Fostering a Culture of Productive Conflict

By Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Leadership by Design – August 2022

For my MBA, I have started work on my thesis which will focus on team dynamics and what makes for a high performing team.  It truly is a topic that is near and dear to my heart and so important in building high performing teams that trust each other to do the right thing every time.

This weekend, I started interviews with key leaders.  And the first interview was able to interview one of my favorite contrarians. This individual is a Tech Executive at Microsoft who manages a global team of 1000+ technology professionals.

She believes that high performing teams have the courage to challenge the status quo.  The way they do so is to encourage healthy debate. Her words, “Healthy debate improves outcomes and prevents bad outcome.”

Healthy debate or productive conflict also bring teams closer together.  It eliminates egos which can be walls and levels the playing field.

She provided an article (see below) that resonated with her and her approach with her global team at Microsoft.

The article is called Fostering a Culture of Productive Conflict and I tried to attach it with no luck, so I cut / pasted it instead.

Fostering a Culture of Productive Conflict 

It might come as a surprise to find that even in this era of polarization and rancorous discourse in all realms of society, it is increasingly difficult to have open and productive disagreements at work. Nearly 20% of surveyed tech employees say that they don’t speak up to their managers, at all. More often than not, even managers opt for inaction because change is uncomfortable or because taking action might get them into trouble; it’s safer to do nothing. So, it’s hard for senior leaders to get the full, unvarnished truth, and they can end up making big decisions based on half-truths or incomplete data.

They are missing opportunities to learn from the frontline about what is not working. Other reasons to encourage people to offer different points of view: Healthy debate amplifies innovation. And repressing alternative opinions hurts employee engagement and retention.

Here are ways to encourage healthy debate and create a culture of productive disagreement.

The Solution

01. ModelNew Norms - When it comes to nurturing a culture of productive disagreement, leaders can play a highly influential role. By integrating the concepts of openness and healthy debate into their language, they can institutionalize new norms. Their actions can help to further reset the rules of engagement by serving as a model for employees to follow. Leaders should incorporate the concept of productive debate into corporate value statements and the way they address colleagues, employees, and shareholders. They should also highlight—and repeat often—values such as “truth seeking” and “debate” as priorities when undertaking major initiatives and as part and parcel of the desired end state in transformation efforts.

02. Encourage two-way communication- Leaders make most, if not all, decisions and convey those decisions down through the ranks. Employees are expected to adopt new ways of working after “consuming” these communications. And they consume a lot of them: in the digital era, employees can be exposed to 2.3 million words and numbers over a three-month period; under these conditions, word-dense, one-directional messages about change efforts fall flat. But employees today want to take part in creating solutions—and they have good ideas. To create something more valuable through change, companies must tap into employees’ creative minds versus merely delivering orders.

03.   Use tools to instill the values of debate- To help promote a culture based in truth, leaders can evaluate the prevalence of debate in their organization’s culture and team dynamics. They can use checklists on a weekly or monthly basis to assess whether teams embody and actively instill the values of debate in their organization. Among the useful questions on those checklists: Is a broad set of voices engaged in developing our recent initiatives? Did you share a contrarian point of view? Do you get the truth from employees without resorting to anonymous surveys?

04. Create a sense of psychological safety- Psychological safety is the shared belief that it is safe to speak up in the workplace and take risks without fear of being blamed. It creates a climate of mutual trust and respect in which employees can test the status quo and challenge ideas. In a psychologically safe environment, employees are more likely to take risks, admit mistakes, and learn from failure. Psychological safety is essential to unlocking an individual’s potential. And a Google research project has found that psychological safety is the top driver of team success. 

05.    Encourage people to share bad news- Sharing bad news can break down barriers and expand the pool of contributors to problem solving. Energy otherwise spent saving face can be channeled into constructive use. But bad-news sharing will take root only if leaders practice it. Leaders can elicit candid responses. Instead of asking team members how they are doing (typical reply: fine!), they can ask what keeps them up at night or what their biggest challenges are. Others can share ways they have successfully overcome such challenges. Leaders deeper in the organization can ask the same questions of their teams. As a result, people will raise concerns and surface problems earlier.

What do you think about the article and about productive disagreements? 

Is it something you practice with your peers?  How about your leadership? 

This week, think about your views on the topic and let me know your thoughts.

Also, let me know how I can help in promoting and leading an environment that embraces productive disagreements and speaking up. 

Truthfully, I want your individual voices to be heard! 

Happy Saturday all,

-srt