The Good Fight: How Conflict Can Help Your Idea

The Good Fight: How Conflict Can Help Your Idea

2:27 PM Tuesday December 14, 2010

I confess, I don't much like conflict. And I have come to see how that can really get in my way.

Some leaders value consensus so much that they feel they need complete agreement on everything. They stamp out disagreements over the issues because they fear their subordinates might get their feelings hurt, some teammates will harbor grudges, or the team could lose cohesiveness. Without commenting on the general wisdom of this leadership philosophy, I will say that avoiding conflict can actually be ruinous for achieving buy-in for an idea.

This may seem counterintuitive. After all, if you have a great idea, you present it as persuasively as possible with the aim of achieving consensus, right? You might be quick to hush dissenting team members as they debate specific measures of the proposal, wishing instead to fast-forward to the moment when you can take an up-or-down vote, win a simple majority, and move on, victorious. But conflict concerning the issues at hand can be constructive, and even essential! Conflict engages. If people have no opinions, no objections, and no emotions, it usually means they don't care. And you'll be hard-pressed getting their help when you have to actually implement your idea.

Moreover, let's admit that most meetings are boring, and people spend a remarkable amount of this time daydreaming or typing on their blackberries beneath the table. When this is the case, conflict shakes people out of their daze in a novel way. They pay attention, which gives you the opportunity to say why your idea really is valuable and explain it in a way that wins over hearts and minds.

In a previous post, I recommended to you to "let the lions in." That advice applies to conflict, even if it isn't coming from an angry lion. If you don't believe me, try this experiment next time you're in a meeting where someone is advocating for an idea: If some conflict emerges, watch the group and see how people sit up and the energy level rises. Disagreement may seem like a bad thing — but it grabs people's attention.

There is, of course, a risk. Worst case scenario, the idea does die. But if it is a nontrivial idea, it will almost certainly need a lot more support than a non-enthusiastic group voting 51% in your favor. My research and experience show that proposals approved in such a way often die a slow and very painful death. (Need an example? Just look at the United States Congress.)

Good ideas need active, engaged support for a considerable time until they reshape how we think about and do things for the better. To make positive, lasting change, you need to energize people, and at a deep enough level to make buy-in — then ultimate implementation — achievable. And you need conflict to accomplish that.

http://blogs.hbr.org/kotter/2011/01/show-some-respect.html