15 Ways to Fight Fair
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“Most organizations have far too little conflict,” Pat Lencioni at the 2011 World Business Forum.
Friction between individuals based on personalities, backstabbing, and gossip stifles organizations, hinders productivity, and creates negative work environments. Solve it quickly.
On the other hand, teams that can’t fight fair are mediocre. They never innovate. They seldom leverage each other’s skill. Worst of all, they fall below the beauty of excellence.
15 ways to have a fair fight:
- Involve people with skin in the game, no one else. (except for a facilitator)
- Flatten the group by valuing every voice. Leaders and decision makers are participants with everyone.
- Say what you really think.
- Withhold judgment.
- Never reward yes-men and brown-nosers.
- Never attack a person, ever.
- Train people to listen fully and understand clearly before challenging an idea. Purposeful conflict requires understanding.
- Institutionalize improvement and excellence.
- Stay on target. It’s about the product.
- Honor dissent; never punish when alternatives are presented.
- Avoid defensiveness. When it gets personal productive conflict turns ugly.
- Embrace the pursuit of excellence as an organizational value.
- Apologize with humility.
- Eject participants that don’t fully embrace mission, vision, and values.
- Pull together once decisions are made, even when you disagree.
I don’t think Lencioni believes organizations need more gossips and backstabbers. You must, however, fight to excel.
Get real:
I’ve always enjoyed hot debate but not everyone feels the same. If it’s easy for you, you may be dangerous. Many organizations aren’t close to healthy conflict.
- Leaders and teams need training to learn how to engage in productive disagreement.
- Leaders need humility and courage; humility to not make it personal and courage to jettison those who persistently undermine the process. Weak leaders can’t endure the hot debate that produces excellence.
How can organizations nurture healthy, productive conflict?
What dangers should be addressed?
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Special thanks to those who participated in the discussion of Pat Lencioni’s comment on the Leadership Freak Coffee Shop facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/LeadershipFreak
Great post Dan. I think you are right about needing a certain level of conflict, as long as you have fair rules of engagement. Sadly, most of us don’t know how to fight correctly when we are losing.
Assuming we can get through most of your list, it is very hard to really and truly get the dissenters on board when a decision is finally made. To me this involves a lot of putting out the same fires we had when we started. It is hard to get these people past the point of feeling that they have lost, which makes them bitter.
Unless you set the tone at the beginning, the personal attacks can outlast the “conflict.”
It’s really required to do a home work before we get into conflict, it can be official or person. End of the day we should not lose anything which is worth staying with us.
Healthy conflict is about letting employees know that they don’t have to agree but they do have to implement. Very often getting buy-in on that implementation is easier if they know they have been heard and their opinion respected even if they didn’t “win.” Early in my career I had a policy disagreement with management. We discussed it at least once every six months. During my first year, I was asked to give my opinion on the subject to a new recruit. Management wanted this potential employee to know that everyone didn’t have to agree with every policy. I knew management’s reason for the policy and I followed it (at least for the three years it took them to see it my way).
Certainly could be titled a number of variations Dan…How to Facilitate an Effective Meeting….Elements of a Healthy & Vital Organization…
Might amend Honor dissent with Honor dissent and errors: never punish when alternatives or honest mistakes are presented. You can learn from both.
Fight on the THINGS that need to be improved, and not about the people or the personalities and what have you.
That is one of the reasons I use my Square Wheels® cartoons, because we generally focus on the things that work but can be improved rather than the wagon pullers and pushers. Sure, we can improve communications, and that is what should occur in most organizations.
But so many innovations just sit there, discovered and used by the exemplary performers and that are unseen by the majority of workers.
Can I hear a “Thump, Thump?”
Thanks Dan for the amazing eye opening insightful daily doses 🙂 your blog is in my list of things to do everyday.
I face a slightly different problem than what is discussed in this blog.
My team is good! they know how to get the tasks done, they are dedicated and reasonably passionate about what they are doing. It is just that the overall work culture is to take orders and perform them well.
I am still struggling to get the team involved in brain storming and decision making – I work with a different ethnic group and perhaps culture is playing a factor here.
Or may be i am missing out something? Please give some insight.
Great challenge to face Nz! Would suggest you keep it ‘strengths-focused’. Build on what you have. When people are performing well, acknowledge it, recognize it and celebrate it. Then push the envelope and sincerely just state, ‘you do that so well…because I believe that we can continually learn and get better at what we do, I wonder if there is an even better way to do that? You know better than me how to do that.’ Just ask the question without waiting for an answer. You can ask semi-rhetorical questions too…”I wonder how we can learn to improve what we are already doing?” “I wonder if we can learn about brainstorming…I have heard that is an effective way to improve too.”
As far the brainstorm goes, you have to tap into the right side of the brain, (said the left-hander.) You can do that with a group exercise on planning a group outing. As an exercise, say that we are going to go, as a group, somewhere and do something. There are no limits.
Literally, no limits and no judgements.
What is the most out there thing you would like to do then? Cost does not matter, time and space does not matter. (You could suggest that you always wanted to go to outer space, so you are putting that on your list.) Ask people to think that wild. What do you want to do? Have people do their own top 5 by themselves. Then ask them to write them on a white board or large piece of paper. Award and recognize the most ‘out there’ idea.
Then, if you want to get real, you can filter, evaluate what is realistic that costs only a little money (or is free) and see if others might agree. You now have planned a weekend in just a few minutes. (This came from Dr. Sidney Simon who wrote a book called ‘getting unstuck’ quite a while ago. This exercise is for when no one can decide what to do and they just get stuck with that.) The brainstorming part is the most enjoyable, well worth it.
How can organizations nurture healthy, productive conflict?
What dangers should be addressed?
It sounds so basic but if everyone is focused on the same mission/values/vision then the likelihood for “healthy conflict” is much stronger. I think of a hospital trauma center – when the patient is bleeding to death the medical personnel are (hopefully) focused on the goal of saving their life and their heated arguments will hopefully all be geared toward the most efficacious treatment, not what satisfies any individual’s personal agenda.