Why you shouldn’t be afraid of constructive tension at work

If we are unable to create tension inside and outside of our teams, we’ll be less likely to influence, challenge standards, hold others to account or create change, says George Karseras.  In other words, without constructive tension we will generate less value

Emma was popular, powerful but somewhat intimidating if you got on the wrong side of her. Several team members, including her boss Harry, told me that she was also ‘highly elusive, breaks promises and says one thing and then does another’. At a team off-site I ran a team feedback exercise. All those criticising her in private revealed nothing in the exercise.  So I invited Harry, the team leader, to comment- surely he would confront the elephant in the room? Harry did speak but he chose to do so for other people – ‘people find you less available’, ‘others have told me they find you hard to pin down’.  I prompted Harry – ‘do you find Emma unavailable and hard to pin down?’ – to which he replied – ‘No, we’re working fine’. If the team leader couldn’t confront Emma, what chance did the rest have?

I have found the ability to have challenging conversations and to hold others to account to be one of the toughest skillsets a team can acquire, especially in matrix organisations composed of multiple cross functional teams. It requires a fundamental belief that it is okay to have a challenging conversation with someone who you don’t formally lead, the necessary psychological safety to have that conversation and the technique to execute it well. That is some combination and explains why just about every team I’ve ever worked with has wanted to be better at it, cross functional or not.

Harry illustrates the first of the two most common ‘destructions’ of tension, namely leaving what has to be said, unsaid. Avoiding short term tension only intensifies long term tension, which is exactly what happened in this team as Emma continued to be elusive and uncooperative. The other type of course is the polar opposite, very aggressive interactions that end up with winners and losers or just losers.

Roy Keane, the captain of the football team Manchester United at the time, famously walked out of the 1992 Football World Cup because he was so disgusted by the standards of kit and training methods provided by the Irish coaching team. The Irish manager at the time, Mick McCarthy, was operating from a very different ‘page’ than the one Keane was used to being on at Manchester United. Keane’s sharp, hostile and very personal attack didn’t work so well with McCarthy. Claiming he couldn’t influence McCarthy, Keane simply walked out. Keane let his team down. He was their best player after all. Even though you can’t help being struck by his commitment to what he believed in, Keane was far from constructive.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a code to follow that science tells us maximises the chances of creating constructive tension in a team. You just have to, know what it is and follow it. After all a bit of tension helps most teams perform better. It guards against ‘‘Group Think” a state characterised by complacency and insufficient internal critique. Valued by Jack Welch of GE fame, constructive tension, or ‘edge’ as he called it, provides challenge and fuels creativity. In an increasingly inter-connected world where collaboration is the name of the game, if we are unable to create it inside and outside of our teams, we’ll be less likely to influence, challenge standards, hold others to account or create change. In other words, without constructive tension we will generate less value.

So what’s this code?

The foundations of constructive tension is the creation of ‘same page trust ™’. We create same page trust, a form of cognitive trust, when we share certain mental models with those with whom we are collaborating, specifically:

1. The purpose of our collaboration
2. The goals we share
3. The roles and responsibilities we have
4. The plan we are working towards
5. How we feedback together on progress
6. The team behaviours we want to see from each other (our team norms or organisational values)

These six agreements form the first ‘Get Set’ phase of a unique 4 phase team development approach that has been designed for today’s teams operating in today’s extreme conditions:  Get Set – Get Safe – Get Strong – Get Success.  Dissonance in any of these six explains the vast majority of relationship tension I’ve witnessed in a 25-year team coaching career. Scientific research also supports the contribution of cognitive trust to building inter-personal trust. Prevention is usually better than cure, so your first step is to safeguard these alignments, build same page trust and thereby reduce opportunities for future destructive tensions.

Then move onto to building psychological safety, a state where people can say what they feel or think without fear of recourse. The science confirms that relationships built on vulnerability, empathy and reflection are more likely to foster healthy collaborations which can better withstand negative feedback. Saying how you feel, asking for help, showing gratitude, lightening the mood with humour, sharing your knowledge, being helpful, curious and reflective with others are all in the second phase of the code – Get Safe – as they all boost psychological safety. This phase is especially important for hybrid and virtual teams. Without psychological safety and high levels of emotional trust, negative feedback exchanged online or over the phone will likely create destructive rather than constructive tension.

Phase three is where you leverage all your accrued same page trust and psychological safety to more confidently extend into the ‘contact zone’ of constructive tension. You require sufficient courage to enter this zone and a skill set to cope with it when you are in it. You will either summon your courage or you won’t. A growth and learning mind-set will help you exercise it. So, see yourself on a path and view mistakes as learning opportunities. Remember that tension is usually temporary, especially in relationships high in psychological safety, so be prepared to hold this tension.

The icing on the cake in this third phase is the ability to describe rather than judge. Stating the facts by saying what you notice is far less emotionally provocative than arguing with opinions.

For example, pointing out, calmly and descriptively, that someone in the team has spoken out five times and each time it has been to either criticise, express concern or disagree with someone is far more powerful than telling them they are a ‘negative presence’, which is an opinion.

Replace ‘You’re not showing any accountability’ with ‘I’m the one who’s booking the meetings not you.’ and switch out ‘The standard of your work is poor, with ‘I’m having to spend hours reworking your slide decks for our presentations to potential clients.’

Feelings are facts too, of course. If I say I’m upset, and I’m being honest, then that’s a fact that can’t be disputed, even though the reason for my feeling upset may not be logical. You may be annoyed I’m late for our meeting as you think it’s rude. However, if you find out I was late because I was helping an old person get back to their feet after a nasty fall, your opinion about me and how you feel will change.  For the tension to be constructive, I have to appreciate you weren’t wrong in feeling angry even if you were mistaken to think I was rude. The difference is crucial.  Saying how we feel is very different to saying how we feel ‘about’ something – which is simply an opinion masquerading as a feeling.  ‘I’m feeling demeaned’ is very different to ‘I feel you are being demeaning’.

Others cannot dispute or argue with your feelings and observations, but they can and probably will do with opinions, especially if either of you are emotionally charged.  In a more ‘aroused’ state, you are more likely to tell a person they are being a pain in the backside than to calmly and objectively describe what you are noticing that makes you believe they are being a pain in the backside. Maintaining composure is therefore another skill required in this third Get Strong Phase.

Veterans of the Apple Mac team learned that they could stand up to Jobs, but only if they used their domain expertise to pushback with data and facts. Like Jobs, Bezos or Musk, formidable colleagues respect you if you stand up to them if you do it with facts and without too much emotion.