Bono is a superstar in the music world. In 2011, he wrote the music and lyrics for the musical Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark—at $75 million dollars, the most expensive show ever produced on Broadway. However, Bono is not used to failure. And that was a big problem when Spider Man was declared a spectacular flop in early reviews. Bono and his U2 bandmate, The Edge, first began collaborating with renowned director Julie Taymor on the music for the show in 2002. But Bono came to regret this collaboration. “The hours and weeks and months … If we thought it would take this long, there is not a chance on earth we would have done it.” However, throughout the collaboration, Bono retained faith in Taymor and her talent. But when the show opened in preview, critics savaged its plot as “incoherent” and “boring,” which cut Bono to the core. In hindsight, Bono wishes he had spoken up about his doubts. However, he self-silenced because he feared that Taymor would walk out of the show if he criticized her—he felt that he could not be open with her.
The opening example reveals how people—even superstars—are terribly afraid of conflict. They don’t want to rock the boat, even when millions of dollars are on the line and their inner voice is screaming for them to say something. As it turns out, Spider Man recovered from its early failures and has since been breaking box office records. So this is also a case in point that teams can recover from early failures—if they are willing to engage in the process of healthy conflict.
Conflict in a team is inevitable. But recognizing it and making it work for you in a team is anything but easy. Most people don’t like conflict and so they don’t want to deal with it; and when they do, they immediately want to extinguish it. So, repeat after me: conflict is a sign of a high-performing team. Now, say it like you mean it!
When I was a young assistant professor at the University of Washington, one of my dearest colleagues was John Gottman; you may know him as the world-renowned marriage and parenting researcher. In his long-term, cutting-edge studies, Gottman found that the couples with the strongest marriages—the ones that endure over time—are the couples that fight. Yes, that’s right. They fight; they don’t avoid conflict. However, there is a particular way these couples fight. They fight fairly. For example, consider the difference between one partner saying, “I don’t trust you. You are a creep!” versus, “I am really angry and I feel that I have lost trust!” The first example is a personal attack; one spouse calls the other a name (“creep”). In the second example, the spouse has communicated anger without a personal attack. For Gottman, one of the keys to a successful marriage is the separation of pure anger from personal attacks. I argue that there is a parallel for teams—people in teams spend a lot of time with each other and get in each other’s way, just as the partners in a long-term relationship.
Similarly, in my studies of negotiation, I have discovered that win-win outcomes result when negotiators are tough, ask penetrating questions, drill down for the core issues, and are hard on the problem, not the people. In fact, when negotiators are too polite and avoid sensitive topics, they are more likely to settle upon lose-lose outcomes.
In one of my research projects with Erika Peterson, we observed how teams of friends negotiate and compared them with teams composed of strangers. At first blush, it would seem that teams of friends would have a distinct advantage over teams composed of people who had no working relationship. Well, we were wrong. Teams of friends were excessively preoccupied about their relationships, and this interfered with their ability to focus on the task of negotiating. Things got even worse when the friends needed to depend on one other for information and when they had to report to a boss. In this case, teams composed of complete strangers actually reached more win-win agreements than did the teams of friends. Excessive concern for the relationship effectively shut down the ability of the teams to search for and integrate valuable information. Being polite is not conducive to the creative crafting of win-win negotiations.
The same is true for creative teamwork. In a study of seventy-one IT project teams, creativity was highest at moderate levels of task conflict—differences and disagreements on ideas, opinions, and interpretations of facts within the team. In contrast, relationship conflict deals with interpersonal conflict between the people in the group rather than the task they are working on. The importance of a moderate amount of task conflict in a team is particularly important when the group is in an early phase. Thus, it is important to set the stage for disagreement early on in the life of a team.
Unfortunately, most people, particularly Americans, are afraid of conflict. Why? There are two major reasons.
First, we don’t know how to separate the people from the problem. When we are attacked or threatened, our defense systems go into overdrive, and we usually respond by attacking the person who attacked us. This, of course, leads to an escalating spiral of tensions. To combat this pattern, we need some lessons on how to attack the problem, not the person. One of my colleagues has an effective behavioral technique for dealing with conflict. Whenever she feels that someone is attacking her, she takes one small step to the side and visualizes the angry words from the attacker going over her shoulder, rather than in her face.
Apparently, she is onto something big. My colleague Roderick Swaab at INSEAD suspected that visual contact between men who are on opposite sides of a negotiation table would lead to more aggression than if these men did not have visual access to each other. So, Swaab had men negotiate with either direct visual contact or no visual contact. All men then engaged in the same negotiation, with the same stakes, bottom lines, and so on, to ensure that any differences in the negotiated outcomes would not be due to economic factors, but rather psychological factors. As it turned out, the men who were in visual contact experienced an increase in testosterone levels.
Apparently, this physiological effect occurs because people, and men in particular, are hardwired to go into fight mode when they face a competitor. So, men who had direct visual contact essentially initiated an animal-stare-down with one another, tensions rising. The increases in testosterone led to more aggressive behavior and less mutually beneficial, creative outcomes. In contrast, the absence of direct visual contact paved the path toward more mutually beneficial agreements.
A second reason we avoid conflict is that we want to be liked. In this regard, most people subconsciously (and, as it turns out, mistakenly) assume that if they initiate conflict, others won’t like them.
