The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track

praise for The Good Fight

"In this terrific book, Liane Davey delivers a surprising and bracing message: Conflict is good for us. It can improve performance, help teams bond, and enrich the workplace. What matters is how you harness conflict to address tough topics and make hard decisions. If you feel like your organization is mired in a rut, you might need a good fight—and you definitely need The Good Fight."

Daniel H. Pink, author of When and Drive

"Liane Davey has long been a secret weapon of the C-Suite. With The Good Fight, any leader can learn how to get their teams unstuck and working together again. Through humor and practical examples, Liane’s book shows how even the most conflict-avoidant leaders can use productive conflict to resolve the issues that have been holding them back. Save yourself the stress and start applying her methods today."

Shawn Layden, chairman, Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios

"For most leaders and teams, conflict is treated as something to avoid at all costs—instead of a path toward greater understanding, engagement, and success. Through practical examples, Davey gives us the right words so we might approach conflict as an ally rather than an adversary. I highly recommend The Good Fight for anyone leading a team. As many of us would agree, normalizing healthy conflict in the workplace is something that is long overdue."

Dr. Marla Gottschalk, industrial/organizational psychologist and LinkedIn Influencer

"The Good Fight is an essential field guide that any leader can use to prevent drama before it starts. Davey provides practical and repeatable processes you can use to disarm people’s egos, resolve the conflicts on your team, and restore sanity to your organization."

Cy Wakeman, drama researcher, New York Times–bestselling author of No Ego, and founder of reality-based leadership

"Whether you’re an organization of 10 or 10,000, the best solutions emerge when people feel comfortable sharing their ideas, even when what they have to say challenges the status quo. In The Good Fight, Davey shows leaders how to facilitate the productive, healthy conflict that’s needed for teams to fully engage and give their best to the organization."

Howard Behar, former president, Starbucks International, and author of It’s Not about the Coffee: Lessons on Putting People First from a Life at Starbucks

"We feel the pain of having a conflict immediately. But the pain of avoiding a conflict is insidious and invisible, like a toxic gas. In The Good Fight, Liane Davey shows us how to clear the air without causing an explosion."

Kim Scott, New York Times­–bestselling author of Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss without Losing Your Humanity

"Growing up among eight siblings, my mother always taught me to ‘use my words, not my fists’ whenever there was conflict. This advice not only helped me out of a jam, but taught me not to back down if things needed to be said. Productive conflict resolution had begun! In Liane Davey’s new book, The Good Fight, she uses her twenty-five years of team-building experience to effectively teach people how to resolve conflict the right way—head on! Her practical strategies are purposeful and wise, and will help create healthy habits, build trust within your team, and increase the bottom line! An excellent read!"

David M.R. Covey, coauthor of Trap Tales: Outsmarting the 7 Hidden Obstacles to Success

Copyright © 2019 by Liane Davey

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Cataloguing in publication information is available from Library and Archives Canada.

ISBN 978-1-989025-20-8 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-989025-21-5 (ebook)

Page Two Books

www.pagetwobooks.com

Jacket and cover design by Peter Cocking

Interior design by Taysia Louie

Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens

Ebook by Bright Wing Books (brightwing.ca)

Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

19 20 21 22 23 5 4 3 2 1

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Distributed in the US and internationally by Publishers Group West, a division of Ingram

LianeDavey.com

For Craig, Kira, and Mac—

who are worth fighting for

Contents

Introduction

Part I: The Case for Conflict

1Conflict Debt

2Conflict Aversion and Avoidance

3A New Conflict Mindset

Part II: The Conflict Code

Introduction

4Establish a Line of Communication

5Create a Connection

6Contribute to a Solution

Part III: Codifying Conflict

Introduction

7Clarify Expectations

8Normalize Tension

9The Conflict Habit

A Final Thought

Bonus Chapter: Try This at Home

Acknowledgments

Appendix A: How to Fill Out the U Template

Appendix B: How to Fill Out the Tarp Template

References

Cover

Title Page

Table of Contents

Start of Content

Introduction

Hi. It’s nice to meet you.

In this book, we’re going to dive into relationships and communication, so I thought it would help if we get to know each other.

I’ll go first. I’m Liane. I advise teams on how to be more effective.

Studying teams, and more specifically what makes teams effective, has been a professional passion for more than twenty-five years. My fascination with how teams work (and how they fail) dates back to grade school. My sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Fahey, assigned us to create our own Caribbean country. It was a great project with assignments covering geography, social sciences, language, and math. It even had artistic components: we were asked to write a national anthem and create a flag. It was right up my alley. I still love that kind of multifaceted project.

