Have you ever looked at your work team and wondered: “Why can’t we all just get along?” Perhaps a better question is: Why should we just get along? By “just” getting along, could we be compromising our objectives for the sake of artificial harmony?
In his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, one of Patrick Lencioni’s five dysfunctions is Fear of Conflict. He contends that fear of conflict can actually create more conflict as unaddressed issues get bottled up and personal resentment grows. The pursuit of artificial harmony prevents candid discussion of critical issues. If getting along becomes more important than tackling tough topics, you’re setting the team up for failure.
If artificial harmony is counterproductive, do we instead want team members to be fighting like cats and dogs? Let’s remember that cats and dogs can exist peacefully and amicably once they develop both tolerance and respect. So if these different species can figure it out, why can’t we?
As humans, we too can be as different as cats and dogs in our approach to solving problems, communicating and generally working with others. The prerequisite for functional team cohesiveness is a common commitment to mutually beneficial goal or outcome. Without that, why would you have a team?
Like cats and dogs, diverse team members are wired differently. They can and should provide diverse perspectives. Diverse perspectives are invaluable for quality, balanced decisions. But when we try to get these perspectives to mesh, flying sparks are inevitable. For better or worse, here are seven ways that team members will potentially conflict.
For each of these potential areas of conflict, the inability to respect and value the opposite end of the spectrum. Effective, balanced team decision making is a balancing act. While a leader’s objective should never be 100% agreement, the team’s diverse factions need to be heard and evaluated.
Pursuit of harmony through full consensus driven leadership is not the answer. A team leader’s responsibility is to make informed, transparent decisions that serve the goals of the team, not their egos. To alter Abe Lincoln’s quote about fooling people: A leader can not please all of the people all of the time and is foolish to try.
The aforementioned Abraham Lincoln quote is: “
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