chapter 2

How do you overcome conflicts or tensions?

• Improving communication
• Encouraging open-mindedness
• Understanding others’ perspectives
• Increasing healthy debate that leads to better results

‘Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.’

Confucius

Self-assessment

Before reading the chapter, do the following quick self-assessment.

How would you rate the following in your team?

Threatened by the arrival of a new colleague

Exploring the problem

In the example above, conflict and tension are brought into the team with the perceived threat of a new team member.

Conflict and tension can have many different causes and this can play itself out in many varied forms. Sometimes it can be an open, argumentative conflict and sometimes it can be in a passive aggressive form, where it’s less obvious and therefore more difficult to address.

Most teams and team members will experience conflict and tension regularly.

Let’s explore what is going on in this example.

Intrapersonal tension

Sarah feels threatened by the arrival of a new colleague. The threat is created by the fact that her boss knew this person from before. Sarah believes that they had a close working bond which means she and the other team members may not be as valued as him, as they don’t have that close bond.

It is not clear to either Sarah or Clark why Rob has been brought in, which creates unnecessary speculation.

Rob and Harriet have previously been peers, which makes Sarah look at him as someone more senior than herself. This makes her compare herself to him and worry that she is not good enough. She feels inferior yet wants to make out as if she isn’t by saying that she should have been given the EXODUS project.

Comparing herself to her new colleague moves Sarah into a competitive mindset, not one with a win–win focus.

Impact on time and productivity

Time is wasted as Sarah and Clark are removing themselves from their job to discuss this. Productivity is therefore affected.

Trust levels

When Clark suggests that Sarah feels threatened by Rob, she denies it. By not being transparent, she creates tension between them, as it’s obvious to him that she is not truthful.

As Sarah doesn’t know or trust Rob very well yet, she doesn’t feel she can address him directly with any of her thoughts, which means her sense of conflict is greater than it needs to be.

Additionally, she doesn’t approach her boss with any of her concerns, which means no real clarification can happen. She doesn’t approach her boss for fear of how the boss will react. After all, Harriet, the boss, has brought in a person whom she has worked with before so there is an existing relationship at play. Also, the boss might not know that this much conflict is going on.

Because Sarah doesn’t know Rob very well, she makes assumptions based on hearsay. She’s putting pieces of information together that aren’t necessarily true, and they create a fabricated picture that she starts to believe.

When taking the call from Clark, Sarah looks around the room to make sure no one can hear, which indicates that she knows that her conversation could provoke reactions in the team. This is an indication of a low level of openness.

Interpersonal tension

When Sarah can’t get Clark to agree with her perceived assessment, she experiences further conflict and tension.

By not agreeing with Sarah, Clark is trying to get her to look at the situation more constructively, but as a result he is creating more conflict as he expresses a different opinion.

Sarah creates more tension by looking for someone to collude with. When she can’t get Clark to agree, she decides to look for another ally.

Even a short, simple example such as this one, demonstrates how much conflict and tension can be created and multiplied in any situation.

So what does this mean for you and your team?

The reasons for conflict and tension in teams

Conflict is simply a difference of opinion. An opinion in and of itself is neither good nor bad. It’s the interpretation that could create a negative sense of conflict.

Here are the top reasons for conflict and tension in teams:

Lack of communication

When they are not given enough information, people will fill in the gaps and make it up, even if they don’t know that they are making it up. The mind is quick to piece together any bits of data, no matter how small, and make up its own story. Each person is different from the next, so we build our own story uniquely, if we haven’t been given the whole picture. In the story, Harriet, the leader, had not explained well enough to her team why she had brought Rob in and what he brings to the team.

Another communication issue is when people do not communicate their thoughts and concerns, which could provide the clarification they need to avoid a sense of conflict. The example above showed how Sarah was guilty of this.

Virtual teams can experience conflict because of the lack of face-to-face and non-verbal communication. When people don’t have access to non-verbal clues there is more risk of misunderstanding, which creates conflict.

Personal differences

As mentioned before, everyone is unique and it’s important to understand how that creates differences in teams. If a person doesn’t understand another team member and his/her personal needs and values, they look at his/her opinions and behaviours as flawed as they don’t match the person’s own view. Truly stepping into somebody else’s shoes and seeing things from their angle is not an easy task. The pace and speed at which we operate, doesn’t always allow us to be in the moment to be able to do that. So this is an understandable challenge we all face, but that’s not an excuse for not doing it.

Conflicting goals

If team members have differing goals, i.e. goals that for some reason don’t support each other, then their priorities will differ and they will not see the importance of the other person’s task. This creates conflict or at least tension.

This is often the case in matrix organisations, where people work together across teams and business areas, thereby becoming part of several different teams. This is where conflicting goals are often a reality, as there is not enough alignment of goals and focus higher up in the organisation.

Competitive behaviours

When roles are unclear, people end up doing the same things as other team members because it’s not clear who owns what and therefore who is supposed to do what. This in turn makes people feel like they are competing for the task and conflict is almost guaranteed, especially if communication is lacking.

