Executive teams need to have a healthy level of conflict to be effective. This is important for all their decisions, of which the most important are the decisions made in the development of your strategy. Critical steps in the strategic process are made, or broken, by the level of conflict your executive team is comfortable with.
There is a key point in the strategy process where we get options on the table and list “what needs to be true for this to be a great strategy?” It’s at this point, as we design the testing of the strategic choices, that we most need conflict. We need all team members to feel 100% comfortable airing what they need to be true for this to work, and what burden of proof they want to see before they can get on board with it.
If any members of the executive team don’t feel comfortable fully engaging in this way then we have lost a valuable, if not critical, level of input. We can quickly end up with groupthink, or everyone “non-commitment agreeing” to the favoured approach of the CEO (or whoever has the most dominant voice in the room). Strategic options don’t get rigorously assessed and tested and we have suddenly raised our risk of having a poor strategy or a mediocre strategy that our competitors can easily copy.
So why don’t executive teams engage in conflict? There are 4 main things to consider.
- Lack of trust. Unfortunately building team trust is something that needs to be done in advance, it’s not a spur-of-the-moment mindset change at the point you need conflict. It takes time, but it can be done. See my post here on the type of trust needed and here how to develop it.
- Not realising why conflict is so important. Conflict is uncomfortable for many teams and unless there is a clear understanding of why we need to do something that’s uncomfortable we won’t do it. Consistent reminders of why conflict is important, especially as it relates to decision-making and strategy need to come from the CEO.
- Not knowing how to engage in conflict safely. There is a point on the scale between artificial harmony and non-constructive conflict that is the sweet spot of conflict according to Patrick Lencioni. To get to that point there will be times when team members tip into conflict that is not constructive. Explaining as an expectation and normalising it will help the team more confident with conflict.
4. Lack of cooperation as a team: This might sound strange, surely a team that cooperates doesn’t have conflict? No. It’s the opposite. If an executive team are cooperating then each team member is sacrificing something at some point. This feels uncomfortable. It creates conflict. And that’s a sign that cooperation is happening. Without cooperation you have a group of individuals working on their own goals in isolation from each other, they don’t need to cooperate and consequently won’t experience any conflict. One way to address this is to make every team member’s success dependent on the whole team’s success, they will then each cooperate in order to be successful. People will cooperate when it makes sense to them personally to do so.
Conflict matters and it can make the difference between a robust strategy or not.
To find out more about the importance of conflict in executive teams for robust strategy development and how to support your teams to engage in healthy, constructive conflict contact Sarah Roberson Consulting or book a discovery call.
