This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Conflict is critical to success. Any team sport, any team, any family, conflict is inevitable. How you deal with conflict is a true determining factor on how successful that family, that team, or that organization is. You show me an organization that seamlessly gets through conflict in a positive way, and I’ll show you a winning team.
Accepting that there’s going be conflict and running towards that conflict as part of the values of the company, for me, I think is important. Because in my organization, I don’t want people to think that I think that conflict is something that’s a bad thing. Conflict comes when two people who are high-performing have the same goal but see it going at it two different ways with the right intent: perfection, success, ambition, growth.
So in an organization, you want conflict because you want to hear two, three, four, five different perspectives on why that marketing plan will succeed or fail, or why the product color should be that color versus that color, or why we should name it this, or what the priorities are that’s going to lead to the most success, or there’s four candidates. Which one should we hire? If you put the company at the center and you remove yourself, and what’s the best idea for the company, regardless of the fact that you guys may disagree? It allows you to think through, I can challenge this person as long as I am not disrespecting them while I challenge them.
So framing conflict as something that could be positive towards a better outcome for the company when you walk in the door as a leader, to me, is important. Conflict is not a bad word. How you deal with conflict can make it a bad word.