Management styles can add to office wars
Even if your corporate culture is good, there will be internal conflicts from time to time. Personalities are bound to clash, and outside events can increase stress. If you notice the same kind of conflict happening in your workplace, however, it’s possible that your leadership style is contributing to the problem.
“Research shows that managers spend upwards of 20% of their time managing conflict,” says Randall Peterson, professor of organizational behavior and academic director of the Leadership Institute at London Business School. “Enormous amounts of energy are wasted every year in every workplace because people are preoccupied with arguing rather than getting their work done.”
Peterson and his colleagues studied hundreds of management teams in multinational companies to understand how to decipher and manage conflict. They discovered there are two main types: taskbased conflict and relationship conflict. Task-based conflict arises from the content of a decision; relationship conflict is due to the dislike of someone.
How you manage relationship conflict
Relationship conflict happens most often in response to negative group feedback, such as when a project flounders or fails, Peterson says. “When a problem happens, do you allow people to blame other individuals? Or do you focus them on fixing it at the group level?”
If you allow the blame game to start, you encourage relationship conflict. However, if you focus on fixing the problem, especially at the group level, you’ll discourage relationship conflict. Interpersonal animosity, or relationship conflict, is generally a warning that your group is not functioning well, he says.
“Winning team members don’t turn on each other because they want to maintain their success. The lesson here is to stop the team from turning inward and blaming each other when negative feedback is received, and not to overfocus on relationship conflict because relationships will improve if you can achieve some successes.”
How to promote task conflict
Not all conflict is bad. Peterson says effective teams should encounter task conflict, which has an inverted U-shape in relation to performance. “If you have none, you’re not really talking about the issues,” he says. “If you have too much, it’s difficult to make a decision. You want something in the middle.”
An example of a healthy level of task conflict is when people in a group enter into a discussion, representing different points of view. Peterson’s research found that the sweet spot is having a debate between two individuals within the group. It’s dyadic task conflict, where the rest of the team figures out what works for the group.
“If you have five people against one, there’s nobody left to be neutral to figure out what’s right,” Peterson explains. “It becomes just about power. Diversity of perspectives on the issues, or task conflict, is about having points of view coming together. Unaligned members are essential for helping people informally vet their ideas, gather others’ insights and ultimately work out disagreements in a way that creates positive outcomes.”
Managers need to make sure that their leadership style supports task conflict instead of discouraging it. One way to determine your stance is to consider how you respond to questions and critiques from your team.
“You can say ‘I have an open door’ or ‘I want innovation,’ but it’s all nonsense if you don’t actually welcome that,” Peterson says.
In the face of a team debate, for example, a leader may say “I’ve already made the decision.” In this case, they teach their team not to raise questions, squelching healthy task conflict that could bring about new ideas.
Being a successful leader comes down to managing and not contributing to conflict. Most importantly, do not ignore it, Peterson says.
The bottom line is that conflict happens even in the most effective teams. Successful leaders who deal with conflict create strategies that get to the root cause, encouraging performance while making individual members happy.