We are all unique human beings, it would be crazy to think that we all think or do the same. This is a good thing, a diversity of opinion is what allows a team to cover all aspects of a problem from different perspectives and build more robust solutions.

Differing, sometimes conflicting opinions, are a fact of life, and they are not necessarily a bad thing. Instead, there is an opportunity for our team to bring together their understanding of different domains and disciplines. Ultimately, this creates better solutions. 

However, diverse backgrounds will cause problems in team alignment; team members will struggle to align if they don't share similar experiences. The more diverse our team members' backgrounds are, the less likely they will be able to collaborate and the more likely they will fall into conflict.

To foster an environment where diversity of opinion is represented, we have to provide a way for our team to better understand each other's styles and to navigate conflict when it occurs.

Many tools can help our team understand our different personality or communication styles. These tools help us understand our differences as well as our similarities and give us insight into how we might go beyond any initial clash of styles so that we might work well together.

The DiSC personality assessment test is one such tool to help us understand our personality type and will get us some of the way toward fostering better collaboration among the team.

The other part of team collaboration, navigating conflict, involves learning how to have powerful conversations. Let’s look at that in a bit more detail in the upcoming section.