Good Conflict, Bad Conflict

A complementary team’s strength comes from its united differences. But to achieve unity, you must cope with the differences creating conflict.

We have said that conflict is inevitable and, moreover, a sign of good management. But it is not always desirable. It can be constructive or it can be destructive. It can be functional or dysfunctional.

Dysfunctional conflict is dangerous to any organization; it can stymie an organization, sap its energy and even destroy it. Organizations need to focus all their available energy on external marketing: Finding the clients, satisfying those clients’ needs, and anticipating their needs for the future. When managers are at odds with each other, the energy that should be conserved for building the company is gobbled up by internal marketing.

Thus, an organization that wastes precious energy on internal conflicts will necessarily be handicapped. I believe this factor alone can determine whether the company succeeds or fails. In fact, if the ratio between external and internal energies spent is known, I believe it is possible to predict the success of any system.

So, the next ingredient in our new paradigm for management is a formula for success that discourages internal waste of energy, leaving the fixed disposable energy available for building the company. In order to build managerial teams in which the team members are different from each other and yet can work together, a team leader must be able to harness the natural tensions that inevitably surface in any diverse group.

How do we ensure that those differences will work for us instead of against us?

The key lies in how we as managers deal with conflict: We must legitimize it as a learning tool; channel its energy; and focus it on being constructive.

Note that I did not say we must resolve conflict. In fact, that is exactly the wrong attitude; those who try to resolve conflict are, again, barking up the wrong tree, working from the mistaken assumption that conflict itself is inappropriate or wrong: “We should not have disagreement.” “We should not have differences of opinion and differences of interest.” But this common perception ignores the reality, which is that differences, and thus conflict, are natural and normal.

Before we can start to reap the benefits of our differences, however, we must accept that conflict is appropriate and necessary, and we must render it functional.

Now, how do we do that? There is one way that I know of, and that is to create an environment of mutual trust and respect. A good manager does this by fostering a supportive learning environment, one where conflict is perceived not as a threat but as an opportunity to learn and develop. (For more on Mutual Trust and Respect, see Ichak Adizes: Mastering Change; The Power of Mutual Trust and Respect, Adizes Institute Publications 1992.)

In a learning environment, differences of opinion are seen as opportunities to learn new perspectives, instead of as threats or challenges or annoyances. We grow through disagreement rather than in spite of it. When you have points of view that I don’t have, I might feel uncomfortable with that, I might not like it, but whe I respect those differences I might learn something I id not think about.

If I don’t respect and trust you, then our conflicts will necessarily be dysfunctional. Whenever you disagree with me, instead of learning from you I will feel that you are stopping me or bothering me or preventing me from doing what I want to do. But as long as I respect and trust you – whether I agree with you or not – I remain open to what you’re saying, and if I rarely come around completely to your point of view, at least I have honed my arguments in response to yours.

Better still, more often than not, the conflict ends with a decision that both of us support and that decision is superior to the ones that either of us could have reached alone. Why? Because we learned from each others disagreement and improved our decision in doing so.

When members of a complementary team learn from their disagreements instead of suffering under them, their joint decisionmaking will reflect the capability of the group, which is greater than the capability of any individual.

In addition to being a knowledgeable achiever, then – a person who excels at finance, accounting, marketing, a good manager must be able to command and grant trust and respect as a member of a team. A manager who cannot command and grant trust and respect will be incapable of resolving the conflicts that inevitably arise in working in a complementary team.

Please note that I am talking about two separate abilities: The ability to command trust and respect and the ability to grant it. They are not the same, and they do not always go together. Some people command trust and respect but don’t grant it. Some people grant trust and respect but don’t command it. What is needed is a person who can both command and grant mutual trust and respect.