Conflict arises from the idea that something is either right or wrong, which in turn means that when opinions differ someone is either right or wrong. And when people think like that, they want to be right. When they go for the need to be right, they no longer look for the potential value in someone else’s view. Assuming both parties want to be right, tension is then created by both of them not feeling listened to or valued.

Competitive behaviour also happens when team members feel they have to prove themselves. As in the example above, this can be caused by a new person whose perceived seniority creates a sense of inferiority or self-doubt in someone else. Another example of this could be if a team member achieves better results than another. This would bring out competitive behaviours that are no longer about the good of the team. The focus is only on ‘what’s in it for me’.

The impact of conflict and tension in teams

If conflict and tension are not managed, they erode trust and make people work on their own rather than cooperate. In really bad cases it also makes people work against each other.

This is how a team is impacted by conflict and tension:

• People waste time thinking about it and often also talking to others about it, and thus create more tension.
• When people don’t have enough information and they make up their own story, rumours are created and suspicion grows, which is detrimental to teamwork.

  

  Figure 2.1    The misunderstanding multiplier

• When people don’t ask for information or fail to voice concerns, the issue festers and continues to drive team members apart.
• If people don’t understand each other, they don’t interact and the team is therefore less efficient.
• Conflicting goals create confusion, which leads to inactivity, which affects productivity.
• Competitive behaviour where team members have a personal agenda that doesn’t match the team’s agenda is deeply divisive and has a negative effect on team spirit.

The impact on the business, customers, employees and stakeholders

When there is conflict in a team, others are bound to notice. Conflict or tension is rarely comfortable for others to watch, so the team could risk damaging important relationships.

Let’s look at an example of how team conflict affects the customer’s experience.

This simple but illuminating example demonstrates how overt conflict makes other people feel.

Within organisations, conflict can have an equally bad effect. Other teams may avoid working with tension-ridden teams where possible, as it’s hard work. It takes too long to get people on side, to get things done, to come to agreements.

This is how it might work.

In this example, poor communication between Andrew and Kevin leads to passive aggressive conflict, which may be harder to address than open conflict. The knock-on effects are many: work-around, role confusion, communication gaps. All waste time and effort and have a negative impact on the bottom line.

Solutions

Conflict and tension doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It can even be healthy, if carefully managed, as it can trigger healthy debates and make people think differently. Knowledge and insight can expand, innovation can happen and results flourish. So the point is not to avoid conflict at all cost, it is to manage it in such a way that it becomes a powerful vehicle for teamwork.

Let’s get specific on how to do it.

Solution 1: Communicate, communicate, communicate

In order to fill in the communication gaps that others will otherwise fill with their own assumptions, you need to communicate, communicate, communicate. Don’t be afraid to state the obvious, because it may not be obvious to others. Don’t make the assumption that people already know. People always want the context, the reason why something is happening, so put particular focus here.

Solution 2: Get together and ask constructive questions

Instead of assuming, ask questions. Frame questions constructively to get the information you need, to fill the communication gap.

And if you notice that a colleague is avoiding you or seems concerned, invest the time to get together talk to him/her. And if you are noticing that there are tensions in the team as a whole, get together and talk. Ask open questions that make people open up.

Here are some questions that work for both teams and individuals:

• How are you doing?
• What’s going on for you right now?
• Is there anything we need to talk about?
• Is there anything I need to know about?
• Is there anything you need from me right now?
• What’s working well for us right now?
• What could be better? What’s not working so well?
• How can I help you?
• How can we help each other?

Solution 3: Assume positive intent

Everyone is different. Just because they don’t think or feel like you, that doesn’t mean that they are wrong. People typically do the best they can. Rarely do people intentionally set out to annoy others or create conflict. If somebody says or does something that makes you feel tension, take a step back and look as objectively as possible on the situation. Assume that they have positive intent. If you only do one thing, let it be this one – assume positive intent. The positive intent may not be clear to you as you don’t always have the full context or particular experience of the other person. However, just because it’s not easy to grasp what the positive intention is, it’s still fair to assume there is one.

Solution 4: Step into someone else’s shoes

In order to really understand another person, you need to proactively find some way of stepping into their shoes. If your team members have a hard time seeing eye to eye, you can for example get them to try out each other’s roles, simply swapping roles for a time, to gain greater understanding. You can also encourage or force team members to buddy up, especially those that don’t work so well together. Reflect on this story that we recently heard:

As you can see – yes, we can step into someone else’s shoes. And as you can also see, it’s still going to be through our own lens that we take in someone’s perspective. So it may not be entirely clear and objective, but it’s still much more than we had before.

Solution 5: Connect up team members’ goals

Every team needs goals, for the team as a whole and for the individuals. If you don’t have them, go get them. Team members need to be included in the creation of the goals to get their commitment to them.