Because of the inherent difficulties in navigating conflict, people often use indirect forms of communication rather than direct communication to convey what they mean. I refer to the use of indirect communication in conflict as conflict code. Conflict code is like a different language—if you don’t know the code, something is certainly going to be lost in interpretation. The problem with using conflict code is that people on the receiving end are required to engage in several mental contortions to attempt to figure out what the other person means. This requires a lot of needless information processing, and receivers become exasperated or just downright confused. In short, they don’t know how to crack the code. For example, consider a conflict in a work group in which one person really wants “Dan” to leave the team. There are at least nine different ways to communicate this to Dan, ranging from the blunt and direct to the nuanced and indirect:
- Dan, leave the project team.
- Dan, we’re wondering whether it might be best if you left the team.
- Dan, we’re thinking that we don’t need your involvement in the team at this point.
- Dan, we’re wondering if your talents might be best utilized elsewhere.
- Dan, we’re thinking that the team is ahead of schedule and does not require its original staffing.
- Dan, have you thought about involving yourself in some of the new projects and lessening your involvement in others?
- Dan, many of the original projects are being reconfigured; yours might be one that is affected.
- Dan, the team has been able to take on the project, thanks to your early involvement.
- Dan, we were hoping you would help us out with some of these new projects.
The first statement is direct and to the point; the subsequent statements are increasingly indirect, requiring Dan to have greater and greater insight into the unspoken intentions of the speaker. We have found that most people prefer to receive direct communication, but (falsely) believe that others are best served by using indirect, softer messages. Thus, there is a double standard.
According to Kellogg professor Vicki Medvec, the illusion of transparency is the belief that our thoughts, feelings, and intentions are clearer than they actually are. Most people believe that they are better communicators than they really are. Similarly, most people believe that their intentions and goals are more apparent than is actually the case. The illusion of transparency leads to problems for creative collaboration when team members are confused about what others are communicating. As a case in point, consider the failed launch of the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999, in which a failure to communicate cost NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) $125 million. Lockheed Martin engineers sent the orbiter’s navigation information to JPL in Pasadena using the English measurement—pounds of force. But JPL had programmed its computers to calculate orbital navigation parameters and thruster firings using metric newtons of force. Neither group saw this problem because they thought their communications were transparent!
The remedy is to use more direct forms of communication and constantly check your understanding. Successful collaboration requires that people be in a heightened state of communication. In my own work with clients and students, I have gotten into the habit of summarizing what I think we have agreed to and have repeatedly found that my understanding is sometimes sorely lacking. Fortunately, this is quickly rectified at the end of the conversation, but could create a collaboration nightmare if too much time has passed!
As a native Texan, since the first time I heard the fateful story of Jerry Harvey’s trip to Abilene, I have been wary of team decision making. While spending quality time with his in-laws and extended family in Coleman, Texas, one hot July day, management scientist Jerry Harvey witnessed a curious group dysfunction. Things started very innocently. Everybody was enjoying cold lemonade and the company of family on the porch. Suddenly, someone casually suggested that the entire family could drive to Abilene for ice cream. Despite the fact that Abilene was over fifty miles away and the only means of transportation was an unairconditioned car, the family members each nodded their heads slowly, saying they thought the idea was just fine. Several hours later, after a sweat-soaked crammed car ride across the Texas desert, the family returned to the comfort of their porch. After a long silence, somebody finally said, “That was fun …” That apparently was the last straw. One person finally spoke up and said, “Actually I was miserable.” Eventually everybody confessed that they had thought taking the drive was a terrible idea and didn’t want to go at all, but didn’t want to rock the boat. Why didn’t they say anything hours earlier—before packing into the car and driving? According to Harvey, everyone falsely assumed that others wanted to go—a form of pluralistic ignorance. If the creative team does not speak up, they are also doomed to make arduous trips to Abilene.
Harvey’s experience reveals the common tendency for groups to make less-than-optimal decisions. It also points to the fact that people in teams don’t speak up and challenge one another because they are afraid of rocking the boat. When it comes to creative thinking, the last thing we want is to drive to Abilene. The group would have been much better off enjoying the porch and the lemonade. Yet so often, organizations and teams repress their reservations, agree for the sake of avoiding feared conflict, and end up with a less-than-rewarding process—and often a collectively disastrous decision.
Another reason teams often experience conflict is that people are unhappy with the allocation of the scarcest of team resources: time. The next time you go to a team meeting, surreptitiously get out a sheet of paper and bring a watch. Record who talks and for how long, and at the end of the meeting, add up how many minutes each person had the floor. If your meetings are anything like the hundreds studied by management scientists, you probably noticed that a minority of people did a majority of the talking. The rest of the folks did not get a word in edgewise!
This problem is known as the uneven communication problem. There are a few dominant people in most groups who control and monopolize the discussion. For example, in a typical four-person group, two people do 62 percent of the talking. In a six-person group, three people do 70 percent of the talking; and in an eight-person group, three people do 70 percent of the talking. The topper is that the dominant people do not realize this. In fact, they vehemently argue that the meetings are egalitarian. They lack self-awareness.
The question becomes: Why are the rest of us here? A dysfunctional self-fulfilling prophecy starts to unfold week after week in these meetings: the dominant people begin to feel that the silent people are unprepared or simply don’t have any opinions, so they dominate more; similarly, the quiet folks feel that it is futile to try to be heard, so they stop trying. Left unchecked, this creates a self-perpetuating doom loop in the group. Team members may blame one another for the unsatisfactory team meeting. In order to get the most out of collaboration, it is important to neutralize the too-dominant people and encourage the too-submissive people. However, just saying, “Shut up” or “Speak up” does not work. We need a more effective technique.
