by Judy Rathwell | May 7, 2024 | Change Management, Communication, Conflict, Decision-making, Productivity
Mastering productive team conflict
All great, lasting relationships will encounter conflict. While conflict often carries a negative connotation, especially in the workplace, it can lead to growth when handled productively. Far from being a sign of team dysfunction, healthy conflict within teams can be a catalyst for innovation leading to stronger relationships.
To foster productive conflict within a team, trust must be established. When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer. By productive conflict, we mean debate that’s focused on concepts and ideas but avoids mean-spirited, personal attacks.
1. Encouraging Constructive Conflict
When we acknowledge that conflict can be a force for good, we open ourselves up to new ideas and perspectives. By speaking up for our beliefs, considering the thoughts of others, and confronting issues, we can push ourselves to reach new heights of success. Developing the habits mentioned here will further help contribute to productive debates within teams.
What Productive Conflict Looks Like on a Team:
- Voicing opinions
- Seeking out teammates opinions
- Confronting important issues
- Exploring everyones ideas
However, having productive conflict on a team can be challenging due to fears and concerns that may hold us back. It’s crucial to be aware of these fears so we can start to overcome them. For example, some team members may be afraid that conflict could damage their relationships with their colleagues, so they may avoid challenging the status quo altogether. Recognizing and addressing these common fears is essential for getting to the best ideas possible.
Fears That Can Hold a Team Back:
- Damaging relationships
- Appearing overly critical
- Anticipating negative feedback
- Disrupting the status quo
2. Taking Action to Build Productive Conflict
Productive conflict doesn’t just happen overnight. It requires active listening, respect for differing viewpoints, and a shared commitment to common goals. Team leaders play a pivotal role in cultivating an environment where team members feel empowered to express their opinions. By promoting open communication leaders can help their teams harness the power of conflict for better decision-making. Certain habits significantly aid in establishing productive conflict practices. For example, glossing over differences can lead to future problems. When all opinions aren’t expressed, teams may lack full commitment and buy-in to decisions.
Top Ways to Develop Productive Conflict:
- Solicit the views of more reserved teammates
- Keep the focus on ideas
- Resist the urge to sweep things under the rug
- Collect emotions before responding
By engaging in productive conflict and tapping into a variety of perspectives and opinions, team members can confidently commit to a decision knowing that they have benefited from everyone’s ideas. Remember, productive conflict isn’t about personal attacks or animosity. It’s about robustly discussing concepts and ideas, pushing boundaries, and ultimately creating stronger teams. When productive conflict is treated as a crucial aspect of team culture, it drives the group towards achieving greater success and fulfillment in their endeavors. So, let’s encourage healthy debates and harness their power!
Source: Five Behaviors
“Leaders do not avoid, repress, or deny conflict, but rather see it as an opportunity”
– Warren Bennis
Did you know this about disc?
DiSC is an assessment that aids with effective communication
Everything DiSC Productive Conflict
Everything DiSC® Productive Conflict increases learners’ self-awareness around conflict behaviors, helping them effectively respond to uncomfortable and unavoidable challenges of workplace conflict.
Rather than focusing on a step-by-step process for conflict resolution, this learning experience combines the personalized insights of DiSC® with the proven science of cognitive behavioral theory to help participants recognize and transform their destructive habits into more productive responses.
Productive Conflict Video
by Judy Rathwell | Dec 19, 2023 | Decision-making, Habits, Productivity
5 steps to DEVELOP more discipline
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You might be surprised to learn that it’s simply focusing on a result you really want. In this sense, the key to discipline is goal setting.
Whether you’re naturally a disciplined person or not, goal setting is a skill you can develop using these five steps:
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Step 1: Determine Your Goal
The key is in knowing what you really want. If you are going to succeed in whatever’s important to you, you first need to know where you’re going. You must be specific, and you need to be able to see it. Write it down, and, while you are at it, add a “by when” date.
Here’s an example: I will lose 10 pounds by December 31.
Step 2: List Your Reasons
This is often the missing piece in both goal setting and discipline. You have to ask, Why is this goal important? What is at stake in my achieving it? You can list both the positive reasons and the negative.
Examples:
- I want more energy.
- I want to lower my cholesterol.
- I don’t want to put myself at risk for heart disease.
- I want to look more trim, especially on video.
Step 3: Identify Likely Obstacles
As soon as you start swimming against the current, you will start feeling resistance. It’s as if the universe is testing you to see how serious you are about succeeding. That’s why you have to anticipate these obstacles and build strategies to overcome them.
Examples:
- Obstacle: Mindlessly eating what I always eat for lunch.
Strategy: Plan my lunch before I leave the house—where and what I will eat.
- Obstacle: Inability to work out on the road.
Strategy: Make sure the hotel has a workout room before I book it. Also, pack my workout clothes and shoes.
