Team Tool: Excellent Communication
Focus: Managing Conflict*
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Constructive Conflict –
In any team situation, one barrier that challenges the team’s ability to communicate clearly is the issue of conflict
and the frequent misunderstanding about it. Clear communication always leads to conflict and the clearer the
communication the faster we arrive at it. Most people sense this intuitively. When there is the potential for
disagreement, they create a gap between how they feel versus what they say. If we see conflict as a negative force to
be avoided, and most people do, then we tend to “murk” up the communication.
A new paradigm is needed that doesn’t see conflict as good or bad but as an indication of difference in interests,
opinions, and points of view.
Constructive Conflict
Clear
Communication
DESTRUCTIVE
Conflict
FLIGHT
CONSTRUCTIVE
Conflict
FIGHT
Clarify the Facts
Deny
Attack
Collaboration
Avoid
Defend
Creativity
Deflect
Blame
Consensus
Broken Relationships
Broken Relationships
Commitment
For conflict to be productive, it must first move through five distinct phases of interaction (see above figure).
1.
Clarify the Facts - or the issues over which we disagree. In most points of disagreement we put forth a
position and then fortify and defend it. The other party does the same. The positions are either offensive or
defensive, and the more one is forced to defend a position, the more difficult it becomes to “suspend our
assumptions.” Like an iceberg, what’s under the water line is what really counts. Our underlying interests
* Adapted from The Performance Factor, Pat MacMillan (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001); Pauline Graham and Mary Parker Follet,
Prophet of Management, (Boston, Harvard Business School Press, 1995), 67-68
Copyright © 2001-2007 Copyright TRIAXIA Partners, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
1
Team Tool: Excellent Communication
Focus: Managing Conflict*
_____________________________________________________________________________
and motives live beneath the surface, and without trust, we are unlikely to reveal them to others. When trust
is present, however, we are more open and reveal the fundamental needs driving us to push for one position
or another.
2.
Clarification leads to collaboration - in which the team can work collectively to engineer higher level
solutions that escape the magnetic pull of compromise. Many see compromise as the high side of conflict
resolution but, in reality, it is a tepid resolution to difference. It is a so-so outcome that basically says, “If
we’re going to be unhappy about this conclusion, let’s be equally unhappy.”
3.
Collaboration introduces the possibility of synergism or creativity - needed to discover a win-win solution
that more adequately meets the needs of all parties.
4.
Creativity leads to consensus – where everyone on the team has had the chance to be heard and the issues
have been debated, discussed and decided upon openly and fairly.
5.
Consensus enables us to get to commitment - that channels the team’s energy into execution unencumbered
by unresolved conflict.
In this way, conflict opens the door to creativity, consensus, and commitment. If the group has an unhealthy
view of conflict or doesn’t have the skills or process by which to manage it constructively, they will never attain
the realm of synergistic communication and the exceptional levels of performance it supports.
If you don’t deal with conflict constructively, there are also several destructive paths. Depending on our nature
(temperament), our conflict management style, and the context of the conflict, we can take a “Fight” path,
where we attack, defend, and blame; or a “Flight” path where we deny, avoid, and deflect. Both of them lead to
poor outcomes and broken relationships on the team. Our fight or flight instincts are very strong, it takes a
conscious decision to go down the path of constructive conflict instead.
* Adapted from The Performance Factor, Pat MacMillan (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001); Pauline Graham and Mary Parker Follet,
Prophet of Management, (Boston, Harvard Business School Press, 1995), 67-68
Copyright © 2001-2007 Copyright TRIAXIA Partners, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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