How can teams and team leaders deal with the uneven communication problem? Well, admonishing people to be brief, let others talk, or simply to monitor themselves is ineffective. To neutralize the dominant personalities in any group—I call this forced democracy—I offer three techniques: brainwriting, nominal group technique (NGT), and cyberstorming. We mentioned some of these very briefly in chapter 2—let’s take a closer look here.
Let’s get this straight: brainwriting is not brainstorming. Brainwriting is the simultaneous written generation of ideas. I use two simple rules in my work with teams: (1) no guessing and (2) no confessions. In practical terms, this means that no one can attempt to determine who came up with what idea, nor can people confess which idea they authored. Rather, all ideas are anonymous. It is my custom to arrive at a brainwriting session with several hundred index cards and make it clear that each idea should be written on its own card in (reasonably!) legible writing. I pass out a generous number of cards. I like to keep brainwriting episodes short, no longer than ten minutes at a stretch—even five minutes works well. After the brainwriting episode, I collect all the cards and post them on a wall or, if a wall is not available, I have the group members sort them into piles according to general themes or similarity. The next step is to vote on which ideas people like the most. I like to do the voting privately; if possible, by having people put stickers on their favorite ideas. If they are milling about in a large enough group, this provides a reasonable amount of anonymity. Otherwise, the cards can be given a letter or number and people can submit votes privately, indicating which idea cards they like the most.
Once the votes are added up, I flag the top four to six ideas. At this point, I often like to spontaneously form four to six groups and give each group a flip chart and twenty minutes to take that idea to the “next level.” Each group then has five minutes to present the flip chart with their results to the rest of the group. I typically pass the index cards around and ask everyone to give a piece of advice or suggestion feedback to each group. The groups now have a stack of cards to use to further refine their ideas.
Using this iterative technique, brainwriting can be woven into interactive team meetings in a way that keeps everyone engaged. The group is constantly cycling between independent idea generation, posting, voting, elaborating, and refining. I’ve rarely encountered teams that are resistant to brainwriting. Most people are amazed at how greatly the volume of ideas is increased. If I feel that I can get away with it, I provide everybody in a team with a toy water pistol and instruct them to shoot anyone who violates the rules (i.e., no confessions, no guessing).
The evidence for the effectiveness of brainwriting is indisputable. Groups that use brainwriting are dramatically more productive in terms of generating ideas than groups that don’t use brainwriting and even groups that use brainstorming. Brainwriting can be made even more effective when group members carefully discuss the ideas exchanged by members (attention) and when they reflect on these ideas (incubation).
Whereas most companies use brainstorming, few, if any, use brainwriting. Yet the scientific evidence of its effectiveness is overwhelming. I worked with one company whose brainstorming goal was to try to get its customers to want to change their motor oil more often. I thought about the cheap plastic sticker on my windshield … and got intrigued. I passed out over 250 index cards to the thirty attendees and asked them to write down ideas, and set aside issues of acceptability, cost, and feasibility. I set the clock for ten minutes of brainwriting and collected over 400 cards. We shuffled the cards and gave each table a stack of cards to sort into common themes in fifteen minutes. Each table summarized the themes on a flip chart. Then, we did a round of voting and found five pockets of excitement. Over the next forty-five minutes, we formed five teams to take each of those ideas to the next level and be ready to make a ten-minute presentation. Following the presentations, everybody was encouraged to write a tip card to further expand that idea, still following the no-guessing and no-confessions policy. We then rotated the team members within each of the groups to inject new perspectives as ideas were being refined. At the end of the session, there were five new, exciting ideas that emerged that everyone felt ownership of. These ideas were taken to upper management, funded, and ultimately acted on.
The nominal group technique is a lot like brainwriting. However, it is a more extreme version, in which people, rather than working in interactive groups, perform completely independently (i.e., in a nominal group) on a task or creative challenge, after which their responses or output are pooled. For this reason, NGT is ideally suited for distance-challenged groups that don’t have the luxury of face-to-face time.
The research findings overwhelmingly indicate that nominal groups outperform interactive groups at brainstorming tasks, particularly when the problem is specialized. Yet companies still favor group interaction for some reason. Some argue that groups are better at selecting ideas, or that real group work is more satisfying. However, there is no scientific support for this. Not only do nominal groups outperform real groups in terms of idea generation, they are just as likely to select superior ideas and are just as satisfied with the process as interactive groups. This question was further examined in a study in which interactive groups were compared with nominal groups: nominal groups generated more ideas, more original ideas, and were more likely to select original ideas than interactive brainstormers. Yet, the myth of the superiority of real group work lives on!
Cyberstorming—also known as electronic brainstorming—emerged when companies and teams realized that people can interact meaningfully via computers. In a cyberstorming session, members are not colocated, but they are connected via computer or Internet. In an electronic brainstorming session (EBS), team members are in the same room, but instead of verbalizing ideas (and competing for the floor)—group members simply type their ideas into a database that is immediately displayed on a large screen. Cyberstorming and electronic brainstorming elegantly solve the problem of production blocking—the interference that occurs when team members compete with one another to speak at the same time. There is nothing to prevent members from verbalizing ideas, but only those that get entered are recorded. This means that the overly dominant personalities do not usurp the meeting. Cyberstorming also provides a cognitive stimulus to team members. Because the ideas are immediately displayed, they can spur new ideas in members reading the screen display. Another advantage is that members’ ideas are anonymous.
