The Better Leadership Team Show
The Better Leadership Team Show
Conflict as a Leadership Strategy
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In this Mike on the Mic episode, I break down why conflict isn’t a leadership problem—it’s a leadership strategy. I explain why most teams either avoid conflict or engage in the wrong kind, how that damages decisions and execution, and what leaders can do to build healthy, idea-based debate. I also share real client stories, clear ground rules, and eight practical tools you can use immediately to turn conflict into a competitive advantage.
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You can't build a powerful strategy with shallow polite conversations, great strategies are a product of friction. Two great ideas coming together and arguing it out. and a third better idea comes from it, that, that friction, that conflict allows us to challenge assumptions. To surface risks that maybe people aren't thinking about the real trade-offs. If we're saying yes to this, what are we saying no to?
Mike GoldmanYou made it to the better leadership team show, the place where you learn how to surround yourself with the right people, doing the right things. So you can grow your business without losing your mind. I'm your host and leadership team coach, Mike Goldman. I'm going to show you how to improve top and bottom line growth, fulfillment, and the value your company adds to the world by building a better leadership team. All right, let's go.
Common Problems with Conflict in Leadership Teams
Why People Avoid Conflict
The Strategic Value of Conflict
Client Stories: Real-World Examples
Ground Rules for Productive Conflict
Practical Tools for Healthy Debate
Conclusion: Embracing Conflict as an Asset
MikeI had a client say to me once, if we have six people in the room and we all agree, then we have five too many people in the room. Disagreement is critical. Most leadership teams see conflict as something to minimize or avoid, and they may not say that out loud. Because most people know conflict is good, but more kind of mentally, emotionally. People just naturally try to avoid conflict and I want you to see clearly conflict not just as a good thing, but conflict. As a GY. Conflict is a core tool. To help you make better decisions. It's a way to build stronger commitment on your team. It's one of the fastest ways to improve culture and improve performance. Teams that avoid conflict make. Zombie decisions. I love that phrase. I heard that from a client a long time ago. A zombie decision is a decision you think you made. It's kind of dead and done. You made that decision, but somehow it keeps coming back to life. Teams that avoid conflict have meetings after the meetings. You know, could you believe what he said? Could you believe that's the strategy we're going with teams that. Embrace the right kind of conflict, have sharper ideas, more ownership for those ideas, and faster execution. So what we're gonna talk about, what I'm gonna talk about on this episode today is why most teams get conflict wrong. How specifically does conflict drive culture and strategy? I'm gonna share three. Client stories with you and of course some simple practical ground rules and tools that you could use right away to help you. Really kind of leverage conflict as a strategy. And I wanna start with the problems. I think there are two big problems with conflict on leadership teams, and I'm gonna talk specifically about leadership teams because if you get it right there, it's gonna cascade down through the rest of the organization. So two big problems. Problem number one is not enough conflict. Problem number two is the wrong kind of conflict. So not enough conflict is, you know, a situation where everybody nods but disagrees in the hallway after the meeting. You know, again, the meeting after the meeting happens, it leads to poor decisions that never get challenged. Low commitment. You know, people saying, yeah, we'll do this, but let's see if that actually sticks. Or going back to their team and saying, you know, they decided to go with option B. Let's make the best of it, which leads to slow execution or half-hearted execution while everybody's just waiting for that decision or that strategy to fail. So problem number one is not enough conflict. Problem number two is the wrong kind of conflict, personality-based conflict, ego-based conflict, turf wars, protecting silos. The loudest voice versus the best idea wins. Drama and defensiveness instead of curiosity and learning. And I'd say of those two problems, not enough conflict and the wrong kind of conflict, I think I see, I know, I see problem number one, not enough conflict, probably two or three times as much as I see the wrong kind of conflict. But they're both problems on leadership teams and then within companies now. For the not enough conflict piece, why don't people speak up? and I think, and I've seen there are four reasons why people don't speak up enough in these meetings, in discussions, in debates. The first is lack of vulnerability. You know, if I say what I really think, um, is it gonna make me look stupid? If I say this, am I gonna upset someone? If I give feedback on this idea, are they really gonna take it in the right way or is it gonna come back and, you know, whack me over the head? You know, related to lack of vulnerability is the second reason people don't speak up, and that's lack of confidence. You know what, if I'm wrong? You know, I'll just, I'd rather stay quiet, than look stupid and be wrong. The third is lack of competence. You know, I don't know enough to add value to this conversation. And the fourth is lack of passion. You know, it's not worth it. It's not worth diving in. It's not worth rocking the boat. I'll just kind of go along. remember the behavior on your leadership team becomes the model across the organization. So if you avoid conflict at the top, don't be surprised when your managers and on down the organization do the same thing. So. Let's talk a little bit about why conflict is a strategic asset strategy actually lives in the debates you are willing to have. You can't build a powerful strategy with shallow polite. Conversations, great strategies are a product of friction. Two great ideas coming together and arguing it out. and a third