Is conflict inevitable in your executive team?

A debate sparked here on LinkedIn a little while back about the necessity of ‘conflict’ in teams. The person who posted it took the position that, in order for a team to be effective, there had to be conflict, where they bashed things out to arrive at the best decisions.

I didn’t agree with this at the time, and I still don’t agree with it. Today, I’m going to explain why I believe conflict in your executive team isn’t good. I’ll share why this doesn’t mean your team can’t disagree or engage in healthy debate. And I'll explain the crucial difference between the two. I’ll also outline some tips on how to move your executive team out of conflict if that's where they are.

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The most critical capacity in an executive team

This matters because when the interpersonal relationships in an executive team are characterised more by competition than collaboration, the team members often retreat to their functional areas or simply don’t tackle the tough stuff. In these situations, the team miss an opportunity to exercise or hone the most critical capacity required in an effective executive team: collective enterprise leadership.?

Why is this?

Let’s turn to how our nervous systems work to find part of the answer. ?

You may have heard of the autonomic nervous system. If it makes it easier, just replace ‘autonomic’ with ‘automatic’. It’s the part of us responsible for all those things that happen automatically, that we take for granted in the normal course of our day. Our heartbeat, digestion, our hair growing, or how our bodies miraculously heal when we cut ourselves or break a bone.

Our autonomic nervous system has two branches, and we behave and experience the world very differently depending on which one is ‘switched on’ at any given time. When we experience the reaction to fight or flight, we’re operating from our sympathetic nervous system (SNS). In contrast, our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) is the place where we feel safe and secure, allowing us to ‘rest and digest’. We don’t want too much of either (the extreme version of the PNS is to ‘freeze’ where we become numb or dissociate - not a not a great place to be). We also need the energy and drive that comes from an appropriate level of SNS.

The crucial point is that human beings are wired for connection. And all of the greatest achievements in the world are actually created by teams of people working in concert to solve a collective problem.

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Conflict and its impact on our capacities

I describe conflict as a situation where incompatible differences in interests, expectations or values occur in or between individuals or groups and is acted out by each side to secure their own interests.

In a company I worked with, a COO and CPO disagreed about staffing levels for a new part of the operation. But that didn’t mean they were in conflict. They may have disagreed. They may even have held their positions quite strongly in that disagreement. But they were not in conflict.

The COO’s disagreement with the CPO didn’t activate his threat system, and he didn’t feel the need to fight with her about it. Neither did it activate the CPOs, where she might have felt the need to ‘pull rank’. It was just a subject they disagreed on. They remained in a safe, connected place. And crucially, from that place, they were able to talk things through.

Conflict automatically activates our threat system. We don’t have a choice in this any more than we can stop a broken bone from healing. It’s not the subject matter that determines whether there’s a conflict or not. And it’s not the personalities. It’s whether team members act out to secure their own interests because this usually means there are winners and losers. It's this that activates our threat system.

What, then, helps executive colleagues remain connected and not conflicted?

Collective enterprise leadership.

If executive leaders operate from a place where they see their role as a shared responsibility for the success and thriving of the entire enterprise, they have conjoined their interests.

In this scenario, the success or failure of any part of the organisation is the success or failure of the entire executive team. Rather than holding a tight functional perspective where one function ‘wins’ against the other, the team has elevated the success criteria that everyone’s working to. It’s less likely that disagreements will sink into conflict, and more likely they remain in a creative space best suited to figuring out how best to proceed.

It’s problem-solving from the parasympathetic nervous system.

If you work in a team where you or your colleagues feel threatened, unsafe, or guarded, then it’s likely that the people in this team are operating from their fight-or-flight response. In so doing, they're ‘automatically’ shut off from their greatest capacities for creativity, problem-solving, and empathy.

How, then, do we cultivate collective enterprise leadership?

• Get clear that the purpose of the executive team is collective enterprise leadership.
• Align the tasks, membership and cadence of meetings towards this purpose. That is, ensure you’re doing the right things with the right people at the right time.
• Take time to discuss how you will have critical conversations. Not just the content of the conversation but the process you’ll adopt and the climate you want to create.
• Review. Review. Review. How did you do? What could you have done better? What will you do differently next time?

I'm an executive team coach working with CEOs and their executive teams to transform their impact and effectiveness. I write about executive team effectiveness and collective enterprise leadership and conduct research in this area.

I consult globally alongside an exceptional team at Waldencroft.

Check out my podcast, Advanced Executive Leadership or reach out if you'd like to know more.

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