Five Dysfunctions of a Team - #2 Fear of Conflict
Have you read "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team?"
I've been writing a short series in my weekly email, summarizing and reflecting on the book, and the feedback has been positive, so I’m sharing my cliff-note articles here.
I invite you to email me your comments or questions, as I'd love to hear about your experiences working on either a healthy or unhealthy team.
#2 Dysfunction - Fear of Conflict
If a team suffers from Fear of Conflict, they lack the ability to talk about issues without fear of personal attack.
Said another way, “Without trust, conflict is manipulation and politics. With trust, it’s the pursuit of the right answer.”
Dysfunction #1 “Absence of Trust” leads to Dysfunction #2 “Fear of Conflict.”
Fear of Conflict is evidenced by:
1) Lack of voiced disagreement (the key word is “voiced”)
2) Truth is shared in the secret “meeting after the meeting.”
3) Disagreement taken as personal attack.
Consequently, teams and organizations default toward the agenda of the powerful, often with unnecessary blind spots.
In other words, the strengths of the team are sacrificed on the altar of comfort.
Team members become content to keep quiet (after all, why speak up if nothing will change?)
Team members find safe people and spaces - side conversations, text-message threads, trips to grab coffee during break - to voice their secret opinions
The rare time disagreement is voiced, team members might feel something is wrong, and follow-up becomes more focused on calming the waves (i.e. quieting the dissenter) than getting to the truth.
When a team is characterized by Fear of Conflict, you can imagine how it quickly leads to Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment.
“Without trust, conflict is manipulation and politics.
With trust, it’s the pursuit of the right answer.”
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