, and that's not healthy conflict. That's a lack of conflict. It's artificial harmony or it's passive aggression.
And what keeps us from having conflict? And the thing I keep boiling it down to when I talk to teams is fear. Fear is what keeps us. Fear keeps us in artificial harmony because we want to be liked and we don't like conflict and we want the team to be happy. But fear also puts us in an aggressive form, in an unhealthy conflict because there's this fear of not getting ahead, not being heard, wanting to make sure we have our stake in the ground, and that also can lead us to the other side of the spectrum where we don't want to be. And fear is a tricky thing. It's a hard thing to get over and get past.
Rob:
Yeah, fear is one of those things that just destroys teams from the inside out, in my opinion. And it can be of a lot of things, but mostly, the only way to conquer fear is people to actually feel safe to say the wrong thing and not be so focused on being right, but getting it right. And I think that that's just so core. And I think the fear reason is why the trust is needed because fear in a group is born out of not knowing if you can trust the other members with being vulnerable, being wrong, being in a place where you can say the thing that may be uncomfortable and still walk out and be okay with each other afterwards.
Traci:
Yeah. And we say this all the time and I know it's hard, but it starts and ends with the leader. If the leader is not creating that safe environment, if the leader is not leading by example, squashing out fear, saying to the team, "It's okay. Nobody's going to get in trouble here. I want to hear debate. I want to hear you say I'm wrong. I want to hear you push back on my idea." And when you hear a leader say that, man, you can feel the entire atmosphere of a room change.
And also, for leaders to say to the guy or gal who's trying to get ahead or to put the stake in the ground or trying to look good or show off, that the leader says, "You know what? We're not going to have that here. That's not the way we're operating here. We're going to care personally while we challenge each other directly. So we're not walking over people. There's not going to be any dead bodies when we walk out of this meeting." And if a leader can set that tone, man, you're going to get places.
Rob:
And I think that even from a leadership perspective, I mean, a common theme throughout all the times we talk, Traci, is leadership matters. It always has, it always will. And leadership is one of the most important things that you can feel when it's right. And when it's not, everything feels off.
But I think as a leader, we can help with this conflict and help get rid of these fears by making sure that we're setting that example and even being okay with being wrong and embracing it, right? And like I said, it's that simple example of giving examples to your team about like, "Hey, this is something we tried and I was wrong here," or if you have a crazy idea that you know doesn't work sometimes as a leader, I think it's okay to put it out there, right? Give your team something to challenge and to feast on a little bit.
I think that if we're intentional about those, and almost like training wheels a little bit with the different people and our team members, they can learn and quickly start to step up to the plate and be comfortable and set that stage for that healthy conflict to be there.
Traci:
What are we trying to accomplish when we have healthy conflict? And oftentimes, teams will get into heated debates. And look, I've worked at huge companies where there's a lot of politics and there's a lot of pride and there's a lot of competition. There's definitely a lot of competition in the media world. And while that can be healthy, I love competition and I love to succeed and I love to be profitable and I love that sort of excitement and that energy that you can have in an environment like that, but we can use that as fuel instead of letting it wreak havoc on our environment.
So the best way to do that is when we're in a meeting and we know there's going to be conflict, we know there's going to debate, or at least there should be, is we just say, as leaders, upfront, "Look, we're here for the humble pursuit of truth. I want truth. I want to get to the root of the problem and really know why we're either off track or not staying on track, or why this issue is happening. And I want you all to be honest. And you have the permission to be honest and to seek that truth."
But if we start to let politics or pride or ego, or instead of listening to each other, we start to take a stance and we just want to win, win, win the argument, then I'm going to shut it down and I'm going to hit the restart button. Because again, we are only trying to humbly find the truth here and move us forward, again, push us outside the comfort zone, but only in the pursuit of making the best decision for the company, not for just your sector of the company or silo of the company, and not just for your own success in your career, but for the company, the greater good, the mission, what we're all sort of pointed towards, the vision of where we want to go. That's where we're all pointed. And when you put that ambition over your own personal ambition, you really get places as a leader and as a team.