The only problem was that the project would be done in groups. We were assigned to work with two classmates and told we would each receive the same mark. It didn’t take long for me to realize this arrangement was going to cramp my style. From the first work session, my teammates made it clear that they were happy to cruise through with minimal effort. My idea to use papier-mâché to build a 3-D topographical map seemed a little too ambitious for them. At twelve years old, I was already learning how hard it is to work on a team.

I figured I had two choices. I could do the majority of the work, which would ensure the project was up to my standards. That would give me the mark I was looking for but would create a huge workload for me. Even at that age, the unequal allocation offended my sensibilities. How was it fair if I did all the work and my teammates received the same grade? The other option was to dole out the work equally and let my mark take a hit. That option felt more equitable in terms of workload, but it didn’t seem fair that I would have to settle for a lower mark. I decided to do the work to get the good grade.

When I tell people this story, many of them regale me with their own versions. Whether they first experienced the struggle of teamwork in grade school, at Scouts, or at sleepaway camp, or whether it took until their first MBA class or day one in the workplace, everyone has a story of that moment when they realized teamwork can really suck. Faced with their first crappy team, most people make the same binary decision I did: either do all the work to get the desired result or live with the consequences of sharing the work equally.

In 1993, I decided to turn my personal interest in teamwork into my professional path to see if I could find a third option. I earned a PhD in organizational psychology—the study of behavior in the workplace. My dissertation research focused on how team dynamics affect innovation, and pretty much everything I’ve done since then has centered on more effective teamwork. All these years after sixth grade, I’m confident that I’ve found the third option: conflict. We can fight to make our teams better: better ideas, better decisions, better execution, better results.

The trouble is that fighting to make our teams better is still fighting. And in twenty-five years of studying and advising teams, I’ve learned over and over again that we don’t like to fight.

That’s where I come in. I’ve dedicated my career to helping people get over their conflict aversion and start fighting the good fight.

Okay, that’s me. Now it’s your turn.

Let me guess. You’re a strong performer who has always done well at work. You’ve already had multiple promotions based on your ability to get things done efficiently. You’re used to being self-reliant and you’re not afraid of a little hard work. But lately, you’re finding it more difficult to get things done. So many of your assignments require you to work with folks who just don’t seem to get it—or maybe they have their own priorities that don’t mesh well with yours. This problem is especially challenging when you have to work on cross-functional teams where everyone is serving a different master. It sure makes it hard to collaborate effectively.

You think about this problem of collaboration a lot, but you haven’t figured out how to talk about it with your teammates without getting everyone upset. And that’s the last thing you want! It’s hard enough to get things done without all the office drama that seems to erupt when you suggest that maybe the team could do things a little differently. But saying nothing isn’t working either, so you’re thinking maybe it’s time to take the risk.

You believe there must be a way to work through all the competing priorities to get your team focused on the right stuff—the short list of actions that will make the biggest difference. There must be a way to deal with the aggressive people, the passive people, and maybe even the passive-aggressive people who are all eroding trust on your team. There must be a way to reduce the toll that poor teamwork is taking and actually get back to business.

There is a way.

The answer to all of those problems is to embrace productive conflict and start fighting the good fight. This book will walk you through the steps.

In Part I, we’ll focus on the business case for conflict. We’ll start by talking about all the ways that avoiding the tough discussions and decisions holds your business back, makes your team dysfunctional, and causes you stress. We’ll look at the notion of conflict debt, the gap that’s created when you try to avoid the contentious issues that need to be resolved. Then we’ll identify all the reasons why you’re avoiding those conflicts in the first place. Finally, we’ll try on a new mindset about conflict—one that sees conflict as healthy for your bottom line, your relationships, and your stress level.

In Part II, we’ll focus on the mechanics of productive conflict. You’ll learn how you can proactively establish a line of communication and build trust with your colleagues. Next, you’ll learn techniques to create a strong connection that turns adversaries into allies. Finally, you’ll gain practical strategies for how to short-­circuit unproductive or adversarial conflict and start to contribute to a solution. You’ll realize that it’s possible to prevent the majority of conflicts and make those you can’t prevent more productive and less aversive.

In Part III, we’ll look at ways to help your team systematize conflict, so it becomes a natural part of how you work. We’ll start with a process for clarifying expectations that neutralizes the majority of conflicts by increasing alignment and reducing miscommunication. Next, we’ll look at how you can normalize the tensions often present in teams, so your discussions stay focused on business issues rather than becoming personal. Finally, we’ll discuss a variety of techniques to build a healthy conflict habit on your team.

In the Bonus Chapter, we’ll apply your new productive conflict skills to your most important relationships: the ones at home. We’ll talk about the role of productive conflict in a healthy partnership and your responsibility to model these skills to the children in your life. We’ll move outside the home, too, applying productive conflict to volunteer teams and the community.

