The Role of Positive Conflict - and How To Manage It

There is a tendency, in both our personal lives and the workplace, to think of conflict as something to be avoided. However, as all the greatest leaders in history would have gladly told you, conflict should never be avoided. Rather, it is something to be embraced and carefully managed.

Consider the political world for just a moment. When it works properly, it is grounded in the careful and productive management of conflict. At the time this article was being written, the government meeting rooms in Pretoria and Cape Town were filled with players from numerous parties hammering out a final agreement for the shape the government of national unity would take. Regardless of what you think about the individual players, it should be clear that a certain amount of conflict would be inevitable. For those negotiations to reach a successful outcome, the leaders involved would have had to manage the arguments and differences of opinion very carefully. If they did so well, the results should ideally have been more beneficial for the greater good than they would have been had there been no conflict at all.

Unfortunately, politicians don’t always get the process right. Skilful conflict management is more common in the business world. However, it is not something that always comes naturally, even to the best leaders. It requires mastery of a certain set of skills, as well as the adoption of a particular mindset towards conflict.

Learning to Embrace Conflict

The first step to more successful conflict management is a shift in attitude. Instead of seeing conflict as something to be avoided or pushed away whenever it arises, it should rather be seen as something to be embraced. We are not talking about destructive, interpersonal conflict. What is being referred to here is a positive form of conflict that arises from differences in opinion and direction. Once you understand that positive conflict can have many significant advantages in the workplace, you will quickly learn to embrace it. Then, you need to learn to manage it so that it can lead to the kinds of positive outcomes your team needs.

The Benefits of Positive Conflict

When conflict is embraced and managed well, it can yield the following constructive benefits:

• Enhanced Innovation: Conflict can potentially stimulate innovative thinking. When diverging perspectives come up against one another, a desirable synthesis can often be achieved - one which transcends the advantages of either conflicting view.
• Improved cohesion: When team members engage in constructive conflict, the result is usually stronger relationships and improved collaboration - provided the conflict takes the form of healthy debate in which the team is always focused on finding the best possible outcome.
• Personal and professional growth: Conflict is an opportunity for the team and its individual members to grow. Disagreements enable team members to learn and understand the viewpoints of others and discover new ways of doing things. Individuals should be encouraged to step out of their comfort zones and learn from each other.
• Better productivity: Effective conflict resolution (not to be confused with merely avoiding or overriding conflict) can make teams more productive, as disagreements are confronted head-on with the aim of reaching an agreement on the way forward.

How to Manage Conflict as a Leader

As a leader who effectively manages conflict, your main role is to bring everybody to the table and drive the conflict resolution process, by directing everyone towards a common goal. Make it clear that your primary purpose is to resolve the conflict in a way that serves the greater good.

The team culture should be one in which differences of opinion are encouraged. Make it known that team members are welcome to disagree with one another - especially with you as their leader! They should feel safe to express their disagreement, but boundaries should also be set for that expression. Establish protocols for tabling and discussing disagreements. Everyone should be willing to listen to the opinions of others, as well as having the freedom to express their own.

In order to entrench this culture and set up resolution protocols that will help you realise the benefits of positive conflict, training is all-important. Provide your team members with the tools they need to work together more cohesively and develop their communication and conflict-resolution skills.

Get in touch with DYNA Training for more information about accredited leadership and conflict resolution courses for your team.