better idea comes from it, that, that friction, that conflict allows us to challenge assumptions. To surface risks that maybe people aren't thinking about the real trade-offs. If we're saying yes to this, what are we saying no to? If we choose option A, what might the impact on our clients be or our team members, teams that debate. Vigorously debate, sometimes even emotionally, debate. Explore more options, catch blind spots, better anticipate unintended consequences of a decision. And when people feel heard and challenged, they may not get their way, but if they're heard and they're challenged in the right way, they may not get their way, but they buy in. You know, we argued hard in the room, but when we walked out, we were all in. So the question is not how do we reduce conflict, it's how do we upgrade the kind of conflict we have or upgrade the amount of conflict we have. And I wanna share a few kind of stories from the field with you. these are client examples. That show the impact of having or not having real conflict. and I had one team that I worked with for a number of years that had a very strong, smart, dominant CEO and in meetings with that leadership team and I worked with them on their quarterly planning, the CEO often. Spoke first, spoke most shut people down. you know, the team started looking to the CEO very often for the right answer as opposed to speaking up themselves. There was very little pushback. On the CEO or each other, very few new ideas coming for fear that the CEO might shut them down. Um, and there was definitely some kind of meeting after the meeting behavior and they'd get together, they'd make a decision, and then maybe two months later, someone would have the guts to bring up a challenge they had with that decision. So. We did a little unintended experiment and for one of our quarterly planning meetings, we couldn't change the date, but the CEO was not able to make the meeting and for a whole lot of reasons we decided to move the meeting forward without him. And it was really interesting to see how. The environment changed how the culture of the team changed, how the discussions changed. There were a whole lot more voices. No one was waiting for anybody else to speak. There was more disagreement, more exploration. People challenged each other's assumptions. They went deeper into risks and new opportunities, and at the end of that session. That two day session that we had together, there was so much more ownership of the plan that we came up with and the decisions we made. It wasn't looked at as the CEO's plan and we're all just here to execute it. It was looked at as our plan, the team's plan. From a culture standpoint, what I saw very clearly is there was way more psychological safety when the person who was perceived as having the final answer wasn't in the room, better ideas came up. So the implication of that unintended experiment for you CEOs listening. Is really think about how and when you speak in meetings and how you might shut other people down as opposed to opening up debate client story number two. I've spent many years working with a growing company with a CEO who is serious about scaling. The CEO's leadership team for a number of years was loyal, hardworking, but in a whole lot of cases they had limited experience to get to that next level of growth. The CEO and the team were trying to get to the CEO's experience, the CEO's skillset was so much. so much more elevated than the rest of the team, that the team was less comfortable challenging the CEO. What happened is because the team didn't have the ability, strategic level conversations kept drifting back to tactics. Because there weren't enough people in the room that were able to see around corners to what might go wrong that had the experience to make these kind of bigger stage decision. Most of them didn't have the confidence to say, I disagree. So over a number of quarters. The CEO made significant changes to the leadership team, hired people who had scaled companies before, hired people that had the backbone and skillset to really challenge and hire people that were more comfortable with healthy conflict. So what changed? Number one, the meetings were way more intense and sometimes more difficult, but in a good way. There was more debate, there was more arguing about ideas. The CEO got pushed on her assumptions, on her timelines resulting of that were clearer. Decisions, clearer priorities, bolder moves with eyes wide open as to what the impact of those moves might be. You can't get a great strategy from a room of people who can't or won't challenge each other, and sometimes you have to change the people to change the conversation. So my first story was about the importance of the CEO's role in generating or squashing conflict. The second story was how the quality of the team in the room impacts conflict. And for my third story, I wanna talk about the impact of one type of person in the room, or the lack of that person. I'm working with a leadership team that had one key member of the team who consistently challenged everyone else, questioned assumptions, pointed out risks. Nobody was pointing out. Challenge the CEO. Now Those challenges weren't always done in the most constructive way. You might even say that there were times that person hurt the culture of the team. As a result of that person is no longer with the team, which. Initially we may look at, we looked at as a good thing, but we didn't realize what we'd be missing, what that person did for the team. You know, that person consistently raised the level of conversation. They prevented groupthink from taking over. They modeled that it was safe to disagree. So when that leader left the company. On paper, the org start chart still looked good. they believed their culture would actually improve, but the dynamic in the room changed dramatically. They started having less robust debate, they started looking to the CEO. For all the answers. They started, they, they stopped challenging each other. There was a noticeable dip in the quality of decisions you see, losing that one truth teller fundamentally changed how the team thought. Now, that team may have made the right decision. in that person leaving the organization, but what they realized is they didn't have enough truth tellers in