Learn more about the psychology behind team dynamics and conflict, and how Resologics’ processes help teams be super creative, high performing and fun!
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A healthy business team is one with strong relationships and vibrant engagement. It’s a beautiful place to be, where people feel heard and creative ideas bump against each other in an open, constructive way. We call it the Creative Tension Zone and it’s the dream (or should be) of any organization with an aim toward consistent growth.
Teams fall out of this place for various reasons, and the spiral downward can devolve into destructive conflict. It is critical to know where you and your team are on the Conflict Curve in order to make good decisions in “real time” so you can recognize what’s happening and pull your team back from the Conflict Spiral abyss.
On average an ombuds will see 3-5% of an organization’s members in the course of a year. Our work as organizational ombuds has increased steadily over the last couple of years, where we’re initially called in because someone in leadership is being dogged by a “small” conflict that won’t go away but keeps festering and growing until they can’t sweep it under the rug any longer. (From there, we typically enter a contractual arrangement with clients where we serve as their ongoing go-to ombuds, mediator, and conflict adviser.)
He could have been sitting in the corner of the conference room where I was convening as Organizational Ombuds for a team that was stuck - there was (emotional) clutter, plenty of discord, and a really difficult situation. Tension was high, people were venting. At any moment (my experience told me) someone could explode with frustration. It was like a freight train approaching the room, about to crash!
Creative Tension Zone is where huge ideas emerge, innovation thrives, and empires are built! The most successful workplace teams know how to manage constructive conflict to encourage creative tension. What every leader needs to know about leveraging the power of conflict in a team.
Have you ever said: “That person just presses my buttons”? We call these 'conflict hooks', because your reaction to the button-pusher has the potential to feed conflict. Understanding what conflict hooks are can help you and your team make better response choices.
Conflict doesn't just appear out of nowhere. There are always signs warning that a conflict is developing. Managers who know what these signs are can be more effective leaders by confronting the problem before it rages out of hand. By resolving conflict in the early stages, the company will run much more smoothly and the overall productivity level will be increased considerably. What are these subtle signs of conflict to look for?...
Building great companies takes building great teams. And I believe building great teams takes conflict.
Wait, what?
For many leaders, this might be a tough concept to stomach. It’s understandable that most of us want to avoid conflict like the plague because it’s typically perceived as negative and disruptive. It can also, in more extreme cases, lead to costly resolutions.
Read MoreBy now you are settling into whatever your particular virtual workplace needs to be for the next several months. You have some organizational shifts in place, the tech up and running to meet virtually and for your people to work from home (WFH), and made pivots to keep your operations and processes running smoothly.
It must feel really different not to be in the physical workplace — not sitting across from each other in a meeting, popping over to the next cubicle for a quick creative confab, or having the casual contact that builds relationships. You might even be (secretly) happy that the usual “water cooler” gossip, interpersonal tiffs, and snarky obstructionist pushbacks you deal with in the office won’t happen anymore.
Hold on….Don’t go there. Conflict still happens.. Your leadership skills are now being called up to keep your virtual team(s) intact, productive, motivated, and conflict competent.
Read MoreA 2017 internal study of 164 ombuds offices in the U.S. and Canada found that, on average, 3.2% of an organization’s population used the Office of the Ombuds as a resource to resolve a variety of conflict issues.
What are the implications of this finding? Without an ombuds or similar structure in place, 3% of most organizations’ employees believe they have nowhere to turn to resolve issues within their workplace because their organization does not have an internal system in place to hear them. If you have 100 people in your organization, it’s likely that three of them are dealing with something right now at work that is troubling them, and it could potentially create a negative ripple effect throughout the organization.
Read More“How could conflict possibly be good for a business?” Conflict is not good or bad, or something that we can guard against like the flu. Conflict is a natural part of human behavior and a necessary part of teamwork, innovation, problem-solving, and change. What we do with the opposing ideas or needs that we call conflict can result in positive or negative outcomes, depending on how we handle them.
Read MoreBehind most disputes is a system that perpetuates the problem. Uncovering the system will reveal why these negative conflict outcomes keep coming back, and, hopefully, how to fix them for good.