Make sure the goals are connected and support the work of the team. Connected goals are when team members each have a stake in each other’s success. Connected goals mean that people are encouraged to work together to achieve results. It’s not possible for one person to achieve individual success and leave the others behind.

Keep looking at the goals regularly, not just once or twice a year, to help the team deliver.

And to take it a step further, effective organisations have goals that are connected at all levels. Sometimes leaders higher up in the organisation push goals down, but the solution to avoiding conflict and tension is having synchronised goals. This is particularly important in matrix organisations where people may have multiple reporting lines that definitely create confusion unless addressed. If you don’t have synchronisation, there will be tension. Make sure goals match and connect as much as possible. Even if there’s not complete alignment, any improvement you can make will help. So keep checking the alignment of your goals, regularly. If you are not in a position to control it, then at least go and influence it.

Solution 6: Let go of the need to be right

We discussed earlier that conflict is merely a difference of opinion. No opinion is necessarily right or wrong, good or bad – it’s just a different opinion. Your mindset makes the difference.

By letting go of the need to be right, you can consider the other opinion and watch the tension fade. Besides, based on the fast speed of change, what was appropriate before may no longer be. Research shows that half of what technical college students learn in their first year is already outdated by their third year.³

So what you think you are right about, you may not be. Keep an open mind.

Solution 7: Work on self-esteem

When people, consciously or unconsciously, experience self-doubt, they are more likely to react defensively and therefore feel internal tension and to create external tension with others. In the example of Sarah, her sense of inferiority in relationship to Rob made her unsure of herself and she felt she had to prove herself. In this instance it made her behave in a competitive manner. In other instances it might drive completely different behaviours, such as withdrawal or aggression. Self-esteem (belief in one’s self-worth), drives how we behave.

One solution to minimising conflict and tension is therefore to work on your self-esteem. We all experience self-doubt or lower self-esteem at different times in our life, in different situations. We can have high self-esteem in certain areas and low in others, and this keeps changing. This is perfectly natural. Self-esteem is driven by how we think and feel (see ‘Thoughts and feelings of team and leader’ below).

Solution 8: Voice disagreement in a good way

If you voice disagreement in a good way, you can improve the results by really getting both of you to consider the various options. One way of doing this, is to avoid the word ‘but’ and replace it with ‘and’. This builds bridges instead of walls between people.

Let’s have a look at what Sarah and the other players could have done instead, had they deployed these solutions.

Behaviours of team and leader

Under ‘Solutions’ above, we have listed a number of ‘how to’ actions. These solutions work best when carried out with these supporting ‘how to’ behaviours. The actions on their own will get you only so far. With the right behaviours you can more effectively manage conflict and tension in the team.

We’ve focused here on useful behaviours when it comes to resolving conflict and tension.

When intentionally practised over time, they become powerful, impactful habits that happen naturally.

Thoughts and feelings of team and leader

On average, a person experiences around 70.000 thoughts per day.¹

Many of those thoughts are habits that affect a person’s mindset or outlook.

When wanting to manage and/or resolve conflict and tension within a team, actively replace thoughts and feelings that are counterproductive to that. Here are thoughts from the story, the impact they have on feelings and how they can be changed.

Summary

Conflict is simply a difference of opinion, which in and of itself is not bad. It’s how we handle the conflict that makes the difference.

Healthy disagreement can lead to better ideas, greater insight; simply a smarter, more effective working environment.

Tension occurs when things are unclear and/or uncertain which makes people suspicious. Tension often leads to conflict and vice versa. They feed off each other.

The key solution to tension and conflict is of course communication.

Team communication

Communicate, communicate, communicate. It’s almost not possible to over-communicate in a conflict situation. Communication provides clarity and as most tension and conflict is down to lack of clarity or misunderstanding, the solution is communication. Honest, respectful, curious communication.

In addition to this, how you approach a person who has different opinion will dictate the outcome, good or bad. Imagine that you are the leader of a team and one of your team members seems to be avoiding you; there is clearly some tension there. You could say, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ or you could say, ‘I was just wondering, how are you doing? We haven’t had a chance to catch up for a while. Could we grab a coffee together?’

Which one would make you feel like opening up and dealing with the tension?

Team open-mindedness

Encourage team members to keep an open mind and see the other person’s perspective. Let go of the need to be right! It’s not right, it’s not wrong, it just is. Go try that out! If you can create that in a team, it can grow to other departments and even start a culture of open mindedness.

And if you take only one thing from this chapter, let it be this: Assume positive intent!

Reflection questions for the reader

Look at your team and consider:

• How open and honest is the communication between team members?
• How clear are my team’s roles and goals?
• How well aligned are our team’s goals?
• To what extent am I keeping an open mind when others’ views differ from mine?
• How am I voicing disagreements?
• How can I let go of the need to be right?

Self-assessment

After you have implemented the solutions in this chapter, answer these questions again to see the progress you have made.

How would you rate the following in your team?