Rob:
Yeah. And I think that one of the warning signs that I always hear during this is that fake outrage that somebody will give, right? You'll be in a meeting and somebody will be like, "Well, I just can't believe I wasn't brought in on this decision sooner." And you want to look at those... I always end up looking at those people and I'm like, "Well, I'm sorry if you felt that way, you're here now, this is still something we're discussing, this is the time to do it," but that doesn't do anything for us. We have to have the trust that everybody's doing their best and things evolve over time. And sometimes we end up where we are and the second best time to deal with anything is right now, right? So let's reset. Let's assume we were all trying to do our best and things changed and move forward.
And I think that another huge part of that in this whole having good conflict and getting people out of that defensive stance, which is so easy for people to get into and I'm guilty of it too, is you have to remove the part of failure where there's punishment or shame attached to it. Because if that's still attached to being wrong, then we're afraid to either take a chance and be wrong and have other ideas, or even admit what happened in the past that is true.
And I think that's a huge part of all of this, is we have to take away and demystify like, "Hey, we succeed as a team, we fail as a team. You didn't make that decision in a vacuum. And even if you did, you did the best you could with the information you had at the time in the situation you were in. How do we move forward and do better next time?"
And all the teams that I ended up on or leading, one of the things that I'm constantly saying is, "Let's just make better mistakes tomorrow. And if not better mistakes, just different ones."
Traci:
Yeah. And I think listening well through that, through those mistakes, really trying to understand them, why they happened, what the hiccup was, turning them immediately into learning experiences, super helpful for our team, because then they realize, "Oh, okay, well, we're not looking at it as a failure, we're looking at it as a learning experience, as something that, it just happens, it's a fact of life. So again, let's look for the facts here. Let's communicate well. Let's get clear and move forward."
And I think it's just helpful to sort of, as you were saying, in the moment, talk through those issues in the moment, address the person who seems to be going off the rails a little bit and pull them back in, again, by telling them and helping them understand what the mission of the meeting is. And that helps keep us from this kind of aggressive attack side of healthy conflict.
One of the things I see more often in maybe smaller, more entrepreneurial type companies—rather than those kind of aggressive attacks, depending on who the leader is—is artificial harmony. And we see this a lot in kind of tight-knit entrepreneurial groups, or even non-for-profits, definitely in non-for-profit world because they feel like they're on this mission of good. And so there's this pressure, I think a lot on the leader, to keep this harmony going. "Oh no, no, no, let's not upset the apple cart. Let's not rock the boat. Let's make sure that everybody's getting along." And they start to feel very threatened or uneasy if everybody's not getting along. And then they start to fear that if there is any conflict, people might leave, and we don't want anybody to leave because we take that so personally. And again, it goes back to that fear.
But one of the biggest signs that I see when I go into a team and I start asking questions about how things are going, one of the questions I always ask are, "How are your meetings? What are your meetings like? What kind of feedback do you get?" And if people tend to say over and over again, "Meetings are boring, we don't accomplish anything, they're a waste of time, I'm sick of meetings," then I usually can pinpoint healthy conflict being what's missing. Because when we're striving for artificial harmony, just keeping the team happy, we tend to have very boring meetings. We go in, we never push each other. We never really challenge each other. We don't say things are wrong. We don't say, "Wait a second, what did you just say? I'm not sure that's jiving with really where we're going." There's just no conflict. And we need that conflict.
So one way to measure if you might be sitting in artificial harmony is are your meetings boring? Is everybody just kind of coming together, getting along, not really accomplishing anything? And then all of a sudden we have to have another meeting because we didn't accomplish what we needed in the first meeting? Or are your meetings efficient? Are people speaking up? Are people sort of, in a nice way, you know, we want empathy in there and caring personally, saying, "Well, wait a second, can I push us back on that? Can I say I don't think that's right?" If you're hearing that type of talk and you're starting to hear people say, "Well, I don't know, I feel this way. Okay, well, I feel this," and you start to hear that, that's great. That's good. That's what you want. You want to start to hear people having this dialogue.
Healthy conflict does not need to be loud. It does not need to be passionate to the extent of volume and aggression, but it does need to be pointed and vocal. And we do want to hear voices and we want to hear questions, and we want to hear people debating, like a true debate, not an argument, a debate.
Rob:
When we're having those conversations with groups of mixed personality types, sometimes, as leaders, or as just participants, we have to allow space for some people who are a little less quick to speak up or it takes a little bit longer to warm up. And I think that that's really, really important because there is people on the teams that I've been involved with that sometimes the best ideas or there are really insightful things they want to say won't get said without that space.
