How Conflict Can Be An Engine Of Progress

Stagnation can spell the death knell of businesses of all shapes and sizes, across all industries and sectors. Without change, without innovation, without forward thinking, organisations are sure to be left behind, floundering in the wake of their more creative competitors.

Now, when it comes to identifying areas ripe for improvement, the more typical sources of inspiration include the likes of customer reviews, employee feedback, brainstorming sessions, data analytics and so on. 

But what if we told you that conflict could actually be a force for good, helping you to revolutionise your business and make long-lasting changes for the benefit of one and all?

The dreaded ‘C’ word…

Perhaps unsurprisingly, conflict has something of a bad reputation, particularly from a business perspective. It inevitably makes us think of unhappy employees, angry customers, overworked and overwrought line managers and leaders… and this, in turn, makes us view it as something entirely negative, rather than something that could be turned to our advantage.

But if you choose to embrace conflict in a healthy way, you will soon see that it can help drive innovation and it can help your organisation progress in all sorts of ways, allowing you to veer away from the norm and look at matters in a whole new light.

In fact, research even goes so far as to show that reducing team harmony in the workplace can help boost creativity and innovation. One study, for example, suggests that when two disruptors of harmony (project uncertainty and diversity) are present, creative performance seems to be enhanced. 

And this paper looking into how conflict and conflict asymmetry impacts creativity in interdisciplinary teams found that task conflict actually has a positive relationship with creativity, while relationship conflict had a negative relationship with it.

Referencing Tuckman’s model on high-performing workforces, every team needs some conflict (storming) before rebuilding and eventually performing at a high level.

So how can you go about embracing conflict in a healthy, more positive way?

One of the best ways to approach this new way of working is to foster a more open culture within the workplace to help drive innovation. When people feel psychologically safe at work, they’ll feel more confident in putting forth their ideas and opinions without being judged.

Helping people to be more open to diversity of views and perspectives will inevitably mean a more mature culture with strong psychological safety… and this is when you’ll start to see innovative thinking increasingly come to the fore. Before you know it, your progress will be off the charts!

Avoiding conflict may seem like the way to go but this can actually lull you into a false sense of security, making it feel as though everything is running as it should, when actually you’re starting to fall behind.

Your success truly lies in your ability to accept the fact that conflict is inevitable, yes, but also that it’s necessary and beneficial, as long as it’s approached and led in a mature way, valuing different opinions with curiosity rather than judgement.

Want to find out more? Get in touch with the WhyNot Partnering team today to see what we can achieve together.