Embracing a healthy conflict of ideas, valuing and engaging in constructive disagreement and listening hard and being able to challenge assumptions, as part of how you operate as an organisation, can turn disagreement into competitive advantage, says Simon Fanshawe
In the 11th century Canute, who was King of England, Denmark and Norway, according to the famous myth, had his throne pitched on the seashore and then commanded the tide to stop rising. Rather predictably, he failed and his feet and shins got wet. When the tale has been recounted over the years, he was variously thought to be either stupid or wise – which depended on whether he really believed he could hold back the sea (stupid) or whether he was making the point that earthly powers are limited (wise).
If you’re in Business School, taking an MBA or fully-fledged in your career, the lesson we can all learn from Canute, over a thousand years later, about human conflict is that he was wise. You can’t actually stop conflict. It is an inevitable part of human interaction. It won’t necessarily last all day. But it will happen pretty much every day.
Experiencing conflict
At different levels and in varying degrees of severity, we will all experience conflict at work. The challenge for us is not whether we can stop it. It is how we learn to deal with it, so that it becomes productive, a point of learning for all of us and one of the skills that managers enjoy constantly polishing.
The idea of ‘inclusion’ is by definition based on the recognition that we are all different. Otherwise why would we have to make an effort to include each other? We could just safely assume what other people thought, believed and knew because we’d be exactly the same. Rather obviously, we’re not. So inclusion means seeing that difference, valuing it and then learning how to combine it. Inclusion must therefore embrace reasonable disagreement.
Bernie Mayer, the Professor of Conflict Resolution at The Werner Institute and a facilitator at the Industrial Relations Centre at Queen’s University, Ontario, argues that: ‘The mistake so many managers make (and conflict professionals too) is to identify their goal in conflict as prevention, containment, or resolution. Those all have their place, but the more important challenge is to create the space for conflict to occur in a constructive way, for people to raise difficult and contentious issues, and for leaders to be exposed to often uncomfortable disagreements. Otherwise, problems fester, important views are squelched, and effective communication is inhibited.’
Weaponising ‘offence’
This reasonable disagreement at work right now seems fraught with difficulty. Offence is not just taken, it can be weaponised as ‘-ist’ or ‘-phobic’, the insults of the era, or it can be thoughtlessly or maliciously given in a ‘I’ll-say-what-I-want’ kind of way. Both of those extremes prevent us learning from each other. We need to identify how we can instead turn such situations positive.
It is useful in the first instance to recognise that not everything that offends is bigoted in intention. It is useful, I find when working with our clients’ teams on inclusion, to divide behaviour and language into three types: careless, thoughtless and malicious.
Recently, when giving a speech, I quipped about the bacon sandwich being the universal British food – ‘even vegetarians often can’t resist one’.
A man in a yarmulke in the front row said with a big smile: ‘I can resist one!’
It was funny and he rightly called me for being careless. At the other end of the spectrum, maliciousness is pretty easy to spot. And it needs a formal process to deal with it. The really hard stuff is when behaviour and language is thoughtless and so ambiguous. A client recently sent me a note after a session saying: ‘Beforehand I was thinking that inclusion is the nice and pink and fluffy stuff. Actually, I started to think during the session that on the contrary it’s where all the muck and bullets are!’
For instance, if a man says to a woman: ‘How do you manage working and looking after the kids?’ without thinking how a remark like this might be received, or a white person to a person of colour: ‘Where do you come from?’, they have failed to consider the kind of baggage that such questions can carry.
They’d never ask a man that and saying that to a person of colour can imply that they do not belong, that after generations they are still being seen as ‘immigrant’.
We must listen to hear
When these kinds of thoughtless remarks cause hurt or offence, the first thing we need to do is to listen to that upset. And we must listen to hear, not listen to respond to the person who was recipient. Equally, we then need to listen to the person who made that remark when they say: ‘I didn’t mean it like that’.
Intention is important. In law it’s the difference between murder and manslaughter. But it’s not an excuse. To learn from each other we need to hear feelings of insult and of intent. We then have to find a process that is trusted by all the team to resolve this, because you cannot run a team or a department on subjective perceptions or accusations. You have to test them against evidence and in discussion. You, as the manager, need to listen to both and create a dialogue. Which is hard. Both parties need to be prepared to do this.
In order for that to work positively you, as the manager, need to have worked with your team in the first place on creating a space where each member feels supported. Where they know when difficulties arise, you can all find ways of dealing with them. Fundamental to that is knowing about each other, discovering the ways in which you bring difference to work. The key framework for this is to spend time making sure that, firstly, you agree your joint objectives as a team, and secondly, you create space to hear from each other what each of you brings to the achievement of those goals from your background, identity and origins. Time discovering difference is time well-spent in turning future disagreements positive.
Opinions, views and knowledge must not be dismissed in teams because of who says them. Instead we must genuinely encounter them on their merits. To reach really good solutions, we must create spaces where speaking up is expected. It’s not brave or sticking your neck out. It is the way you have decided to work. So, when you are in a meeting, make sure everyone is in the room.
Atul Gawande’s famous surgical checklist has saved lives with the simple exercise of starting surgery with introductions around the operating table.
His research has shown how this has enabled nurses to cross the considerable status barrier in medicine and challenge a surgeon. Take the time for everyone at the start of a meeting to introduce themselves or, if you all already know each other, say something about how they are at work that day or for two of you to bring a discussion you’ve had recently where you disagreed and reached agreement. As Amy C Edmondson says in The Fearless Organisation: ‘Psychological safety does not imply excessive talking and over-processing. Psychologically safe meetings do not have to take longer… I’ve studied management team meetings where low psychological safety gave rise to an indirectness of argument that consumed far more time than necessary.’
Bringing the best of who we are
One useful way of discovering whether your colleagues are not feeling able to bring to work the best of who they are – and I know this sounds simple – is to ask them. In one-to-one meetings, check out whether they are feeling inhibited or muting aspects of their personality or culture or background in ways that are holding them back from contributing to those joint objectives.
The key is the recognition of difference, valuing the way that people’s different backgrounds and identities can contribute every bit as much to innovation and good solutions as their technical skill. Clashes and differences of opinion are fundamental. So make them part of your values.
As the INSEAD Professor of Organisational Behaviour, Charles Galunic, says: ‘A wrestling match with your culture can be a valuable exercise …companies who show more dynamism around their values – those that change them over time – outperform firms who kept theirs stable’.
Embracing as part of how you operate as a team or organisation ‘a healthy conflict of ideas’, ‘valuing and engaging in constructive disagreement’ or ‘listening hard and being able to challenge assumptions’ makes the expectation of disagreement a competitive advantage.
In short:
- Conflict is a given.
- Managers should accept that and turn it productive rather than trying to suppress it
- When conflict occurs, in the first instance, listen to hear not to respond.
- Crucially listen to the feelings of both insult and intention to learn
- Embody healthy disagreement from the outset – there are rules possible about how you disagree, but it is unwise to rule out some issues on whether you disagree.
Simon Fanshawe is the author of The Power of Difference – where the complexities of diversity and inclusion meet practical solutions.
