Do You Bury Your Head in the Sand about Conflict on Your Team?

In this series of posts, we’re discussing conflict and how to use it to benefit your team. Having already talked about changing your mindset to embrace creative abrasion in my last post ( Step One ), it’s time to move ahead.

On to Step Two: Acknowledge and discuss conflict that is already occurring, and determine its sources and impact.

Conflict is like a 12-step program; you first have to admit you have a problem. Putting your head in the sand about whether conflict is occurring on the team or not is pointless, because it absolutely exists. I have worked with more than my share of groups with leaders who assure me there is no discord on the team.

I remember reading a survey that asked employees what New Year’s resolution they most wanted their leaders to adopt.

Want to take a guess what it was? Do something about the conflict in the workplace!

Just because you don’t see people yelling at each other and overtly expressing their dislike of others doesn’t mean you don’t have some degree of tension. Explicit expressions of anger are not the only way that conflict plays out on a team; oftentimes, it has gone underground or been glossed over.

Conflict can surface in many silent, hidden ways: like the passive aggressive person , or the femme fatale. You know the kind of people I’m talking about: they pretend to be your friendly colleague, a real team player who appears to agree with the team’s consensus, but they are truly just feigning their cooperation and support. Instead, they will do just enough to get by, rather than giving their full energy and effort.

It can be very deflating to the whole team when one or more members act like they are on board and truly are not. These people use others’ trusting nature against them, and take advantage of the collaborative team in order to avoid responsibility and commitment. Not only does it defeat the person who has been stabbed in the back, it destroys—sometimes for good—that person’s belief in the goodness of others, and the team’s belief that this trust idea will ever fly.

So, who or what is eating your team alive? What behaviors are proving to be toxic to the very trust you are trying to establish? Is someone harming the team and getting away with it?

In next week's post, we’ll talk about various techniques for turning destructive conflict into productive conflict. Suffice it to say for now that the team leader needs to step up and address this situation head on, as quickly as possible.