Companies that are faced with distance-teamwork challenges might find a serendipitous effect with cyberstorming, as it can either be anonymous or not. There is some evidence that more controversial ideas are produced by members of anonymous electronic groups than by members of nonanonymous groups. Moreover, anonymous electronic groups produce fewer redundant ideas than do non-anonymous electronic groups.
Cyberstorming works because it overcomes the limitations of face-to-face (FTF) brainstorming—there is no one who can dominate a discussion, criticize ideas, talk too long, or interrupt. Groups using electronic brainstorming outperform both FTF brainstorming groups and nominal groups because they act not as a group, but as a collection of individuals who interact with an evolving set of ideas rather than with other people. One concern with EBS is information overload. In short, people may feel overwhelmed because they have to contribute ideas and also monitor ideas that other members are simultaneously contributing. To be sure, there is multitasking involved because participants are not only expected to contribute ideas but also must read the ideas that are fast emerging in the group. However, compared with face-to-face brainstorming sessions in which any number of factors can derail brainstorming, electronic groups are task focused.
In short, brainwriting, nominal group technique, and cyberstorming are all, hands down, superior to the typical face-to-face team meeting, although nominal brainstorming groups seem to have the edge. One investigation compared the quality of ideas generated by four different types of team configurations—nominal groups, interactive groups, EBS-anonymous groups, and EBS-nonanonymous groups—and found that, overall, nominal brainstorming groups generated ideas at least as good, if not better, than EBS groups. Another investigation designed a brainstorming application that used an interactive table and a large wall display and compared the results to traditional brainstorming. The electronic brainstorming application resulted in better-quality ideas than traditional FTF brainstorming. Yet, faulty beliefs about the efficacy of FTF brainstorming still exist. Organizations continue to argue that FTF interaction is more rewarding and satisfying. If anything, the opposite is true. One study compared the decision quality of untrained FTF, brainstorming, and nominal groups. Brainstorming groups and nominal groups were more satisfied, felt their groups used a more effective process, and felt they had communicated more effectively than the untrained FTF groups. Bottom line: the most effective and rewarding creative teams have structure and are not free-for-alls!
As you might imagine, there is some concern that electronic brainstorming might lead to a loss of informal face-to-face communication. And there is indeed reason to be concerned. Teams that abolish all face-to-face meetings run the risk of creating an antagonistic atmosphere. One Silicon Valley company abolished its weekly face-to-face meetings because they were considered to be too bloated—a waste of time. Yet, this ultimately resulted in a toxic workplace. Thus, if the team happens to be colocated, go ahead and set up meetings—but use the structure outlined—rather than just having an anything-goes free-for-all.
In summary, adding some structure to the creative collaboration via the nominal group technique, brainwriting, or cyberstorming can dramatically increase productivity and make the process more rewarding and less frustrating. These are all examples of the hybrid approach to creative collaboration that can supercharge the team.
I set up a global team assignment in one of my classes. The goal was to give the students a collaborative experience working with people across the world. This was of interest to the students because over 50 percent of them expected to have a significant management challenge abroad. In the exercise, managers from over twelve countries participated in groups of four to five people. The students eagerly jumped into the project. Armed with an array of state-of-the-art technology, each global team tackled the first order of business—to set up a conference call using Skype-type technology. Despite the carefully laid plans, over 50 percent of the scheduled conference calls did not take place as planned! The problem was not a technology failure. Nor was it motivation. Instead, there was a simple communication problem. The students relied on the “world clock” to determine the time of the call, but failed to learn about idiosyncratic differences in countries and time zones not observing daylight savings time! Unfortunately, the students did not realize the source of the problem and instead blamed each other. That day, I received several e-mails from my students complaining about the “lousy work ethic” of the “foreign” students. At the same time I received these e-mails, the coordinating professors in the other host countries were receiving e-mails from their students complaining about the “unreliability of the US students”! The peer evaluations at the end of the semester confirmed that the local team members held the remotely located members responsible for the debacle.
The experience of the students in my class is an example of relationship conflict—conflict that is not about the task, but rather, about personalities and underlying intensions. Relationship conflict is personal, emotional, accusatory, and parties often don’t trust or respect one another. Worse yet, the longer relationship conflict goes unaddressed, the more likely it will grow and spread. When it spreads, it becomes malignant conflict. For example, when the students in my class immediately leaped to assumptions about the lack of goodwill, dedication, and work ethic, and began trading stories among one another and across groups, the conflict became malignant. The subsequent meetings did not go as well, and other team members spoke in harsh terms about what had happened. Rumors about what had occurred even spread to other teams that did not initially have problems. In short, the conflict quickly grew out of control and poisoned the working relationships of team members.
In contrast to relationship conflict is a different type of conflict that is centered on the task at hand and is known as task conflict. For example, if someone does not materialize for a scheduled conference call, it could very well be because the person is lazy and unreliable (as suspected by my students), but it could also be that there was another, much more benign explanation, such as the time zone difference (as in the case I’ve described) or a technology failure. Unlike relationship conflict, which is personal and emotional, task conflict is usually impersonal, task-focused, and contained. For this reason, task conflict is usually benign, in the sense that it does not threaten to damage the relationship between the parties involved or spread to others in the organizational network. A telltale sign of benign conflict is that the protagonists talk about the altercation immediately after it occurs, make adjustments, and then follow through.
