How Healthy Conflict Benefits Teams

How Healthy Conflict Benefits Teams

High performance teams are critical to an organisation’s success. A leader’s role in developing these teams is to continue to involve them and support their performance. There is a perception that high performance teams are free from conflict, this is simply not the case. Rather, it is their ability to freely express ideas, disagreements, and challenge one another that allows strong teams to succeed again and again.

Create Space for Conflict

TexHealthy teams are rarely silent. In fact, silence may be a signal that your team is hesitant or afraid to speak up. Strong teams build ideas on each other. They hold space for debate and challenge ideas to come up with solutions that will provide the maximum benefit. As a leader, you create the culture by reinforcing the value of your team members and ensuring their voices are heard. Engaging in a high performance program can be an opportunity for leaders and teams to develop healthy debating habits. Healthy conflict can result in greater innovation and performance.

Conflict Builds Trust

For teams to sustain high performance, they must learn how to overcome conflict productively. Leadership development training allows teams to establish collaborative problem solving skills. This requires them to trust in one another’s capabilities and expertise in order to succeed. From here, stronger personal relationships develop that are based in trust. When future conflicts do occur, they are overcome much more efficiently and without personal attacks that can derail progress.

Conflict that Matters

High performing teams have clearly defined roles and expectations that increase productivity. Not only are individuals aware of their own responsibilities, every team member understands the role each of them plays in achieving their goals. This is important for developing high performance and to eliminate occurrences of blame shifting. Conflicts that arise in these teams are about the work. They happen only because every team member is dedicated to producing high quality results.

Conflict is an unavoidable part of life, and it is certainly unavoidable in high pressure environments. Participating in a high performance leadership development program gives teams the opportunity to air disputes and gain the skills necessary to overcome challenges together. Healthy conflict leads to stronger teams, capable of achieving far beyond expectations.