What do we mean by “system?”
Have you ever been on a business team where the same issues seem to arise again and again? You thought you had dealt with the problem by training, shuffling the team, dismissing a person who was obviously at the center of the issue, or simply waiting for it to take care of itself - only to see something similar rear its ugly head a few weeks, months, or even years later.
If this is the case, count on the possibility that something deeper - systemic - is going on within your team or within your workplace. So, the challenge is to get to the root of the problem.
Read MoreConflict, when well managed, can breathe life and energy into workplace relationships that inspire more productivity, creativity and innovation. How, as a leader, do you start to create the kind of organizational dynamics that harness the power of constructive conflict? Read on…
Read MoreIt’s not an easy thing to spot - or accept - lack of trust from your team members. Erosion of trust could originate from any number of things: poor workplace policies, unsettling (true or untrue) rumors circulating around, lack of communication from management, disgruntled employee or partner disputes, or an organizational culture that doesn’t value its people.
Whatever the cause, the longer it persists the more difficult it is to rebuild that loss of trust. And the more dangerous it is to an organization’s ability to function successfully. Trust starts with leadership.
Read MoreSkillfully managed conflict can propel an organization down a path of new opportunities, awareness, innovation and growth. Handled badly, a dispute can quickly cause distraction, raise stress levels, and create barriers to good things like productivity, communications, and creativity.
The literature supports this position; however, only tip-of-the-arrow companies are seeing the value in investing in conflict management training. Is there ROI on an organization’s investment in training and support for the purpose of developing conflict competency skills and systems before a dispute arises?
Read MoreLet’s just cut to the real question: Why should leadership invest in a retreat?
The quick answer is, they shouldn’t - unless it is going to be a meaningful experience for everyone with well-defined outcomes.
The deeper answer is this: We live in an incredibly busy culture and work environment. This busyness means that lots of things get done. It also means that lots of things get left undone. Important conversations get put on the back burner. Things expressed in yesterday’s conflict get overtaken by today’s crisis or new deadline. Expectations become ignored or dismissed. We lose track of why we’re doing this work.
And, as the old Irish saying goes, “Expectation is just resentment waiting to happen!” The workplace begins to feel stressful, uninspiring, and even pocked with negative conflict. It’s exhausting.
Enter the definition of “retreat:” a quiet or secluded place in which a group of people can reset and think clearly…
Read MoreHave you ever heard someone say they just love to go to meetings? Nope, I haven’t either. Here is why: You can find pages of advice on running an effective meeting - managing the agenda, the time, side-conversations, papers and reports, pre-defined objectives, concise action steps. Efficient logistically to be sure, but … where is the “human” piece?
The essential purpose of a meeting is to bring a team together to interact, bounce around ideas, discuss, and glean valuable results toward achieving a common goal. If that group is not encouraged to engage and participate, then ideas and interactions don’t surface, and the meeting becomes simply reporting and rehashing.
This is when I ask the question: “Why did you hire this creative, expert talent if you’re not using it?”
Whether it's an operating agreement between startup founders, a safe communications agreement within a team, or ground rules for a project committee -- every team has agreements around how they will work together.
For most teams these agreements are unspoken, unwritten and un-negotiated, nonetheless they become the rules of behavior and are binding on team members. They are "the way things are done around here." They may not be in the policies and procedures manual, but it doesn't take long for new team members to figure out what is rewarded and what is punished.
Read MoreInstead of avoiding conflict which only makes it more destructive, welcome conflict in your workplace as a tool for creative interaction, innovation, and employee engagement. Well-managed conflict is good for business!
Read MoreCreative Tension Zone is where huge ideas emerge, innovation thrives, and empires are built! The most successful workplace teams know how to manage constructive conflict to encourage creative tension. What every leader needs to know about leveraging the power of conflict in a team.
Read More“Conflict, when well managed, can breathe life and energy into workplace relationships that inspire more productivity, creativity and innovation.” ~ Mark Batson Baril
Conflict - probably not the first item on your business-building success list, right? However, conflict is a natural occurrence in your workplace and can either catalyze positive experiences that boost growth, or negative experiences that have been known to break a company. So, time to put it on your list!