Let’s consider another example. Suppose that two research scientists, Jerry and Jenny, hold very different theories about light. Now suppose that they are both planning to attend the same annual research convention to present their theories. They see each other in the convention center. When Jerry sees Jenny, he starts calling her names and walks over to her poster board and leaves a nasty comment. The next day, Jenny attends Jerry’s presentation, raises her hand, and says, “This guy is really stupid and the theory is nonsense!” Most scientists who have opposing theories would not conduct themselves in this manner. Rather, it would be more usual for Jenny to raise a particularly incisive question during the presentation and put Jerry on the spot by asking him to recall the exact statistical significance of a complex test or perhaps citing another investigation that she feels Jerry might not have read and asking him to explain the differences. Most of us could not imagine the personal attack occurring among highly educated professionals. Yet it occurs in many companies.
For example, Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, was known for his over-the-top displays of emotion. In 2005, Mark Lucovsky alleged in a sworn statement to a Washington state court that Ballmer grew enraged upon hearing that Lucovsky intended to leave Microsoft and take a job at Google. He described Ballmer picking up his chair and throwing it across his office. Then came the angry threat: referring to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Ballmer vowed to “kill Google” in an expletive-laden tirade.
Another example of malignant conflict occurred in 2011 when Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused fellow justice David Prosser of putting his hands around her neck in a choke hold after a disagreement got heated in Bradley’s office. Similarly, a new industry has emerged in medicine, with coaches and consultants providing anger management to curb the temper tantrums thrown by doctors in the surgical room. According to George Anderson, a consultant who offers anger management training for professionals, verbal abuse is among the milder transgressions—throwing surgical instruments such as scalpels is not unusual.
Jeer pressure, a term coined by Leslie Janes and James Olson, occurs when people watch others in their team being ridiculed or taunted. When we watch others poke fun at people, we unconsciously inhibit our own behavior. In short, jeer pressure increases conformist, conventional thinking; when people observed videotapes in which people were either ridiculing others, ridiculing themselves, or not ridiculing anyone, those who heard others being ridiculed were the most conforming and more afraid of failing compared to those who watched self-ridicule or no ridicule.
As you might sense, relationship conflict is generally not productive. Task conflict is often (but not always) productive. However, although too little or too much task conflict can thwart effectiveness, there is a “sweet spot” where moderate amounts of task conflict have beneficial effects. In one investigation, top management teams in 109 US hospitals examined the relationship between the amount of task conflict on the team and the teams’ decision quality and found teams with moderate amounts of conflict were the most effective. This section introduces methods to ensure that teams engage in the right amount of conflict.
There is an apparent contradiction in the advice given to team leaders. On the one hand, teams and leaders are strongly advised by decision scholars to introduce devil’s advocates, debate, and critical thinking into group meetings. On the other hand, creativity researchers admonish teams to set aside all evaluation and judgment and banish devil’s advocates. Indeed, one of Alex Osborn’s cardinal rules of effective brainstorming was to eliminate judgment and evaluation of ideas. Thus, leaders are the victims of a mixed message: “Don’t criticize others, yet engage in dissent!” Which is correct? As it turns out, debate and competing views have positive value and stimulate divergent, creative ideas. One study investigated traditional brainstorming instructions, debate-and-criticize instructions, and control condition. Debate instructions were superior to traditional brainstorming instructions in at least two cultures—the United States and France. Teams that engage in task conflict are more likely to engage in innovative behavior and knowledge sharing behaviors. Conversely, teams that engage in relationship conflict shared less knowledge.
In our own research, my colleagues and I have found that another factor that mediates the ability to benefit from task conflict is the degree to which people need to save face or protect their own image. Think about the people on your own team. Are some people extremely sensitive? Are some people easily threatened, embarrassed, or worried about their image? People who are particularly thin-skinned might take offense even when they are challenged about a task. Indeed, when people who are highly sensitive are challenged, they react emotionally. Face-saving—the need for people to preserve their image or avoid losing dignity—is at the root of much social embarrassment. Some people have a much higher need than others to feel dignified and respected by others.
My colleagues Judith White, Rene Tynan, and Adam Galinsky and I conducted a series of experiments on how people who are sensitive and thus have high face-saving needs can create problems for mutually beneficial interaction. We first needed to find people who seemed particularly sensitive and also people who were not particularly socially sensitive. To do this, we asked people to respond to three simple statements: “I don’t respond well to direct criticism”; “My feelings get hurt easily”; and “I am pretty thin-skinned.” We then clustered the data into three groups and found that the thinnest-skinned people were the most likely to storm out of a potentially lucrative, win-win negotiation opportunity. Moreover, in mock job negotiations, candidates with thin skins were less likely to negotiate in effective win-win, creative fashion. People with thin skins are quick to take offense and become competitive instead of collaborative. Maybe you have particularly thin skin or maybe you don’t, but someone on your team does.
