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Transcript
Hello, welcome to this episode. My name is Thomas Harris, and over the past podcasts, the last few episodes, we’ve been going over Patrick Lencioni’s book, The Five Temptations of a CEO, and going over the different temptations. And while he focuses primarily on CEOs with his book and most of his books, what he talks about when it comes to temptations, it actually applies to any of us as leaders.
So we’ve gone through the first three temptations. We’ve gone over status over results, popularity over accountability, and certainty over clarity. And today we’re talking about temptation number four, which is choosing harmony over conflict.
What does that mean? Well, sometimes leaders, people in general, we feel like we should get along, that there shouldn’t be any argument, there shouldn’t be disagreement, and that people should just kind of seem to get along together. However, especially in a business environment, that’s not really healthy.
Why people avoid conflict
And there’s different reasons why people feel that way. Some of it may be how you grew up. Some people grew up in homes where they disagreed and there was arguing and such, but it was healthy argument, and they came to realize that they could disagree and then keep moving forward.
Sometimes people, there was unhealthy argument or maybe their home, there was no arguments at all, there’s no disagreements. And so they felt like in life, that’s how you’re supposed to be. You’re not supposed to really argue about things.
Sometimes people attach it to self-worth. So if someone’s angry with you, then they are with an idea or they’re disagreeing with you, then it’s against you as a person, not just the idea.
Sometimes people fear the conflict itself because when you’re disagreeing, there’s often uncomfortable emotions. It can make you feel uncomfortable. You know, there’s those emotions that you don’t like because of it, how people may respond to you and the feelings you get with that.
So sometimes that’s something people don’t want. And again, sometimes don’t know how to separate ideas from identity. If a disagree, think I’m attacking you versus just talking about the idea that we’re disagreeing with. And sometimes for some, it can be hard to separate that.
Disagreement though, and conflict in itself is not bad. There’s a difference between arguing ideas and identity or attacking a person. Big difference. It’s good when you can discuss ideas.
There’s actually a story I remember reading about Wilbur and Orville Wright, when they were working on building the airplane, is that they would argue with one another a lot. They would both have a different argument about a topic, and they would spend time arguing about it with one another. And then they would actually switch who was which side, which each one was on, and then argue it some more.
The purpose of conflict
Now, when it comes to conflict, one thing that you always need to remember is that you need to remember the purpose of your conflict. And that’s something that often hurts us in general when it comes to, in the business setting or even when it comes to personally with relationships, is that we forget the purpose of why we’re having that argument. And that’s often when it becomes attacking because we forget the purpose.
The purpose in general, maybe, in the business situation, is to find the best idea. It’s to find, to discover new ways of doing something, to make the best decision, to solve the problem the best way. And you do that by talking and discussing and disagreeing and getting different people’s viewpoints.
In the personal relationship, generally you want to solve the problem, or you want to continue to make the relationship good.
But the problem is in both those situations, we can start focusing on winning the argument. And that becomes our purpose without thinking about it, or proving that we’re right, or pushing our idea no matter what. And when we get that mindset, that hurts us in our conflict and it hurts us in our arguments, and it hurts us in those situations. When we have the right mindset about conflict, we can learn, we can grow, we can discover new ideas, and we can make better decisions.
Why you want conflict
So people should feel safe on your team to challenge ideas freely and to disagree. Because when you disagree, when you have disagreement, you hear different ideas versus the one that you may think is right and may learn that something’s better. You may learn different pitfalls or potential issues with ideas on the table.
It helps you see different perspectives to make different decisions, helps you solve problems better, and again, just new ideas. And when you do that, too, when you open up the door for people to disagree and give their viewpoint, when a decision is made, people are more likely to take ownership because they’ve had the time to share their thoughts and opinions, even if it doesn’t go the way they initially wanted, because they were heard and able to give input, they’re more likely to take ownership of.
False consensus
If you’re in a situation where people aren’t agreeing, that really is a problem and you want to work on that. You want to start drawing out this agreement from people to vet ideas. And if you have a decision idea and everybody’s like, yes, you want to stop right then and start asking questions to see what could be wrong with that idea.
When you have consensus, often it really isn’t consensus. It’s just a false consensus.
Sometimes there’s a climate of fear on a team or an organization. So people fear speaking up because they’re afraid of how it might hurt their job, our career, our things of that nature. And that environment is created by the leader.
What happens is that sometimes leaders, they push an idea. It’s something they want, something they like, and they just want everyone to agree with it. So because of that, and because of the fear, because of the way the person, the leader, may disregard people’s ideas, people don’t speak up. They just agree with it.
But what it really is is false consensus because they don’t disagree in person, but they disagree behind the person. They may talk about negatively behind it. And of course, when it fails, they don’t take ownership of it. It was that other person’s idea.
What happens when you stifle disagreement
And we’ve talked about already with out the disagreement. You can go down bad paths, make worse decisions, but it also hurts your influence as a leader because of that, because you’re not listening, because you’re not getting input.
It stifles innovation because people aren’t sharing new ideas. You can’t, again, vet decisions and problems good. There’s less engagement from people and again, less ownership. But also it can keep you from facing the real issues that are happening.
If you just push a certain direction or someone else does, you may get superficial agreements, but you may not face the real problems and real issues that are happening. And so the same problems may pop up later or things that’s to be redone are fixed later because of that.
You don’t need consensus to decide
What you want is disagreement, the right kind about ideas that are arguing ideas, not people. And truth is you don’t need consensus to decide and for people to act. Because you debate and argue the ideas, everybody gives their input. And then whether you decide or however it’s decided, once it’s decided, then everybody backs a decision.
Not everyone has to agree by mind, they just agree by action.
How to implement this
So how do you implement this as leader? How do you make this happen? Especially if you haven’t been doing this so far or lately are in the past?
Well, first you need to tell people that’s what you want to do. Tell them the intent. You may apologize for stifling it in the past and talk about the path moving forward.
You may need to teach people about conflict and how it’s okay and the right kind of conflict, how to do it appropriately, how to give feedback, how to disagree, ideas versus identity and then model it yourself.
So when people give you feedback, accept it well. When people speak up, praise people for that. Draw it out from people. So, if no one’s disagreeing, ask people to disagree. Have someone play that role of the person who disagrees. Ask people what could go wrong with the issue.
Ask people to share other ideas. Make sure people know you’re serious. And the more you reward people and praise people for doing that, the more people will do that.
Consensus is not your friend. Don’t choose harmony over conflict.
I’ll see you in the next episode.
