Conflict – Good or Bad

Building an effective and cohesive team is never easy because of the different personalities and egos involved. However, if everyone on the team makes the commitment to be open and honest with each other and leave their egos outside the door, this becomes much easier.

In Patrick Lencioni’s book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” he identifies trust as the foundation of teamwork and organizational performance. Successful leadership teams are built on a foundation of trust. Each member of the team must establish trust, cultivate trust through his/her actions, competence, commitment and words and work to continuously maintain that trust.

However, with trust comes honesty and with honesty comes vulnerability. If someone on the team has a problem or needs to ask for help or direction, they must have trust in the others to speak up, without recrimination. It is also critical that members of the leadership team be brutally honest when necessary, but in a productive way. If there is an elephant in the room, there must be enough trust in the room to bring it up because that’s where the real issues are. If not addressed, the team will be focusing on the wrong challenges to solve.

Without vulnerability-based trust, the environment may not be conducive to saying what must be said. This lack of trust tends to bypass the conflict, which prevents the discussion of the real issues. When handled in a respectful, positive way, conflict enables the team to focus on the right issue and arrive at the best solution. This will strengthen the leadership team bond. Conflict must be encouraged, not avoided. Avoiding conflict allows the issues to fester. It also means the team is not yet strong enough to say what needs to be said. When this happens, there needs to be more focus on building trust within the leadership team so they become more comfortable dealing with conflict.

When the legitimacy of conflict is recognized and there is a willingness to examine it in an environment of compassionate understanding, it opens pathways to creative problem solving, team building, and improved relationships. Learning to challenge issues and not personalities is not easy to learn, but is necessary for the greater good of the organization.

Trust leads to conflict; conflict leads to commitment, commitment leads to accountability and accountability leads to results. Conflict is essential to team success.

David Saxe, BBA, CPA, CA, CBC
Business Performance Specialist
Accredited Facilitator – The Five Behaviors of a Cohesive Team™
Certified Ownership Thinking™ Facilitator
Professional EOS™ Implementer

David has over 40 years of hands on business and business related work experience and is the Senior Associate of Next Level Business Planning. The firm provides leadership teams with the tools, training and skills to build high performance, cohesive, productive teams within their businesses organizations. David has a passion for working with leadership teams to help them create a laser-focused vision and provide the tools, training and traction to achieve that vision. He also helps to create a culture of engagement and accountability to maximize efficiency and profitability by training employees to think and act like owners. David can be reached at david@nextlevelbusinessplanning.com.