How Productive Conflict Contributes to Team Success

Conflict gets a bad rap in the workplace. Early in my career, I believed conflict had no place in a healthy workplace. As I progressed, I realized that it was quite the contrary. The lack of conflict isn't a sign of a healthy work culture, rather it is an indication that important debates, discussions and differing viewpoints are being disregarded or suppressed. This insight revealed another key aspect: high-performing teams do not shy away from conflict. They embrace it, leveraging diverse opinions to drive optimal outcomes for customers. What sets these teams apart is their ability to handle conflict constructively. So how can this be achieved? I reached out to my friend Andrea Stone, Leadership Coach and Founder of Stone Leadership, for some tips on effectively managing conflict in the workplace. Here's the valuable guidance she provided: 1. Pause: Take a moment to assess your feelings in the heat of the moment. Be curious about your emotions, resist immediate reactions, and take the time to understand the why behind your feelings. 2. Seek the Other Perspective: Engage genuinely, listen intently, show real interest, and ask pertinent questions. Remember to leave your preconceived judgments at the door. 3. Acknowledge Their Perspective: Express your understanding of their viewpoint. If their arguments have altered your perspective, don't hesitate to share this with them. 4. Express Your Viewpoint: If your opinion remains unswayed, seek permission to explain your perspective and experiences. Remember to speak from your viewpoint using "I" statements. 5. Discuss the Bigger Objective: Identify common grounds and goals. Understand that each person might have a different, bigger picture in mind. This process can be taxing, so prepare beforehand. In prolonged conflict situations, don't hesitate to suggest breaks to refresh and refuel mentally, physically, and emotionally. 6. Know Your Limits: If the issue is of significant importance to you, be aware of your boundaries. For those familiar with negotiation tactics, know your BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement). 7. Finalize Agreements: Once an agreement has been reached, continue the engagement to agree on responsibilities and timeframes. This ensures clarity on the outcome and commitments made. PS: Approach such situations with curiosity and assume others are trying to do the right thing. 🔁 Useful? I would appreciate a repost. Image Credit: Hari Haralambiev ----- Follow me, tap the (🔔) Omar Halabieh for daily Leadership and Career posts.

The uncomfortable truths about high-performing teams that nobody talks about (and what to do about it). After two decades of coaching executive teams, I've discovered five counterintuitive truths about exceptional performance: 👉 High-performing teams have more conflict, not less. Teams engaging in intellectual conflict outperform peers by 40% in complex decisions. → Action: Schedule structured debate sessions where challenging ideas is explicitly encouraged. 👉 Top teams strategically exclude people. McKinsey & Company found that each member above nine decreased productivity by 7%. → Action: Create a core decision team while establishing transparent processes for broader input. 👉 The best teams often break company rules. MIT Sloan School of Management research shows 65% of top teams regularly deviate from standard procedures. → Action: Identify which processes truly add value versus those that add bureaucracy. 👉 Emotional intelligence can be overrated (but not overlooked). Teams with moderate EQ but high practical intelligence outperform by 23%. → Action: Balance empathy with pragmatic problem-solving in your team assessments. 👉 Effective teams experience productive dysfunction. 82% of top teams go through significant tension phases before breakthroughs. → Action: Recognize periods of dysfunction as potential catalysts rather than failures. In today's complex work environments, understanding these hidden truths is critical. Embracing these contradictions rather than fighting them positions you as a leader to build exceptional teams—even when the process looks messier than expected. Embrace the mess. Coaching can help; let's chat. Joshua Miller #executivecoaching #leadership #teamdevelopment

A recent post about Project Aristotle, our study on team effectiveness at Google, brought back a key personal learning. In that work, psychological safety, as defined and deeply researched by Amy Edmondson, emerged as the single most important factor behind team success. A key aspect of psychological safety is creating an environment where it’s safe to disagree. When we talk about conflict on teams, we often think in terms of “more” or “less.” But that framing is incomplete. What matters just as much as the presence of conflict is the quality of it. Here’s a 2x2 I find helpful, inspired by the work of Liane Davey, Priya Parker and Kim Scott. For me, the most insidious quadrant here is unhealthy peace, where surface-level harmony conceals deeper dysfunction. It often feels like saying “Sure, that works” even when your inner voice is saying “this doesn’t sit right.” You see avoidable mistakes happen. You may be in the room physically but are checked out mentally. Healthy conflict feels very different. You can disagree openly while still feeling like you belong. You walk out of a hard conversation with more clarity and more trust. You experience being stretched and challenged in a way that sharpens you and your team. So how do you know where you stand? Here are a few reflection cues that are helpful: -- Am I holding back because I want to be thoughtful, or because I’m afraid? -- Do I leave hard conversations feeling like something real got said? -- If I disagree with someone in power, do I trust they’ll listen? Like any muscle, the ability to engage in healthy conflict takes practice: -- You have to start with curiosity: “Can you help me understand how you got there?” -- You need to muster courage to name the discomfort: “This is hard to talk about, but I think it matters” -- Reflect after the disagreement: Did we learn? Did we grow? It’s one thing to have healthy conflict with peers. It’s much harder when there’s a power gap and when the person across from you controls your ratings, promotions, or future opportunities. That’s why leadership role modeling matters. If leaders don’t create environments where disagreement can be surfaced safely, they are setting their teams back. Make it easier for others to be both brave and heard -- that's the kind of leadership I've aspired to.

