For many, conflict immediately
invokes thoughts of hostility, shouting matches, or even negative relationships. Certainly, this is not what I am suggesting as good for the workplace.
Conflict is a natural process of communication and facilitates the sharing of
divergent point of views. The process of getting multiple perspectives on
any issue is critical to identifying problems, designing interventions, and
producing optimal solutions. Without conflict, you tend to have
groupthink, you discourage innovation, and you discourage learning, none of
which are good for a productive work environment. Many years ago I recall an executive in our group who while we were in the early
part of discussion of an important issue would agree with the other senior executive without really having a proper discussion and blurt out
"Yep, we are aligned". Nothing would irritate me more. I am all for
teamwork and being collaborative, but it is also important to create
an environment at workplace where people can speak their mind, debate and
disagree vigorously but finally get on-board on a direction that is either
consensus based or majority opinion based and at times following the original marching orders (because the CEO said so), but atleast you have weighed the pros and cons of a direction openly.
Recently, I
was watching a 1995 interview of Steve Jobs called "Steve Jobs: The Lost
Interview" released few years ago and he describes
this beautifully in one portion of the interview. It is a must see for anyone leading a team building a product or even
building a great team. Here is the excerpt from that interview where he discusses it.
"Designing
a product is keeping 5000 things in your brain -- these concepts--and fitting
them all together and kind of continuing to push to fit them together in new
and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something
new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a
little differently. And it's that process that is the magic. And so we had a
lot of great ideas when we started, but what I've always felt that a team of
people doing something they really believe in is like--is like when I was a young
kid there was a widowed man that lived up the street. And he was in his 80s. He
was a little scary-looking. And I got to know him a little bit. I think he
might have paid me to mow his lawn or something. And one day he said,
"Come on into my garage. I want to show you something." And he pulled
this dusty rock tumbler. It was a motor and a coffee can and a little band
between them. And he said, "Come on with me." We went out to the back
and we got some--just some rocks, some regular old ugly rocks. And we put them
in the can with a little bit of liquid and a little bit of grit powder. And we
closed the can up. And he turned this motor on and said, "Come back
tomorrow." And this can was making, you know, a racket as the stones went
around. And I came back the next day. And we took-- we open the can. And we
took out these amazingly beautiful polished rocks. The same common stones that
had gone in, through rubbing against each other like this, creating a little
bit of friction, creating a little bit of noise, had come out these beautiful
polished rocks. And that's always been in my mind. My metaphor for a team
working really hard on something they're passionate about--is that it's through
the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against
each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and
working together, they polish each other and they polish the ideas. And what
comes out are these really beautiful stones..."