- Obstacle: Eating more calories than I intend.
Strategy: Record everything I eat. What gets measured improves.
Researchers call these strategies implementation intentions. And they work.
Step 4: Develop New Behaviors
This is where you should focus. What are the positive, new behaviors you want to develop to replace the old, negative behaviors? It’s not enough to decide not to eat junk food, for example. You’re going to want to snack on something. So what are you going to do about it?
Examples:
- Drink 2.5 liters of water a day to stay hydrated.
- Eat healthy snacks, like raw almonds, celery, carrots, and so on.
Step 5: Stay Focused
Read your goals daily, review your reasons why, anticipate obstacles, and work on your new behaviors. If you get off track, don’t beat yourself up. Sometimes it’s three steps forward and two steps back. The trick is to shake it off and re-lock on your goal.
You might also consider changing your strategy to get there.
Examples:
- If I injure my ankle and can’t run, I could switch to swimming.
- If I can’t get traction on my own, I’ll research and hire a personal trainer.
Discipline is not really about willpower so much as focusing on what you really want. If you get clear on that, it suddenly becomes much easier.
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Source: Michael Hyatt, Full Focus
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment”.
– Jim Rohn
Did you know this about disc?
DiSC is an assessment that aids with effective communication
by Judy Rathwell | Jul 8, 2021 | Newsletter, Productivity, Setting Expectations, Stress Management
Often people end the day feeling that they have not completed their tasks satisfactorily because they have spent much of the time “putting out fires.” This is just one of mode of leadership that can cause inefficiency and chaos in a company. Sound familiar?
When fires are continually being put out, it is because there is no planning and no clear definition of the company’s goals and objectives. This means that everything often has to be improvised and that generates chaos. It also means employees are unable to focus on what is really important for the company. When it is the leader who acts as a firefighter, this can create even bigger problems for the team as a whole. Therefore, It is essential to solve this dangerous mode and put into place a clear definition of roles, responsibilities and priorities. It is an exercise of rigor and self-discipline.
How can you stop fostering a culture of firefighting?
- Make time to map out a plan based on annual goals and objectives and allocate the company budget accordingly.
- Communicate the plan to the team to ensure each team member is clear on where the company is going, thereby reducing the number of “fires” and generating motivation and a sense of belonging to the group.
- Clearly define the responsibilities of each position and the associated performance measures.
- Create simple protocols for all phases of the value chain so that each employee knows their main obligations, resulting in a significantly reduced need to act in a firefighter mode.
- Make quarterly plans to set smart goals for each job in the short term so that each person reconfirms their priorities on a regular basis.
- Educate people on proper time management, teaching them to place on their agendas the tasks that really add value to their roles and therefore to the company. This can help employees form positive habits, effectively use their time, avoid unproductive tasks and, above all, move past the interruptions and duplications that these fires generate.
By following the recommendations above, tasks will cease to be as urgent because they have previously been defined, planned and assigned. As a result, the emergencies that are symptomatic of firefighter mode are reduced, generating greater productivity and minimizing stress.
Source: Jose Luis Gonzalez Rodriguez via Forbes
by Judy Rathwell | Jun 28, 2021 | Decision-making, Habits, Newsletter, Productivity
Your days are full, and it can be hard to get
everything on your list done. You were finally making progress on a task when
your focus is disrupted yet again with a meeting reminder. You don’t know how
you’ll finish what you need to do today, and it’s probably going to be yet
another waste of time. Is this just the way things are, or is there a better
way?
According to The HR Digest,
professionals lose an average of 31 hours a month on meetings–which adds up to
approximately four workdays, or a total of two months per year. That’s a lot of
disruption, particularly if those meetings aren’t actually yielding much. The
problem isn’t just an overabundance of meetings; it’s that so many of them turn
out to be bad meetings. But you don’t have to settle for bad meetings that
disrupt your work and kill productivity. Great meetings are possible with a
little bit of forethought. Let’s look at one of the first steps in that
direction: determining the necessity and nature of a meeting.
Here are five filtering questions you can use
to coordinate essential meetings:
- Is
this meeting necessary? There’s
a well-known piece of literary advice for writers: “kill your darlings.” That
is, don’t get too attached to the storyline, especially if it doesn’t serve the
bigger picture. The same is true for meetings. It’s too easy to get caught up
in a series of meetings that don’t matter. Keep the high-leverage ones that
support important goals. Eliminate the rest, and your team will thank you.
- Are
you sure you’re necessary? Too often, we blindly accept the never-ending barrage of
meeting invites. It’s natural to think our presence in a meeting is always
necessary, especially if we were invited. But that’s not always true. Guard
your schedule, and only say yes when you truly need to be there.