the room. Conflict is very often carried by a few brave people until you really build it into the culture. So if your one key challenger left tomorrow, what would happen to your culture of conflict? Would it remain or would it disappear with them? How many truth tellers, how many challengers do you have on your team? You better have more than one. Hopefully you have a team of challengers, so. What we want is more of the right kind of conflict. And as I said earlier, the right kind of conflict is idea based conflict. Conflict about assumptions, risks, trade-offs, data. They might feel intense, but they're energizing and they're productive personality. Based conflict is not productive. That's about ego or status. It's unsafe. We want more idea based conflict and less personality based conflict. So I wanna talk to you about some ground rules and a little bit about the CEO's role, and then we're gonna talk about some practical tools that you could implement this quarter. Well, let's start with some ground rules and I set ground rules when I work with my clients doing their quarterly and annual planning every time. And some of these are the same ground rules, but I'm kind of modifying them for the purposes of just focusing on conflict in this episode. So what are some of those ground rules for leadership teams to generate more productive, more idea-based conflict? Number one, assume positive intent. If you've listened to a bunch of my podcasts or have heard me speak, you know how important this idea of the law of positive intent is for me. We've gotta start with a belief that the person that we may disagree with. The person that we think has a bad idea. We have to start with the attitude and the belief that this person just wants what's best for the company. It's very easy to believe. Some people wake up in the morning and say, what could I do to screw things up today? I've never met anyone like that. I believe everyone's just trying to do the best they can with the resources they have. And even if there are people out there that are just trying to screw things up, it's still important to start with that attitude of they just want what's best for the company.'cause if you start with an attitude of they have negative intent. That's just gonna cause you to get angry, frustrated, lash out, more personality based conflict versus idea based conflict. If you believe a person just wants what's best for the company, but they have an idea you disagree with, instead of getting angry, it causes you to get curious. So number one, ground rule. Assume positive intent. Number two, attack issues, not people. Try to stay away. Stay away from labels like you always, or you never stay away from absolutes like that. So attack issues, not people. Third, everyone speaks once before anyone speaks twice. That kind of de privileges the loudest voices. And it helps quieter members contribute. I'm in some practical tools. I'll talk about one way to make sure everybody's idea gets out there first before anybody really dives in and spends a lot of time talking. Next, I think I'm up to number four, ground rule. No meeting after the meeting. If you have an issue, raise it in the room or schedule a follow up with the right people, but there's no meeting after the meeting, which means if someone pulls you aside and says, Hey, could you believe that it's your job to stop them? No meaning after the meeting, say it in the meeting and in the last ground rule. The fifth one is as a leadership team, there is one voice, one voice outside that room. You could debate hard inside the room, but once a decision is made, everyone supports it on the outside. Instead of saying, well, they, that's what they decided. You know, let's make the best of it. It's, we had a really powerful conversation. We made a decision. Let's figure out how we're gonna make it work. One voice outside that room. And before I share some practical tools, and I'm gonna share eight practical tools with you. I want to talk a little bit about the CEO's role, which we talked a bit about when I shared one of the client stories. But the CEO's role is they have to model this. They have to model being challenged, asking for a challenge. The CEO could feel strongly about something. But they should also say, Hey team. I know there's a lot of smart people around the table that disagree. What am I missing? Who you know who here disagrees with me? Because I know there are other great ideas out there. The CEO needs to reward dissent, thank people who push back even if you don't agree with them. Thank people. Who pushed back for having the confidence and the courage and the passion to push back and as CEO, please try not to speak first. Let other people frame the problem. Propose solutions before you weigh in. Because if you weigh in first as the leader of the leaders in the room, if you weigh in first. Very often your soft opinion comes across as a directive, whether you mean it or not. So let's talk about some practical tools, and I'm gonna talk about eight tools that you could use this week, this month, this quarter, to generate. More conflict, more healthy debate on your team. Number one is when making a decision, conduct a pre-mortem. So most of you have probably heard of a postmortem after something is executed and it either works really well or it doesn't work, or somewhere in between. A, a postmortem is where you look back and say, what did we do well? What didn't we do? Well? what? What should we do different next time? A pre-mortem is taking a strategy or a decision. and actually assuming the negative and saying, what if this is a miserable mistake? What are all the reasons that might be true? It's just a really productive way of challenging assumptions and dealing with obstacles before they happen and generating more debate about why this might not be the right decision, or even if it is, why it might not work. Yes. So tool number one, conduct a pre-mortem tool. Number two is have a red team and a blue team for major decisions. Create one subgroup within your team that argues for a proposed solution and one subgroup that argues against it. You know, it's kind of like being, you know, on the debate team in high school and college, and sometimes you have to argue for things you don't necessarily believe, but you've gotta