Dahlia Season Consulting

I love conflict.

I especially love when a team I’m working with has conflict.

And when I tell them that, they often give me incredulous looks. Sometimes snorts and laughter. 

But a team that has conflict is a team that cares, a team that has the potential to move forward. Because a system without conflict is stagnant. 

Conflict is good. And learning how to skillfully identify and work through it is extremely important in creating a great team that produces amazing products. 

Unfortunately, I’ve seen way more teams that don’t engage in conflict, they stonewall instead. They turn away from each other when they disagree. They disengage. With those teams, the challenge is to learn how to stay. How to stay with each other in the discomfort. How to bring forward ideas for discussion.

For every five teams I work with who stonewall, I have one that has out-loud, open conflict. And that gets me super excited. Because that’s energy. It’s ideas. Its care and investment turned toward each other. That energy can be harnessed into learning the skills needed to navigate the conflict to get to the place the team needs to be.

Regardless of where a team is starting from, either fake agreement, stonewalling, or loud, messy disagreement, the ability to navigate conflict with skill can absolutely be learned, as long as every team member is willing. And that takes trust as well as a measure of either psychological safety or courage (maybe both.)

Common skills I work with teams on include:

• Staying in the conversation (step 1 for the stonewallers)
• Have respect for each person in the conversation, regardless of if you agree with their idea or not
• Listen, truly seek to understand the idea or approach that another is proposing
• Find what you agree with or where the idea could be improved
• Find out what won’t work about the idea; test it against other parts of the plan, solution, or product
• Give your own opinions or ideas, and repeat the three bullets above
• If there isn’t agreement, look for alignment, that is look for a deeper understanding beneath the apparent point of contention. Is there something more fundamental that can be aligned on, and then ideas brought forth from there
• For big ideas or big decisions, have time to marinate. I call it “noodle time.” Sometimes a new approach or a better idea comes when you’re going about life, not thinking about work
• Learn to choose the best idea, or to create a solution that takes elements of many ideas to create a stronger way forward
• Learn to separate your ego from your work product. (This one can be particularly difficult.)
• Learn when your team needs a break. When no further progress will be made in that session, or on that day. Learn this about yourself as well.
• Practice walking into a tough conversation with the attitude that everyone is partially right and partially wrong

I’m sure there’s another dozen micro-skills that I haven’t listed here that feed into being able to skillfully navigate conflict as a team.

The first step is the next step you are willing and able to take. And if you can’t take any, if you are stagnant, consider working with a team coach who can help you.