After working with 353 companies in the last ten years, we've found that it’s not too much conflict that kills teams. It’s the fear of having any at all. Disagreeing well is one of the most important—and most overlooked—skills we now teach for today’s workplace. We put so much emphasis on teams "connecting well" and feeling "safe and seen". But what about disagreeing well, challenging each other in a safe way. Time after time, we hear our clients say that their people stay silent in meetings, avoid giving feedback, or default to just saying “thank you” when what they really mean is “I disagree but don’t know how to say it.” Last week alone, we were on a discovery call with a client and I asked what the team lead wanted out of our potential workshop: “I really want them to learn how to disagree professionally.” That’s it. Not how to avoid conflict. Not how to sugarcoat it. Just how to do it well (as a mature adult), and challenge someone’s idea without actually making them feel like they’re being challenged. We invented a method three years ago called Inquisitive Empathy to help teams do just that. At the core of it is this idea: when in doubt, ask better questions. Not accusatory questions. Not questions loaded with hidden judgments. But curious, calibrated questions that start with What or How. Not Why. Questions like: “What outcome were you hoping for?” or “How do you see this working across teams?” These questions help people feel seen, not attacked. They create space for reflection instead of reaction. And they open the door for mutual understanding—even in moments of tension. When people learn how to disagree well, everything changes. Conversations go deeper. Ideas improve. Respect grows. And most importantly, people stop avoiding the hard stuff—and start leaning into it, together.

You want alignment? Then STOP avoiding disagreement. I was on call with a Sr. Engineering Manager and she said, "My teammate is pushing back on my idea. I don't want to fight. I just want buy-in." I’ve heard this countless times. And I’ve said it myself. But think about it: We want agreement without debate. Buy-in without pushback. Alignment without conflict. Why? Not because it helps us grow, but because it feels safe. Lack of disagreement isn't a sign of alignment or great culture. It's often a sign that we're avoiding hard conversations as a team. We avoid the messiness that real collaboration requires. I told her: ↳ Conflict is not confrontation. One is progress. The other is ego. ↳Disagreement isn’t dysfunction. It’s where the real work happens. If you want better ideas and stronger outcomes, invite tension early. 3 ways to do it: #1 Make debate part of the agenda: Ask your team to poke holes on purpose. #2 Sketch before you sell: Visuals force clarity and spark real discussion. #3 Bring in skeptics early: Instead of building in an echo chamber, invite dissenting voices (from sales, support, marketing, and other teams) *before* you finalize a direction. The best teams don’t avoid hard conversations. They make space for them. Do you agree? ——— 🔔 Follow me, Bosky Mukherjee, for more insights on breaking barriers for women in tech leadership. #leadership #womenleaders #cxos #womenintech #womeninbusiness

I have coached dozens of executive teams on their journey to high performance. Here are the top 5 lessons I've learned: 1. 𝐇𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐚 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 When overplayed, harmony becomes dysfunctional. Getting along with each other is great, but driving best outcomes for the organisation has to remain a priority at all times. 2. 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐭, 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭, 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 Let me tell you: if there is no conflict in your team, you have a problem. Coaching the team how to have a constructive conflict and infusing a culture of conflict encouragement, rather than avoidance, is a game changer. 3. 𝐄𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐧𝐨𝐧-𝐧𝐞𝐠𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 If you have a leader on your team who is in it just for themselves or their team - coach them into enterprise leadership or let them go. Seats on any executive team should be reserved for enterprise leaders only. 4. 𝐀𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 '𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐨𝐦' 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 High-perfoming teams know that addressing the elephant in the room first is a must. While it takes some courage and energy to do it, they know that doing it saves them a lot of friction and unnecessary noise down the road. 5. 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐮𝐭𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast' Peter Drucker Your ability to inspire and mobilise the rest of the organization will depend on everything you do and say - consciously and unconsciously. Become fully aware of your leadership shadow, individually and collectively, and take unapologetic ownership of it. No excuses. Top 5 benefits that organizations and leadership teams that follow these principles experience: 1. 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞 that drives significantly better outcomes 2. 𝐄𝐧𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 of their diverse workforce that drives better results 3. 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 that allows them to stay ahead of the competition 4. 𝐋𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 which accelerates transformation and again drives better outcomes 5. 𝐇𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 that leads to increased employee satisfaction and enhanced company reputation in the market If true success is never accomplished alone, then a high-performing executive team is by far the most important lever of success for any organization out there. P.S. Which lesson do you believe is most important? (1-5) ______________ If this was helpful, repost to share with others ♻️ and follow me for more in future. 📌 Interested in Leading Like a CEO? Join 3800 leaders who get my free newsletter: https://lnkd.in/dVFPtRWx