really try to take the other side of it. And if you have a red team and a blue team, kind of a for team and an against team, it ensures that you've got some conflict going on about the idea. That's tool number two. Tool number three. Debrief conflict in real time. So after a heated discussion, ask some questions.'cause sometimes right after a heated discussion, it may not feel very good and it may not feel very good because it was personality based conflict, or it may not feel very good just because assumptions were challenged and it was idea based conflict. But even those are sometimes really hard and don't feel great. So debrief conflict in real time. After a heated discussion, ask the team how did that feel? What do you think we did well in that debate? Where did we cross the line? Where did we hold back? Normalize on the team, actually talking about how you talk to each other. Normalize talking about how you argue or get into conflict, not just what you argue about, but normalize talking about how you debate and how you argue. That was tool number three. Tool number four, after a debated decision. Do something I call cascading communication. End. Each meeting with, of all the things we discussed and all the decisions we made, what needs to be communicated to who or is it whom? By when? By whom? What needs to stay in this room, you know, it not only ensures that decisions are clearly communicated. But it also ensures that half baked decisions that should stay at the leadership team level,'cause maybe that needed more debate. It makes sure they don't leak out and cause fear and confusion. It also makes sure sometimes half the team thinks you debated to a conclusion and half the team thinks you're still debating. Cascading communication helps align people around where you are in that decision. Tool number five, have a quarterly conflict health check-in, similar to what I said in tool number three, which is debrief conflict in real time. This one is not in real time. It's once a quarter asking questions like, Hey, are we avoiding any conversations? How safe do we feel challenging each other? Where are we having the meeting? After the meeting? What do we need to talk more about that maybe we're afraid to talk about? One of the things I do at the beginning of each of my quarterly and annual planning meetings with clients is I have pulse check questions. And these are some great pulse check questions to ask to make sure the team all feels like they are doing well with this idea based conflict. Tool number six. Is using flip charts and post-it notes to get all ideas out. Remember, I, one of the things I said before in, in the ground rules every, is everybody talks once before anybody talks twice. One of the great tools to use to do that is to ask a question about an idea, a decision, a strategy. Have everybody write their answer or their idea. On a Post-it note or several post-it notes, get it up there on the flip charts, look at all of the answers before you dive in to a debate. It allows even the quietest folks in the room to get our, their ideas out. You know, just as much as the folks that are more comfortable talking or that have a tendency to dominate the discussion. That's tool number six. Tool number seven, be clear about the decision making process. Very often a team dives into a debate without knowing what their goal is. You know, is our goal to debate this so that we can build consensus in this room and come up with an answer based on consensus. Is our goal to debate this? And then one person in the room who is accountable for this, that one person will hear everybody and make a decision? Are we not even trying to make a decision? Is this really just about brainstorming? So someone or the team could make a decision at a later time. Be clear about the decision making process before you enter into that debate. Tool Number eight, ask yourself, do I have the right people? Remember one of my client stories was about a company that didn't have the right people in the room to bring the discussions up to a strategic level to challenge the CEO. If people lack the expertise, experience, or confidence to contribute to strategic debate, you may have a talent problem, not just a conflict skills problem. So assess your team's talent. I have done dozens of podcast episodes on my talent density framework and how to assess people's talent. So I won't go into details there, but assess the team's talent. Consider whether you need some changes on your team to get the right voices in the room, to have the right conflict. So let's wrap this up. Eight ideas, five different ground rules, modeling for the CEO. But let's end this by challenging you to do a quick self-diagnostic, some questions for you to figure out where you need to focus. Are you having the meeting? After the meeting often on your leadership team? When's the last time someone strongly disagreed with you or others in the meeting? If you're the CEO, do people challenge you or do they mostly nod and go along? If one key challenger on your team left would debate continue or would debate disappear. If you want a clear, structured way to look at this and other characteristics of building a great leadership team in conflict is such an important characteristic. You may wanna check out my Breakthrough Leadership Team assessment that I mentioned on this show before. You know, it covers culture and vulnerability and trust, talent, and structure, how well the team executes and communicates with each other. You could take this assessment yourself, but you're gonna get five x the value if you take it with your team. And if you go to Mike-Goldman/blt which stands for Breakthrough Leadership Team, Mike-Goldman/BLTassessment go take that assessment and look for this or other areas where your team may be having a challenge. So remember, conflict is not a problem to get rid of. It's an asset we've gotta invest in and grow. You need the right people in the room. You need the right ground rules. You need the right tools to debate in a healthy way. And remember, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. And one of the most powerful ways to build a great leadership team is to build one that's comfortable in conflict and challenging each other. Go make it happen. I look forward to seeing you again soon.