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Fear of Conflict

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About this lesson

Fear of conflict is one of the five team dysfunctions. In this case, team members do not engage in conflict even when it is critical to team success.

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Quick reference

Fear of Conflict

Fear of conflict is one of the five team dysfunctions.  In this case, team members do not engage in conflict even when it is critical to team success.  Rather they form internal alliances and use team politics to force decisions while not encouraging other team members to share their opinions and insights.  

When to use

When team performance and cohesion is lacking, analyse the team for the five dysfunctions.  If there is fear of conflict, apply the corrective actions to overcome this fear.

Instructions

To address the team dysfunction of Fear of Conflict, you must be able to recognize this condition.  The table below contrasts the fear of conflict with the encouragement of positive conflict by team members.

Conflict

 

Tools for Overcoming the Fear of Conflict

The following tools are commonly used by teams to overcome the fear of conflict.

  • Experiential team activities. Mining: team member seeks to uncover hidden conflict.
  • Real Time Permission: Encouraging people when in the midst of a conflict to stay engaged and that this conflict is good and needed.
  • Personality tests such as DISC or Myers Briggs that identify where differences are likely to lead to conflict.
  • Thomas Kilmann conflict modes.

 

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  • 00:04 Hello, I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:05 Let's look at another of the five team dysfunctions, fear of conflict.
  • 00:10 I'll begin by describing some characteristics of team conflict.
  • 00:15 Let's start by acknowledging that there is productive conflict and
  • 00:18 destructive conflict.
  • 00:20 We spent an earlier session discussing how to create positive conflict resolution.
  • 00:24 A point I would like to make now is that positive conflict helps individuals to
  • 00:28 grow and relationships to strengthen.
  • 00:31 Productive conflict is about concepts and ideas, not personal attacks or
  • 00:35 personal characteristics.
  • 00:37 The conflict about ideas will sharpen the thinking and
  • 00:40 understanding of both parties.
  • 00:42 Each team member will gain a greater insight into the other's perspectives.
  • 00:46 The goal of the conflict resolution then becomes to find the best organization or
  • 00:50 business solution, not to secure personal points over the other individual.
  • 00:54 Overcoming the fear of conflict can sometimes be difficult
  • 00:58 because many of us have been taught, since we were children, not to fight or argue.
  • 01:03 We often come to view conflict as a failure in a relationship,
  • 01:06 rather than as a means to strengthen the relationship.
  • 01:09 Of course, everyone believes that their opinion is right and
  • 01:11 that the other person is wrong, or at least, misguided.
  • 01:15 Avoiding conflict to understand the ideas and concerns and
  • 01:18 then seeking a win-win resolution will just delay the team decision.
  • 01:22 Until the conflict is resolved, at least, one team member is not
  • 01:26 supporting the team direction and this will lead to a degraded team performance.
  • 01:31 Resolve the conflict to restore the team's unity of purpose.
  • 01:36 To bring this dysfunction of fear of conflict into sharper clarity, let
  • 01:40 me contrast teams that fear conflict with those that engage in productive conflict.
  • 01:45 When teams engage in positive conflict, they have lively and interesting meetings.
  • 01:49 The ideas and
  • 01:50 opinions of all team members are extracted and the best ideas come to the forefront.
  • 01:55 This results in the team solving real problems and doing that quickly.
  • 01:59 Another characteristic is that team politics are minimized.
  • 02:02 Team members don't need to work behind the scenes to gather support for
  • 02:06 their ideas so that they can rollover any opposition in a team meeting.
  • 02:10 Instead, all the ideas are freely and
  • 02:12 openly debated without the debate turning into personal attacks.
  • 02:16 As a team develops a track record of using positive conflict
  • 02:20 to resolve real problems, the team members are more likely
  • 02:23 to continue to bring real critical problems to the table for discussion.
  • 02:28 Now let's contrast that list with the list associated with teams that fear conflict.
  • 02:33 For one thing, the team meetings are boring.
  • 02:35 This is because there's nothing of importance discussed or
  • 02:37 resolved at the meeting.
  • 02:39 Instead, there are numerous back channel meetings and
  • 02:41 political alliances formed by team members so they can get the support for
  • 02:45 their opinion or idea to steamroll over any opposition.
  • 02:49 Often, this is done by personal attacks on those with different opinions
  • 02:53 in order to hopefully silence them or destroy their credibility.
  • 02:57 While all this background maneuvering is going on, critical team decisions
  • 03:01 are ignored because the issue won't be debated until one side has already won.
  • 03:06 When the issue is already brought out to the open, other opinions are not requested
  • 03:10 or they're ignored if provided, since the solution was already predetermined.
  • 03:15 It's no surprise that in this type of environment,
  • 03:18 team members are more concerned about their personal power and posturing and
  • 03:22 threatening others to maintain that power and
  • 03:24 trying to avoid the risk of erosion of personal power from attacks by others.
  • 03:30 Obviously, the picture I painted about the fear of conflict is not good, so
  • 03:33 what could be done to overcome this problem?
  • 03:36 First, let's acknowledge that conflict will happen.
  • 03:38 We don't all think exactly alike and have exactly the same experiences.
  • 03:43 Therefore, we will likely have different ideas and opinions or
  • 03:46 reach different conclusions about the best way forward in any given situation.
  • 03:51 Let's further acknowledge that positive conflict is good and healthy for a team.
  • 03:55 It will lead to better team decisions and stronger team relationships.
  • 03:59 We discussed some of this in the earlier session on resolving team conflict.
  • 04:03 Some of the tools that I've used over the years to encourage teams
  • 04:07 to use positive conflict are experiential team activities.
  • 04:11 The team members must face a challenge and
  • 04:13 listen to each other's ideas in order to find the solution to the challenge.
  • 04:17 Another technique that the team leader or a facilitator can use is called mining.
  • 04:22 In this case, the team leader seeks out conflicting opinions or ideas and
  • 04:27 has the team consider them in order to improve the overall team decision.
  • 04:31 Along the same lines is giving team members real time permission
  • 04:35 to discuss and challenge any ideas.
  • 04:38 The challenge should not be a personal attack but
  • 04:40 rather focus on the concepts and ideas.
  • 04:42 Giving team members permission to disagree can keep them engaged when they might
  • 04:46 otherwise remain quiet thinking the decision has already been made.
  • 04:51 Of course, we can use the personal tests like Meyers Briggs or
  • 04:54 DISC that we mentioned in the previous sessions.
  • 04:57 These tools help team members understand why they might disagree and
  • 05:01 that their opinions and insight is needed by they team,
  • 05:04 even if their recommendations are not completely accepted.
  • 05:07 Finally, the Thomas Kilmann model of different modes for
  • 05:10 negotiation has often helpful for team members to understand
  • 05:14 that they can disagree with each other and lead to a better solution for the team.
  • 05:17 Of course, this was also addressed in an earlier session.
  • 05:21 Teams that fear conflict often become overwhelmed by team
  • 05:26 politics as important issues are not publicly addressed.
  • 05:31 Fortunately, there are number of ways to overcome this fear.
  • 05:35 When this is your team's dysfunction, start using some of these tools.

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Absence of Trust
05m:00s
Lack of Commitment
05m:37s
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