Six reasons why your work-place should never be conflict free
Image courtesy of Alexander Mills on Unsplash
Let’s start with a bit of house-keeping; there is a distinctive difference between conflict and combat. Nothing in this blog suggests or should be taken to imply that there is anything healthy about a combative working environment. Should the work-place be challenging? Yes. Competitive? Absolutely? Combative? No. Combat implies that there are victors and where there are victors there are vanquished. The work-place is not a theatre of war.
That is not to say that organisations aren’t squeamish about the idea of conflict in the work-place — they are. Why? Well because they fail to realise that conflict exists on a spectrum. At the one end, there is creative tension that leads to the emergence of new ideas and at the other, there is the conflict that arises from utter dissatisfaction with mediocrity. Both, of the above, generate powerful energy and are nutritious in terms of their contribution to organisational health and wellbeing.
But if this is all true, why do organisations often try to avoid conflict, instead of cultivating it? Well, many organisations see conflict much like those who first discovered fire. They cannot utilise it because they do not understand it and because they do not understand it, they fear it.
This blog seeks to explode the myths about conflict. In doing so, it describes six reasons why the work-place should never be conflict free.
1. Conflict shows that your employees care
The time to be truly terrified is when your employees become impassive and inert. A little shrug of the shoulder, a little roll of the eyes, but little more than that. When they no longer challenge back and offer advice, because they know that you do not value their opinions; that is the time to be really concerned. Sometimes conflict can be a bitter pill for organisational leadership, but even bitter pills can improve health outcomes. The alternatives to conflict are acquiescence or worse still, coercion. Organisations that simply default to labelling employees who offer conflicting perspectives, as ‘challenging’ or ‘difficult’ are lazy. Each case needs to be evaluated on its merits not badged for convenience.
2. You cannot generate disruptive energy without conflict
An organisation with serious designs on market leadership or for that matter, market competitiveness, must be at ease in the presence of idealists, critics, naysayers and pragmatists. It must actively assemble and sound out these diverse and disparate voices. Why? It is this ‘patchwork quilt’ of dissent that makes it possible for disruptive change to flourish. A mature organisation, one that understands how to harness the energy of conflict, understands how to channel this power and emerge stronger and wiser from the experience.
3. Conflict is an early indicator that things are not quite right
Conflict functions as a kind of organisational temperature check or bellwether. Not enough conflict is a measure of declining organisational health and wellbeing, whilst too much could be an indicator of organisational hyperactivity. In any work-place that is transitioning through a period of change, there will likely be a greater level of conflict than in one that is not on the same trajectory. When an organisation is starved of the energy of conflict, it becomes anaemic and its natural ‘immune response’ is suppressed and compromised. However, on the flip side, no organisation can survive in an environment of perpetual conflict. Perpetual conflict is chaos and chaos will produce paralysis. The challenge is for an organisation to find its ‘sweet spot’ and to clearly understand not just the kind of conflict that it needs, but also the right measure.
4. Conflict facilitates organisational growth
Conflict is an organisational survival skill and one that employees need to learn in order to function at a satisfactory level of professional and social competence. An organisation is not meant to be a utopian entity. Therefore, it should not be engineered as such. One of the ways in which organisations mature and thrive is when their employees know what is expected of them and are empowered to do what is asked. When employees understand the context of conflict and what it is intended to achieve, then they are empowered to work towards that goal and can empower others to do likewise. Needless to say, the productivity generated from empowered employees, facilitates organisational growth.
5. Without conflict your organisation will be an improvement free zone
Conflict creates discomfort and discomfort is the ideal environment for continuous improvement. Conflict, therefore, ensures that an organisation learns to become comfortable being uncomfortable. Again, conflict is not about creating a combat zone, but rather creating a safe space to moderate ideas and participate in difficult conversations. It should allow for an honest, evidence-informed airing of views and opinions and empower all to be able to have their contributions valued without fear of retribution. To that extent, conflict should facilitate greater organisational accountability for what has worked and under what conditions as well what has not worked and why.
6. You need conflict to test and prove leadership
It is often said that the ability to build a consensus and reach a compromise is an essential leadership skill. After all, what is the necessity for consensus or compromise without conflicting points of view? Therefore, if we accept that simple logic, then conflict resolution is one of the most important proving grounds for leadership development. Leaders who are adept at resolving conflict demonstrate a unique set of skills: they are emotionally intelligent, empathetic, patient and rational. A leader who can be trusted to navigate their way through the complexities of conflict, is best placed to lead others through it as well.
In conclusion, work-place conflict can be one of the most important stimulants of organisational growth and development. For those employers best able to cultivate and harness the energy of work-place conflict, the potential exists for the rapid evolution of ideas and the accelerated drive towards transformational change. By contrast, attempts to make the work-place a ‘sterile environment’, by stifling conflict, serve only to deprive employees of the opportunity to develop and enhance their stakeholder engagement and leadership capabilities.
