Most of us as leaders and managers in the health club business are adept at challenging our people and challenging ourselves. It’s what we do and it’s in our DNA. Today I want to you to think about it from a different angle: How good are you at allowing yourself to be challenged by the people you lead and your peers? Have you created a work environment where your people feel comfortable challenging your ideas and engaging in healthy conflict? If people do speak up, do you actively listen with an open heart, process and consider the merits of their point of view? Or do you listen politely, wait for them to be done speaking and proceed with your idea?
Many people have read “The Advantage,” by best-selling author, consultant and keynote speaker Patrick Lencioni, and are familiar with the material. As a refresher or as an introduction if you haven’t read it yet, in this book he talks about the conflict continuum. On the left side you have Artificial Harmony where everyone gets along and there’s never a disagreement. On the other end of the continuum is an atmosphere of Personal Attacks where things get so heated there are almost fist fights, and the biggest bullies rule the day. We know our organizations are typically not at the extremes, however most teams commonly live in the world of artificial harmony where it’s easier to go along and get along than to cause waves. The problem with this is it causes dysfunction because we’re not getting our best thinking out of our team members.
The way this plays out in a meeting is people are unwilling to give their true opinion and just go along the path of least resistance. Often, it’s the people closest to the issue who have the best perspective on solutions and if there isn’t a healthy forum for debate, then their ideas will never be brought forward. It’s easier to just agree. The perception may be, everyone in this organization gets along great, no one ever argues, we’re always all on the same page. Unfortunately, people will only speak their minds when they think they’re in a safe situation, commonly known as the meeting after the meeting. We have all experienced this — people talking about what they really thought about the boss’s idea after the fact. The problem is these opinions may be very valid and helpful and the organization is missing out.
I learned early in my career, the way to get honest opinions from people was first and foremost to build trust so they knew their opinion was valued, and not to come in too strong with my own ideas to leave room for healthy conflict and debate. I can say without a doubt the result was far better after the team really wrestled with the options and pushed one another until we came up with something far better than when we started.
The key is to get to a place where everyone feels free to state their opinion without the fear of criticism or retribution. At the heart of it, having healthy conflict is about getting to the best answer and that only happens when people can speak freely with fear of criticism or retribution. As the leader, you need to acknowledge and accept you may not always have the best answer. Demonstrate that you’re open to hearing what others have to say.
Take a minute to think about your staff meetings and reflect on the questions I asked at the top of the column. Are you allowing the people who report to you and your peers to challenge you? Do you have healthy conflict within the team?
Here are three things you can do to encourage healthy conflict within your team and get people comfortable with speaking up:
- Establish clear rules or meeting norms that allow for disagreement and debate. Agree as a team that we won’t make the argument personal, and we won’t take anything personal. Agree it’s everyone’s responsibility to speak up and contribute.
- The leader should be “mining” for conflict at every meeting, setting the example and allowing themselves to be vulnerable.
- Give the team real-time permission to have healthy conflict by positively reinforcing team members who challenge and take an opposing point of view.
If, as the leader, you allow yourself to be challenged and show you the expect the same out of your team, the discussions become much more meaningful. There will be a higher degree of buy-in, and your team’s productivity will skyrocket.
If you would like more information on this topic listen to the Table Group’s podcast episode on The Upside of Conflict.