- Who
else should be involved? If
you’re organizing a meeting, think through who absolutely needs to
attend. Remember, smaller groups can align more quickly to drive a decision.
Relevant information can be shared with the masses later through an email or
project-management update.
- What
type of meeting do you want? Consider ahead of time the type of meeting that will help
you accomplish your goals. Establishing this early on will keep the
purpose clear and the conversation from meandering, so your time will be
productive.
- What’s
the right format? Historically,
in-person meetings have been the norm across businesses. But nowadays, we’re
all meeting virtually in some capacity, and in-person meetings are no longer
the default. It takes intentional thought to determine what’s best for your
team, and what format will work best for what you’re trying to achieve. If
that’s in-person, great. Otherwise, your preferred video-conferencing app works
great too.
Take control of your meeting habits. Routinely ask yourself, Is this meeting necessary? If not, be decisive and eliminate the meetings that don’t matter or that inhibit your productivity. Make the best use of your team’s time and resources by focusing on the high-leverage stuff, and you’ll start seeing less frustration and better results.
Source: Michael Hyatt & Co. Blog
by Judy Rathwell | May 17, 2021 | Executive Leadership, Newsletter, Productivity
Does the boss buy your time or your productivity?
In the pre-industrial age, when we worked from home (“cottage industries”) workers got paid by the piece.
As we moved to factories, it shifted. Many workers preferred a reliable regular paycheck, and owners decided to profit by investing in productivity and keeping the upside. When new machines show up, the workers don’t get paid more, but the boss makes more.
Now, as work-from-home promises/threatens to become a norm for many knowledge workers, the question is back.
Some bosses are demanding workers return to the office, and some managers have spent the last year forcing people to endure endless zoom meetings. The mindset seems to be that if your time is what got purchased, the boss wants to be sure you’re spending all of that time at work on work, not, who knows, tending for an ill family member or something.
But as it gets easier to measure productivity and contribution, and as it gets easier to outsource any task that can be described clearly, there’s a fork in the road:
If we’re not buying or selling hours, what, exactly do we measure and how are we compensated for it? Are workers ready or open to getting a commission, a profit-share or a per-piece price? And if we’re not selling our time but our contribution, does that further self-center the culture?
And if we are buying and selling hours, how does that work when surveillance capitalism bumps into workers needing flexible schedules and the trust that it takes to develop leadership and creative contribution?
Is it okay with you, the boss, if one of your workers dramatically increases productivity through some outsourcing or tech shortcuts on their own nickel and then goes home at 2 pm every day?
Is it okay if you have another worker who works until midnight every night but doesn’t get nearly as much done?
What about a team of five deciding to skip most of their meetings, coordinate through a shared doc and put the time they save into going for a walk or thinking about the next breakthrough?
If it’s truly about what we produce, how many people on the team are aware of how much they produce? What would happen if they were?
The theory of the firm was based on two key assumptions: That workers needed to be in physical proximity to each other, and that communicating with and measuring outsiders was simply too expensive to scale. For a lot of knowledge work, neither is completely true any more, and so we have to reckon with what the right size of a ‘firm’ even is.
The very nature of the factory and employment is completely up in the air. Instead of bragging about how many employees a company has, how big the office is, how many folks are in any given meeting… some leaders may start optimizing for how few they need to get the work done.
Source: Seth Godin via Seth’s Blog
by Judy Rathwell | Feb 26, 2021 | Leadership Development, Newsletter, Productivity
Organizational leaders
may say they are committed to employee well-being, but unintentional messages
and behaviors can signal otherwise, leading employees at all levels to default
to their draining routines. How we leverage time and calendars can be a powerful,
reinforcing message around valuing resilience and recharge.
Six ideas to get started
are:
- Create a daily ‘away from the office’ routine — for example, during lunchtime — to set boundaries and manage expectations.
- Send no email after 7 p.m. local time or opt to use “delay send.”
- Walk as part of your meetings. If possible, skip the video in exchange for an old-school phone call and walk while talking. Build movement into your meetings, pausing every 60 minutes or so for everyone to take a brief stroll or stretch.
- Consider no-meeting Fridays. If that’s too bold, start with no-meeting Friday afternoons.
- Schedule shorter meetings to allow for a rejuvenating “commute” between video calls and meetings. For example, 25 instead of 30 minutes…or 50 instead of 60 minutes.
- Surprise and delight! Give a Friday off, an extra PTO day, or another reward that makes sense for your organization.
Sustained, peak
performance is achievable when individuals and organizations prioritize
intentional recharging. Burnout is not an inevitable phase of our work life, nor a
badge of honor to wear. With intention and attention, we can create the
conditions for ourselves and our employees to burn bright.
What are ways you help your employees burn bright? I would enjoy reading. Email us at aha@ahaleadership.com
Excerpts from Chieflearningofficer,
February 2021