Try this as an exercise: the next time you are in a meeting, have someone count the number of times people say “we,” “us,” or “ours” and also the number of times people say “I,” “me,” or “mine.” I often do this surreptitiously in a meeting and then after the meeting, have the nerve give everyone a We-to-Me ratio score. People with higher scores are more “we” focused. (In our research on the “we versus me” effect, my colleagues and I had some people read a simple paragraph that focused on family and interconnections (we); we had others read a simple paragraph that focused on independence (me). Then, we examined their subsequent behavior in a completely unrelated situation: a tense, fractious dispute. Those who had read the “we” paragraph were more constructive and less likely to reach an impasse than those who had read the “me” paragraph.
Then, as a follow-up, start listening for your own pronouns and, as I like to say, “find your schizophrenic self.” Every time you hear yourself say, “I,” “me,” or “mine,” try to rephrase it using “we,” “us,” and “ours.” Using the language of “we” puts our focus on the collective interests of the group.
In one of my workshops focused on creating win-win negotiation techniques for clients and their companies, I observed a somewhat curious phenomenon. It involved flip charts and whiteboards. In one exercise, several teams of people were challenged with a particularly contentious buyer-seller negotiation. Unbeknownst to negotiators, a creative “A-ha!” best solution was possible, but it was not easy to see. That is, unless protagonists were willing to ask questions, brainstorm, and consider a lot of possibilities. As it happened, we were in a facility in which some people met in rooms that were impoverished in the sense that they did not have any flip charts or whiteboards. Others were negotiating in rooms that were stocked with flip charts and whiteboards. Other than that, there were no discernible differences. The groups who had access to flip charts were not explicitly instructed to use them—but they spontaneously did. And then a curious thing happened—they started writing suggestions and editing various drafts of proposals. Those without flip charts made decidedly fewer proposals and seemed to lose motivation. Most notably, those using the flip charts were the most likely to craft creative, win-win deals. When people put their words on paper, they can attack the paper, rather than attacking the person. This prevents a stare down and creates a single text to which both parties can contribute. Many times confusion arises when people are talking. Writing things down immediately clarifies potential misunderstandings.
During conflict, people often become frustrated and stymied because they don’t know how to find a way out. Instead of expressing frustration and defeat in such moments, summarize; for example, “Look, I feel angry too and I worry about things that are going to come out of my mouth. I think we have been in a defensive mode and I would like to see us move toward problem solving.”
One of my clients asked me when is the right time to tell the other party that something is “not negotiable.” I told that client, “Never.” Too often, people in conflict will claim that certain courses of action are unacceptable or nonnegotiable. I advise my clients and students to put aside the language of “accept or reject” and instead opt for the language of rank ordering and prioritizing.
Most people have a characteristic style of dealing with conflict in their personal and professional lives. I call this your conflict tell. Frankly, the way we deal with conflict with a boss is not likely to be dramatically different from how we deal with conflict with a spouse. To begin your self-discovery process, think of a significant conflict you have recently had with someone you care about (i.e., not a one-off conflict with an airline attendant or service manager at a hotel, etc.). Rather, think about a long-term coworker, teammate, or superior. If necessary, think about your spouse! Of the four following behaviors, which would you say best characterizes how you behaved during that conflict?
Avoid: You ignored the conflict; avoided the other person to the extent you were able to do so; wrote the other person off; circumvented a discussion because it seemed fruitless, hopeless, too painful, not worth your time, etc.
Rationalize: You tolerated the relationship; rationalized the other person’s behaviors; hoped the situation would resolve itself; tried to be understanding and accepting of the difficult situation; maybe even made excuses for the other person (e.g., “If he was not jetlagged, I’m sure that he would have thanked me for getting the project done on time.”).
Attack: You engaged in direct combat; stepped right up and told the other person off; recruited whatever resources were necessary to stand your ground and block or thwart the other person.
Engage: You attempted to initiate a clarifying discussion with the other person; talked about your goals; acknowledged your own faults; separated the past from the future.
These four patterns represent how people often deal with interpersonal conflict. And your signature conflict style at home is often what you bring to work. Thus, if you often retreat from conflict at work or attempt to tune the other person out, you are probably doing this at home as well. The key thing to think about is: what behavior are you reinforcing in the other party? In other words, if you are engaging in avoidance, the other person has no doubt gotten the message that you are unavailable.
Conversely, if you use attack mode, chances are you have created a boxing match with the other party. This is what is meant by an escalating conflict spiral.
If you have rationalized the conflict and tried to keep a stiff upper lip, you have not been honest with yourself or the other party. There is never a right time for conflict. Conflict is always inconvenient. But if you don’t take care of it, it is going to rear its head in an ugly way.
So, what course of action is best to take? An abundance of evidence suggests that it is only through engagement that conflict can result in productive outcomes. Avoidance, rationalization, or outright attacks are not optimal for solving conflict. People who use avoidance suppress conflict. If you suppress conflict, it often manifests itself in very unpleasant ways, such as poor health, passive-aggressive behavior, and the deterioration of relationships. Those who rationalize conflict are bound to eventually reach their breaking point. By making excuses for the other party, we are not treating them with the respect they ultimately deserve. The problem is that most people don’t know how to start productive engagement because they are afraid or quite simply, have given up hope.
One of my favorite interview questions is, “Tell me about a conflict you had with someone at work and what you did to resolve it.” If the job candidate answers, “I don’t have conflicts with people,” then I’m immediately suspicious. If they say that the people with whom they have had conflict with in their organizational career have been psychopaths (and proceed to give me full-blown personality profiles), then they lack self-awareness. If they say that they ignored these people, hoped they would change, or attacked them, I also score them below average. Why? People who are emotionally intelligent realize that conflict is inevitable in the workplace and they deal proactively with conflict (rather than reactively, passively, or aggressively).