And every team I can think of that I've been on, and maybe it's because I've been on all the teams that I can think of, there's always somebody who wants to fill that space and will take those long pauses out. And I think that one of the things I look for in meetings anymore is was there space given and that almost uncomfortable pause to allow people to jump in when they feel like they won't be interrupted or they're not interrupting anybody else?
Traci:
Right. Yeah. And that's why when we talked about trust in the last podcast, one of the tools I brought up was the DiSC profile and how that helps to build trust. And one of the ways that exercise plays out is in healthy conflict, exactly what you're talking about, so that we're able to say, "Oh, well we know Susie's an S," in our mind, and we can say, "I better circle back to Susie and make sure that she has some space," as you're saying.
And that's one of the exercises or tools I'd bring up when it comes to healthy conflict when I'm trying to help teams get there, is one of the first things you can do is actually talk about this with your team, to say, "Hey guys, I want to pursue healthy conflict, so what I want to do is talk about our own conflict culture."
Traci:
What is our conflict culture? Because everybody's coming to the table with a different temperament, a different personality, a different cultural background. So think about that, right? Somebody who comes from an Italian family is going to debate very differently than somebody that comes from a Japanese family, right? And that's just culture. It's not right or wrong.
One of the things I learned when I was getting my master's in psychology is that a lot of Latino cultures are overdiagnosed, right? It's just that's what the statistics say. Because sometimes people will look at a very passionate, loud cultural way that we express ourselves as being dramatic or hysterical or emotional, but they're not. They don't feel emotional at all. That's just the way that they communicate, right?
So we have to honor that. We want people to be who they are. If you are an expressive Italian or come from a reserved Japanese family and they're thinking, "Why are you yelling at me?" and you don't think you're yelling, we should talk about that as a team. If Susie likes to argue one way and Sally likes to argue another, that's fine. Let's talk about that so that we realize, "Oh, Susie's not really yelling at me, that's just how she debates. That's her nature," and let her understand she's coming across that way, right? We need mirrors for each other.
But there's also family norms. Sometimes people come from an abusive background where their parents are very loud, abusive, or alcoholics and voices being raised makes them super nervous and it triggers them. We should know that if they're willing to share that with us, that, "Loud voices make me nervous," and so then we can sort of honor where that person is.
One of the things I noticed in my career was, at HGTV, a lot of our programming was headquartered down in Knoxville, Tennessee versus all my bosses were in New York City. Very different personalities, very different level of patience, very different way of handling conflict. And I would have to adjust to that depending on which location I was in, but that comes with emotional intelligence, right? Being able to kind of read the room, know who our teammates are, know the personalities that we're working with, and honor those personalities and those cultures and those differences, and bring those differences together in a way where they can communicate well.
And so I think doing kind of the conflict culture exercise is super healthy for a team and it really helps us get to that place where we can debate in a way where everybody feels safe and comfortable.
Rob:
All of this gets back to what our goal is here, right? Which is to achieve our mission, to have healthy, happy, well-adjusted humans and families and business things. And we are trying to figure out what works best for the group of humans we have in the room that are trying to accomplish these goals. And it is going to take some giving on all of the parts and some taking on all of the parts to have that happen.
And it's not like we're trying to find the best way to do conflict, because that has been different on different teams that I've been on. It is the way that this group is most effective doing conflict. And this is why when you read a book or you talk to a consultant or you start doing this, the answer is workshops, exercises, discovery, honesty, trust, all of these things because there isn't a prescriptive model to say, "Well, just conflict this way. Just talk about things this way. Do these three steps and everything will work out," because we're talking about humans and different groups of them, and it's just different every single time.
Traci:
Yeah. And these exercises don't take long, but man, do they accomplish a lot.
Traci:
Another really cool and easy exercise to do with your team is just get up and draw a line on the board, or if you're doing this over Zoom, just hold up a piece of paper with a line. And it's called the conflict continuum. On one end of the line is artificial harmony, on the other end of the line is aggressive attacks. And then in the middle, put a dot that says healthy conflict. And have every member of the team, nobody gets left out, put a dot on that line of where they think the team is.
