From Discord to Harmony: The Positive Impact of Team Conflict

Five Reasons Why Conflict Can Propel Success

As I reached the office on another regular Monday morning and opened my laptop, I noticed an unusual number of message notifications from one of my team members.

“Strange” I thought, considering we usually communicated differently regarding work.

Upon opening and checking the messages, my heart kind of sunk when the context became clear.

Not something I was expecting.

Following feedback received from a client, the way a particular project was handled left a mark on them and caused them to be stressed, less productive, and of course agitated.

What left me astonished was the lack of any warning signs that could lead to such event.

After all, how we handled that particular project was how we handled our other projects as well, leading us to our best results.

Acting as a wake up call, the event made me realize conflict is inevitable. It is part of our lives as much as eating food and sleeping is.

And it can have negative consequences. Productivity falls, people become entrenched, and synergy is ruined.

However, it becomes a problem if you allow it to.

As I always like to say, you can always turn a bad situation into a good one.

Turning Tensions into Triumphs

Although the word “conflict” alone can elicit negative reactions, it can be turned into a positive force. If used strategically and managed the right way, it can be a key factor in the development of high-performance teams.

Opportunity to address root issues

When we finally discussed my team member’s concerns, the issue became clear.

Being relatively new to the roster (but with experience in his domain), he believed the procedure was not optimised, things were being rushed, and many important decisions were being taken in relatively short amount of time.

Even though he had these beliefs from the very beginning, they had not been communicated until they were forcibly revealed by the incident.

Following our conversation, we identified more deep rooted issues.

I saw this as an opportunity to not only address his concerns, but to also improve anything else directly affected by the established process.

I listened carefully and took in his opinion based on his expertise. We revised our methods and how we handled things in the relevant department.

That led to significant increase in productivity on that particular part, but also on other sections of our workflow as we achieved harmony throughout the steps of the process.

Moments like these are ones you should be on the lookout for. If you find yourself in a similar situation, it is important to shift your focus on listening and identifying the underlying cause for the circumstance you are in.

It’s the golden opportunity to address issues that existed from before but were never brought to the surface.

Increased team trust

Succeeding that incident, more people felt confident in speaking up when they believed something was not being addressed as effectively as it should.

Team’s trust in respectfully disagreeing with each other had dramatically improved, and people would see the other person’s full perspective.

As one of the critical components for team synergy, facilitating trust within your team is paramount.

More understanding was placed on where people were coming from.

Members formed stronger bonds between each other by being more empathetic and genuinely listening to what the other person had to say.

Keep an eye on team’s morale following such events and you will notice that if managed correctly, these moments of discord lead to a sense of belonging solidify cohesion.

Creative problem solving

Drawing from a similar but different experience, conflict can open the way forward for coming up with better solutions to address problems.

It fosters an environment of creative problem solving through productive antagonism.

In a scenario where we had to switch tech stacks following heated discussions concerning the likelihood of meeting client needs while still remaining within allocated resources, we managed to have inertia removed from people’s thinking process.

Individuals became passionate as to why their proposed solution would work better, which eventually gave way to the approach we implemented.

And it turned out to be the best option.

It would not have been possible to engage in such constructive process without this “rivalry”.

I’m sure you will find out the best approaches to a problem emerge after an uncomfortable event. The important thing is to be vigilant so you capture these approaches once they appear.

Increased likelihood of innovation

During times of conflict, people are at their most energetic.

Passion and strong emotions flow through the body, allowing creativity to spark and out-of-the box thinking mentality.

That is exactly when the intersection of innovating and creative thinking happens, paving the way for ground-breaking suggestions.

Creative friction which happens through moments of conflict allows the team to make sure solutions are well thought out and to synthesize diverse perspectives.

Consequently, because consensus is not reached immediately, it increases the chances of exploring all pros and cons of one suggestion to make sure it is the most desirable one.

It is the perfect environment for stimulating growth and fostering learning.

That was the case when we had to switch tech stacks for that particular project. Not only did we reach our target with less resources spent, we found out a new way of delivering results to our clients which we subsequently used to launch a new product service that allowed us to penetrate the market even further.

I believe there were moments during your professional career where the most innovative solutions came to be in succession of unpleasant events. If so, part of it can be attributed to the dynamics of conflict.

Draw from lessons learned

Lastly, there is capacity to draw from previous experiences.

Having faced conflict within your team, you are equipped with the knowledge of what led to those encounters in relevance to the context they occurred in.

Subsequently, when something similar is brewing on the horizon, you are more likely to see it coming.

This is gives you quite the advantage in anticipating dangers, and as such, you can mitigate the risks better.

Your strategy going forward can be adjusted accordingly on factoring in scenarios that may cause harm and to include mitigation steps for potential pitfalls.

As such, you ensure that you are better prepared venturing into the future.

When we were again at crossroads to make a choice between our tech stack in relevance to the available timeline, we could draw from our previous experience in making the decision going forward.

The benefits from that were two fold:

• One, we managed to reach consensus much faster.
• Two, we were able to educate and inform our client respectively on how they would exactly benefit from our decision which increased transparency between us and helped establish a more long-term relationship with them.

Of course, simply by encountering conflict and being aware it happened doesn’t automatically turn them into favourable circumstances.

From Obstacle to Advantage

To switch the narrative, make sure you recognize when conflict is happening. Don’t avoid it.

It is important the occurrence is assigned the relevant gravity it deserves so the actors involved are heard and seen.

Whilst in the process of the disharmonious event, ensure judgement is removed from the equation and genuinely listen to the other person.

This exercise will reveal things that would otherwise have remained buried.

Ensure new solutions and new methods of doing things are documented when they emerge. This will allow you to capture everything new that is brought to life and be compared against the status quo.

Benefits, pros and cons, and anything else relevant will be eligible to be put in contrast and provide a clearer picture to you.

And lastly, when you feel like things may go sideways, you can be proactive by initiating the “creative destruction” process yourself.

As a result, you can set the scene properly and safeguard that the ultimate objective of the conflict is for the team to emerge triumphant one way or another.

The Bottom Line

Although inevitable parts of life, conflicts can be turned into powerful allies if managed strategically.

One of our greatest assets as humans is seeing opportunity amidst adversity. Applying this mindset during such circumstances should be no exception.

By embracing our human nature and focusing on the positive instead of the negative outcomes, we put ourselves in a position where we can thrive and break beyond the ordinary barriers.

As such, we establish such an arrangement where we keep pushing our known limits.