The key to successful conflict management begins with self-awareness. If you are unaware that you are feeling angry, misunderstood, unappreciated, or defiant, you will be unable to move forward with proactive conflict management.
Once you have become self-aware, the next step is to inform the team of what is going on. The main principle to keep in mind here is that you need to take ownership of your beef with the team and avoid making the assertion that they have “caused” your problem.
To make this concrete, let’s take the case of Lisa, who feels that the team makes an inordinate number of requests and demands of her and does not ask her about how this will affect her workload. In short, Lisa feels unappreciated, not respected, and “dumped on.” What should Lisa do?
Don’t say: “I am fed up with how you guys are dumping on me. You don’t show me any respect and you don’t appreciate all that I do and I’m at the end of my rope and I won’t take it anymore.”
Do say: “I feel frustrated and unappreciated when I get requests to do work that is in addition to what we have previously discussed. I want to discuss how to make things work better.”
Let’s suppose you have decided to not avoid conflict and not rationalize it away. You feel like attacking, but instead you have committed yourself to having a real conversation. How do you begin? The phrase “Talk to Joe productively about our conflict” is not in anyone’s Outlook calendar!
You don’t want to ambush the other party. Instead, you need a lead-in to initiate engagement. Some of my favorite lead-ins, which have been pilot-tested by plenty of my clients and students, are:
- Harry, I would like to have a level two conversation about the project and check signals. What is a good time? I will work around your schedule.
- Susan, I feel uncomfortable talking about the project, but I’m unhappy with the current situation and suspect you might feel the same way. I’m hoping we can work out a time to check signals.
- Chris, I need to talk to you about something that is bothering me. I want to try to work this out before I start feeling resentful.
Once you have led into the conversation and carved out a time to talk, make sure you speak to this person, keeping to the following guidelines:
- Use verbs, forget the adjectives: Adjectives get us into trouble. It is much better to use verbs or behavioral descriptions. For example, compare phrases like “You are controlling” and “You are judgmental” (adjectives) with “I was upset when you did not consult me” and “I was taken aback when you criticized me in the meeting last Thursday,” which reference an action or behavior. So, be descriptive via referencing behaviors and actions rather than evaluative. By focusing on behaviors and actions rather than internal states, the receiver of feedback is able to better change their behavior. Consider the difference between, “You seem lazy and uninvolved at work” versus “You arrive fifteen minutes late and you don’t ask for others’ help in projects.” The former is blaming and immediately puts the other person on the defensive. The second is fact-based.
- Be specific, not general: Do not use the terms, “You always …” or “You never …” but rather, “Sometimes …” or preferably, “Last Wednesday …”
- Speak for yourself: We often show our anger and resentment by forming coalitions against someone. For example, consider a colleague who approaches a business associate and says, “You know, several people were talking about how we don’t like how you are allocating the budget …” It is important to speak only for yourself. Otherwise, the person might become so defensive that he or she will be unable to hear the substance of your message. Do not say, “Everybody thinks …” or “Everybody feels the same way I do.” Instead, speak for yourself.
- Ideally, find something positive to say: People don’t get enough positive feedback. So find something you actually do admire about this person—or something she does better than others—and compliment her.
- Express optimism about change: It is very important to emphasize that you not only care about the other person, but you believe that he has the power and ability to change and develop. Carol Dweck cites the belief in one’s own ability to adapt and learn as the single most important key to success. For this reason, people who believe their skills are innately determined are less resilient than people who believe their skills are malleable.
Most people say they want to hear the truth about how they are perceived, but in fact, it is often so frightening to get feedback that we don’t react in a way that allows us to benefit. We often go into a flight-or-fight mode.
I get more questions about giving feedback than almost any other topic. What is interesting, however, is that I get very few questions about receiving feedback. One of the first principles I teach my students is that to be entitled to offer feedback to someone, you must be open to receiving feedback. The first principle when someone offers you feedback is to thank them. Think of it this way: someone cares enough or thinks you are important enough to bother to do something about. So, express gratitude when someone offers you feedback. Feedback is a gift, so say thank you or, even better, send a note or card.
The second principle is to be open to feedback. Don’t ask, “How am I doing?”; ask “What can I work on?” Signal openness to feedback. However, just because you might see yourself as a person who can accept feedback, it in no sense guarantees that you are signaling that you are open to receiving feedback. And if you are hoping that your casual remark to your staff and subordinates that they should let you know if they have any feedback will get them to really speak their minds—well, just forget that. Rather, the burden is squarely on you to set the appropriate stage to receive feedback.
For example, Leo Babauta asked his readers for feedback to improve his blog, Zen Habits. After receiving a heavy dose of critical feedback, he returned all e-mails and thanked the readers for their comments. Similarly, Ken Mills, CEO of creative media company Mills James, solicited direct feedback from his employees when the company began expanding. He instituted a series of nonmanagerial employee meetings where feedback (and criticism) could be leveled without fear of reprisal. He admits that criticism of a personal nature, though sometimes necessary, can be a tough pill to swallow. “Sometimes I get depressed after these meetings. But I think the main thing is, that even more than what you do, is that the people feel like they are being heard. That goes a long way.”