And I love for leaders to do this, because oftentimes, as leaders, we don't really know what the team's feeling honestly. And so when we see all the dots go up, I've seen, when I've done this with teams, I've seen so many leaders go, "Really? Wow, you guys think we're that far over towards artificial harmony. I thought we were closer to healthy conflict." And it's oftentimes because the leader's leading and he's not sitting in the room observing everything like other people are.
And I think it's so quick. It does not take long at all to do the exercise, but the amount of information you get... And then you lead a discussion and you say to the team, "Okay, well, if we're this far over towards artificial harmony, how do we get to healthy conflict?" Or, "If we're over in aggressive attacks, how do we get to healthy conflict?" So it's a really good—as you said, you got to talk about it. You got to get it out on the table. You got to let the humans speak.
Rob:
And it's not a one and done. Things change over time. Teams get more comfortable. Teams get less comfortable. Teams develop baggage. Teams get over baggage.
One of the things that whenever I was doing consulting that I would constantly notice is you'd be like, "Oh, this team really gets along," until you found the thing that they don't talk about. And everybody kind of tenses up when you brought that thing up and you're like, "What did I say? I didn't know that was where the landmine was. What is going on?"
And sometimes this presents in so many different ways that that line between overly aggressive and artificial harmony has to be maintained. And there's probably a happy peace in the middle where you'll drift back and forth in that and still be healthy, but you have to constantly check yourselves because things change over time. And that's a good thing.
Traci:
It is a good thing.
Rob:
The fact that we can change things is a blessing and something that we ought to be thankful for, but that also means that we have to maintain all of this stuff.
Traci:
Yeah. And also, people change. People leave your company and new people come, and those personalities as they are trying to climatize and acclimate, sometimes it shakes up the personality of the team. And so we need to measure that.
To your point, you can't just do this once and think, "Oh, okay, we got it all figured out." You have to keep taking the pulse of the team. And if there's one person that's really shaping the way this falls out, like one aggressive personality or one super passive-aggressive person, that has to be jumped on and tackled right away.
And I know it's hard because sometimes, especially in creative environments, you can have very creative brilliant people who think they know it all. And they come across a very aggressive and they are able to shut down an entire team very quickly. And that sits on the leader's shoulders. The leader has to be the one, assuming they're not the person, who can go and make sure that we don't have any creative jerks that are kind of ruling the roost. We want to make sure that everybody knows we're a member of the team.
Rob:
That's so difficult. I'm just thinking back on my career. And I used to believe that there was this continuum that the better you were technically or creatively, the bigger jerk you could get away with being. And I still think that that happens at a lot of organizations, but I actually don't believe that that's something we ought to be allowing at all. But there was so many people that'd be like, "Oh, they're special rules for this person because of how good they are or how awesome they can do their…whatever their thing was.” And I think that what I've come to believe is that those people are actually the people that need to be brought in line quicker and first, because they have the power, an immense amount of power to influence others by their ability to other team members that'll look up to them.
Traci:
Yeah. And I think as leaders, that could be just kind of the positive impact we have on the world. Because too often, really brilliant creative jerks get promoted, promoted, promoted, and then all of a sudden, we see them in the spotlight and we think, "Geez, how did they get to where they are?" And it's because there weren't leaders in their life to say, "Hey, guess what? Your legacy is going to be even bigger, your impact is going to be even larger, you are going to be admired and followed by people in the right way if you do all your brilliant, creative, wonderful things more humbly."
Traci:
And sometimes people like that never have somebody up in their face, never have a boss that really mentors them. And again, this is the mantle of leadership. It's heavy. But if we take it seriously and we really groom those people instead of catering to them because we're scared they might leave and we don't want to lose their brilliant creative self, if we don't, again, like we started out this podcast saying, give into the fear, but we do the right thing and we lead in the right way, we actually can help these people become much better leaders in the future themselves.
Rob:
Yeah. I mean, that's the job, right? Trying to help people become the best versions of themselves.
Traci:
Exactly. And ironically, this healthy conflict, teaching people, I always say the tool of teaching them Radical Candor. That's a great book and I encourage everyone to pick it up if they haven't, or at least look at the model. But it boils down to this, if we can teach our team members to care personally while challenging each other directly and honestly, we are creating great leaders within our team and we will be very, very productive. Healthy conflict is such a key component to success.
Rob:
Yeah. Well, thanks, Traci. That was a lot of fun.
Traci:
Thanks. Until next time.
Rob:
Yeah.
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