Conflict is often negatively associated in business. However, this is one thing that you and your team members shouldn’t avoid! Instead, you should welcome positive conflict and have a respectful discussion to bring about productive and useful changes in your workplace. To identify which conflicts in a team is healthy and which is not, here are some questions you need to ask:
1. Is there a respectful conversation during the conflict?
If your employees are not being respectfully towards one another, throwing rude comments or even vulgarities, then you need to step in as a leader to control the situation. A respectful discussion should allow everyone to speak their mind without the fear of being bullied. Therefore, creating a culture of trust can help with this.
2. How competitive are employees with each other?
Top performers tend to be more competitive towards each other than the average worker. To help control this and turn it into something good, let the employees compete with each other in certain areas, as long as they are working towards a team goal and making progress.
3. Is the conflict solving an issue?
A conflict that isn’t based on a real issue can be unproductive and bad to your team. Make sure a healthy conflict surrounds real issues that will make a difference to the company or team. The goal should be based on efficiency and effectiveness!
4. Are new ideas being presented and debated?
Sometimes conflict involves the same issues being debated over and over again. This is not healthy because nothing new is getting solved or changed by the discussion. Instead, once something is solved and debated it should be put to the side so that new issues can be discussed instead.
5. Is there a set of rules being followed for the discussion?
Healthy conflict should follow a set of rules of engagement that will guide employees on how to treat each other during a discussion. Having this set of rules will make everything go more smoothly and help employees to know how they should or shouldn’t approach a discussion. A simple rule such as “No Interpersonal Politics & Personal Attacks” can go a long way in creating a safe space for your employees. Instead, conflict should be limited to the ideas that aims to produce the best solution(s) for the team.
As the team leader, you can help to promote healthy conflict within your team by creating the right company culture that focuses on trust, adaptability, flexible mindsets, openness, and acceptance of new ideas will help your employees embrace positive conflict. This can be done so through frequent team building activities such as Laser Tag, Archery Tag and Bubble Soccer! Remember, conflict is rarely pleasant for anyone. But if it’s done in the right way it can engage the team and bring greater about a good to the company.