Here are three guidelines that will help you process feedback:
- Ask for examples: Remember that the people offering you feedback may not follow the guidelines of constructive (informational) feedback. That’s okay. So, if they are using evaluative language, then don’t lecture them about the importance of using behavioral examples, just ask them to give you examples. If they can’t come up with any, then refer to meetings in the recent past and ask for them to give feedback pertaining to that situation or meeting.
- Separate agreement from understanding: Just because a person is offering you feedback does not mean you need to agree with it. It also does not mean you need to argue with this person. Rather, you can probe for understanding and set aside the question of whether you agree or not. I will warn you that this is hard to do, but think about these sentence stems, “I’m not sure I can agree with that or not, at least until I get some more examples of the controlling behavior you are referring to. Can we talk about whether you saw such behavior in the new program launch?” or perhaps, “I’m not sure I see it the same way you do, but can you give me some more examples that I can think about?”
- Focus on the future; do not attempt to justify the past: Most of the time, people become very defensive about the criticism that others offer them. Thus, they tend to dig up the past, explain and justify and rationalize their behavior, which really serves no purpose. However, it is a far more effective use of everybody’s time to focus on what can be done in the future so as not to repeat past missteps.
People on teams need to care and to trust each other. Trust and respect are both important for teams, but they are not the same thing. Trust is the willingness of a person to rely on another person in the absence of monitoring or supervision. Conversely, respect is the level of esteem a person has for another.
To measure the amount of trust you have in your team, how much do you agree with the following statements?
- I trust my teammates.
- I have little faith that my teammates will consider my needs when making decisions.
- I believe that my teammates are truthful and honest.
If you answered yes to items 1 and 3, but no to item 2, then you have high trust in your team.
To assess the amount of respect for your team, indicate how much you agree or disagree with these statements:
- I think highly of my teammates’ character.
- This team sets a good example.
- Our team does things the right way.
- My team deserves my consideration.
- I admire my teammates.
- I am proud to be part of my team.
- I think my teammates have useful perspectives.
- My teammates usually have good reasons for their beliefs.
- People on my team have well-founded ideas.
- I hold my team in high regard.
- I think highly of my team members.
- Our team has reason to be proud.
- I respect my teammates.
If you answered the majority of these questions with “true” or “I highly agree,” that is a good indication that you have respect for your teammates. If you answered the majority of questions with “false” or “I disagree,” that is an indication that respect is lacking.
Here’s another way to think of the difference between trust and respect: suppose your colleague has failed his pilot’s license test three times because he has an uncorrectable vision problem. However, he is a wonderful, generous person who is very smart. Most rational people would never get in a plane with him if he were to fly it because he lacks competence. We trust his intentions, but we don’t respect his competence. We are (wisely) unwilling to make ourselves vulnerable when we don’t respect someone’s competence. Now, imagine you have another colleague who is an expert, decorated pilot, but knows that you have queasy stomach. You have occasionally wondered whether this person wishes to intimidate you or make you sick to your stomach. You would most likely not board her plane—not because of a competence issue, but because you don’t trust her intentions. The first example is a respect issue; the second example is a trust issue. Ideally, we need both trust and respect in our teams. Teams high in respect but low in trust often appear as collections of individualists, afraid of exposing their vulnerabilities for fear they might be exploited. Conversely, teams high in trust but low in respect are safe but ineffective because they don’t see much value in the contributions of their teammates, even if they are well intentioned.
People need to recognize the expertise of others (respect others’ competence) and also trust their intentions. Trust is the willingness to make yourself vulnerable to achieve a greater goal. People in teams size up how “safe” they feel in bringing up certain subjects and seeking assistance from their team. Psychological safety is the extent to which people feel that they can raise issues and questions without fear of being criticized, scorned, or rebuffed.
What does it take to develop the collaborative spirit in people? Trust is critical for effective collaboration. Trust occurs when people are willing to be vulnerable in their relationships with others.
Many people have a difficult time being vulnerable with their teams. When we depend on others, we need to trust their skill and we need to trust their intentions. That is the only way we really learn. However, just like the airplane pilot example, we need to be judicious about whom we put our trust in.
There appears to be at least one caveat to the trust-is-good-for-creativity mandate. In one investigation, people were either exposed to subliminal distrust messages—below the threshold of their conscious awareness or subliminal trust messages—again, below the threshold of their awareness. If you ask these folks, they will tell you they were not aware of seeing anything. However, their brain took in the subliminal message and this led to an interesting twist: those who had been exposed to the subliminal distrust message were more likely to display cognitive flexibility—the opposite of rigid thinking! Why? Distrust provokes people to think about nonobvious alternatives to potentially deceptive appearances. Thus, even though people were not even consciously aware that they had been subliminally exposed to distrust, their brains started to spontaneously solve a problem by thinking outside of the boundaries!
Chapter CapstoneWhen managed well, conflict enhances team performance. The problem is that most people are afraid of conflict. Part of this fear is rooted in the fact that they have seen the damage that can result from open attack and jeering. However, there is a healthier type of conflict that is problem- rather than people-focused. Leaders need to be role models for effective conflict expression and also need to know how to move away from an attack. Leaders also need to know how to use the group’s scarcest resource—time—and so this chapter also touched on how to neutralize overly dominant people. If there is a conflict sweet spot, it is engagement that involves being specific, using verbs, and expressing optimism about change.