Throughout the book, I’ll share stories of my clients (disguised to protect their identities) and how they learned to use productive conflict to make their businesses more profitable and more innovative, their teams more trusting and more fun, and their own lives more rewarding and less stressful. It wouldn’t be fair if I left myself out of this story—to show you that I’ve gone through exactly the same journey, I’ll share my stories of learning and applying productive conflict skills.

I’m so glad you’re here.

1

Conflict Debt

Agroup of doctors sits around a mahogany table in a luxurious private club. It’s a sunny Saturday morning at 8 o’clock and while most people are at the club for the tennis or the eggs Benedict, we’re crammed into a meeting room discussing the lackluster growth of these doctors’ medical practice. I’ve been hired to help them work through their issues and get the business back on a growth trajectory.

They aren’t talking much. They’re barely making eye contact. They know they need to be here and have willingly sacrificed a day off to have these conversations, but it’s clear they would rather be anywhere else. How could working through a few business decisions be so hard? It’s not brain surgery! In fact, brain surgery would be way easier for some of them than leading their fifty-person organization.

It gets worse before it gets better. Just ahead of the morning break, we broach a topic that’s so raw that the group has been avoiding it for months. In my head, I’m singing the kids’ song We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. You know the one: We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it, we gotta go through it! So I wade in. Apparently not everyone is ready to go through it. One doctor is so upset by the conversation that she closes her notebook, gives us a piece of her mind, and then storms out. One of the partners who organized the day races after her, but he can’t convince her to return.

At the break, two of the female partners corner me in the ladies’ room to convince me to raise another sensitive issue that’s been left undiscussed. This one is about the unfairness of how they distribute shifts. They give me ten years of history through the stall door. The male partners, lacking the ladies’ room ambush option, resort to sending lengthy emails about these and other festering topics.

After only a few hours, it’s clear to me what’s wrong. As we return from lunch, I share my diagnosis: You need more conflict.

What?! They look at each other, confused. Did she just say more conflict? On the plus side, at least I have them making eye contact now. More conflict is the last thing they expect me to say. They are already in agony dealing with the smallest decisions. Each meeting is an excruciating cocktail of trepidation, anger, guilt, and frustration. How could they possibly need more conflict?

What they don’t realize is that they’re mired in all those negative emotions because they’re unwilling to work through them. As long as they avoid the topics that are creating the anger, guilt, and frustration, they are stuck with them. They are ignoring Winston Churchill’s adage, If you’re going through hell, keep going. Several topics on the table have been there not just for weeks or months but for years. They have tried every which way to go around the contentious issues, but now they need to go through them.

The Importance of Conflict

The doctors are not the only ones who avoid conflict. Most of us have been raised to think of conflict as a bad thing—something to be avoided when building a healthy organizational culture. Conventional wisdom holds that conflict is bad for productivity and corrosive to trust and engagement. Unfortunately, that view is totally at odds with how an organization actually works. Conflict isn’t bad for organizations: it’s fundamental to them. The ability to work through opposing sides of an issue and come to a resolution in the best interest of customers, shareholders, and employees is required on a daily basis by everyone—from the boardroom to the shop floor. Conflict is part of strategic planning, resource allocation, product design, talent management, and just about everything else that happens in an organization. Or at least everything that should happen in an organization.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen as it should. While organizations require conflict, humans tend to run from it. Rather than working through the conflicts that will help our organizations move forward, we avoid, postpone, evade, duck, dodge, and defer them. The result is conflict debt.

Conflict Debt

Conflict debt is the sum of all the contentious issues that need to be addressed to be able to move forward but instead remain undiscussed and unresolved. Conflict debt can be as simple as withholding the feedback that would allow your colleague to do a better job and as profound as continually deferring a strategic decision while getting further and further behind the competition.

The doctors are in conflict debt. Each time they avoid the discussions, debates, and disagreements that are needed to get their business growing again, they sink further in. I mention the notion of conflict debt and one of the doctors smiles wryly and admits, I call it the ‘too hard’ pile. Yes, I think, he’s nailed it! He proceeds to itemize a list of contentious issues that they have been tacitly agreeing to ignore and attempting to work around. Their too hard pile is so high and contains so many issues to be avoided that every avenue of growth has been obstructed by something undiscussable.

To understand where conflict debt comes from, think of financial debt. You get into financial debt when you use credit to buy things you otherwise can’t afford. You want something, maybe even need it, but it’s too expensive or you don’t have the cash at the time, so you use credit. You rationalize to yourself that you will pay it off as soon as you get your next paycheck, but if you’re like 65% of American credit card holders,1 you carry that balance over from month to month.