Read MoreThe truth is that starting up is one thing, but staying alive is another. Research shows that half of new business startups fail within the first five years of operation, and over 60% fail due to negative outcomes from conflict. Noam Wasserman’s research on startups, described in his best-selling book The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, reveals this: Most business startups ‘sink’ not because of lack of planning, failure to test the market or undercapitalization, but rather due to interpersonal complexities, destructive co-founder disputes, destructive team dynamics, and people problems.
Another truth is that conflict is a necessary part of successfully running a business. This is because conflict is a natural occurrence which can happen any time two or more individuals have different ideas, wants, and needs. Conflict is normal in any environment. However, if not properly managed, conflict can escalate into disagreement and become entrenched to a point of no return for a young, fragile business.
Read MoreThis is the second in our series of Leader’s Guides on harnessing the power of conflict. Conflict, when well managed, can breathe life and energy into workplace relationships that inspire more productivity, creativity and innovation.
I talked in the previous article, The Leader’s Guide: The Key to Boosting Employee Engagement in Your Workplace: It’s Not What You Think, about what conflict is - a natural occurrence in a workplace that can either be a positive or a negative experience. And that a leader who sees conflict as a useful tool rather than a negative thing to avoid, helps increase employee engagement and the vibrant exchange of ideas that take your business on the innovation and growth path.
So how, as a leader, do you start to create the kind of organizational dynamics that harness the power of constructive conflict? Read on...
Read MoreA recent article by Charles Duhigg in the NY Times, revealed and confirmed some of the most interesting findings I have ever seen around team dynamics and high performance. If you read nothing else about team dynamics this year, I highly recommend finishing my short synopsis in this post, and, popping over to the full article What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. It will be worth every minute, I promise.
Over the past five years Google engaged in a special project (Project Aristotle) that was tasked with breaking the code on how to build a perfect team. They have a huge workforce, a great number of teams, and methodologies to measure and analyze results that are second to none. They originally set out to see if they could predict what types of personality types and experience could be matched together to build a high performing team. The results of all that work…
Read MoreA quick search online will show how much workplace productivity is being talked about these days, with myriad solutions being offered, many of them basically short-term tips. At the end of the day what we’re really talking about is building a workplace culture that keeps employees not just at their desks doing work, but actively engaged, inspired and committed to organizational goals.
In this highly complex and swiftly-changing environment, it may not be surprising that only about 25% of business leaders have an employee engagement strategy in place, even though 90% feel that such a strategy has a positive impact on business success...
Read MoreEmployee engagement is a hot topic in business these days, and for good reason. To put the issue into stark perspective, here are two statistics for you: 70% of U.S. workers have been found to be either not engaged or actively disengaged at work (Source: Gallup “State of the American Workplace” 2014 report); and increasing employee engagement investments by 10% can increase profits by $2,400 per employee, per year (Source: Workplace Research Foundation).
What is the key to increased employee engagement? Higher compensation, company outings and better food in the cafeteria help, but achieving sustainable success goes much deeper than this. For us, conflict advisors who work with individuals, leaders and teams on-site in all kinds of organizations, what consistently rises to the top is this factor:
Read MoreIs conflict helping or hurting your workplace? Does this even seem like a plausible question to you? I understand if it doesn’t – the term “conflict” generally has a negative connotation, something to be avoided or resolved immediately before it finds itself in a courtroom and costing a business millions.
The truth is that you DO have conflict in your workplace at one time or another. Conflict naturally occurs when two or more people have divergent ideas, needs, and wants. It’s normal, inevitable and every organization experiences it. This is why you should be talking about conflict in your workplace – because unaddressed or poorly managed conflict could cost your business in more ways than you might think.
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When we join a company, partnership or team, our expectation is that everyone involved will exhibit professional behavior toward us and each other. Instead, it’s highly possible that we may become one of the more than 60 million adults in the United States who are affected in some way by bullying behavior at work.
What kind of behaviors are we talking about? Our definition is any interpersonal behavior that causes emotional distress in others sufficient enough to impede their productivity or disrupt organizational functioning. It isn’t just a personality conflict — it’s a chronic pattern of disrespectful behavior.