A Leader's Guide to Healthy Debate

Why Embracing Conflict is Your Key to Leadership Breakthrough

Here's your leadership cheat sheet for this week!

Each weekly email helps you to positively influence your team to adopt a vital high-performance behaviour!

I'm all about providing actionable insights, so don't miss the team exercise at the bottom of this newsletter - perfect as the ice-breaker for your next weekly team meeting.

Creating a team atmosphere where honesty and directness are not just encouraged but celebrated is key to unlocking true team potential.

It's about fostering a culture where team members feel empowered to speak openly about key topics and issues, knowing that their candor will lead to constructive outcomes rather than conflict.

[5-minute read]

THIS WEEK'S HIGH-PERFORMANCE BEHAVIOUR

"Team members are candid and direct in their discussions of key topics or issues."

If your team is not demonstrating this behaviour consistently, it likely indicates a fear of conflict within the team.

Fear of conflict isn't just avoidance of disagreement; it also results in missing out on growth...

Healthy conflict stirs creativity, sharpens ideas, strengthens bonds. Leaders who fear conflict leave these golden opportunities untouched.

When team members feel safe to be candid and direct with each other, the team won't miss out on high-performance dynamics like:

• Stimulating creativity: Healthy conflict encourages everyone to think out of the box, fostering creativity and innovative thinking.
• Refining ideas: Disagreements often lead to discussions, which help to scrutinise, refine, and improve the quality of ideas.
• Strengthening team relationships: By navigating conflict productively, your team will build stronger, more trusting relationships, enhancing the overall effectiveness of the team

Next, let's look at how you can influence this behaviour in your team!

Consider Lucas’s story:

Lucas, a tech entrepreneur, faced the common dilemma of fearing direct conflict within his team. He understood the importance of open, candid discussions but struggled with the thought, fearing it might fracture the trust he'd built.

This was more than just altering meeting formats; it was about facing his fears head-on and navigating the individual personalities that shaped his team's dynamics.

Addressing the team as a whole was straightforward for Lucas, but engaging them individually presented a more formidable challenge. To address this, he introduced a 'Candid Hour'—a weekly session for open discussions on any subject, however contentious.

Despite initial apprehension, these sessions soon transformed the team's dynamics, fostering a deeper understanding of individual concerns. Introducing the 'Candid Hour' was a leap of faith for Lucas, confronting fears that it might cause discord or undermine his leadership. However, this vulnerability opened up significant growth opportunities for both him and his team.

This direct approach yielded unexpected benefits, including improved problem-solving and strengthened trust. Clients observed a more cohesive team, leading to enhanced outcomes for the startup.

Lucas's experience demonstrated that difficult conversations, particularly through personal engagement, could foster innovation and team cohesion.

This story highlights the power of addressing individual team members personally, proving that confronting fears can lead to both professional excellence and personal satisfaction.

BEHAVIOUR DRIVERS

It's not enough to simply tell your team members not to fear conflict, or to be more candid and direct with each other...

The only way to influence real, long-lasting behaviour change is to address the root cause of their behaviour, which are: Unconscious Assumptions.

Unconscious assumptions influence how we interpret the situations we find ourselves in, which in turn evokes emotions that influence our behaviour.

When we replace limiting assumptions with more empowering ones, our emotions, and in turn, our behaviour naturally improves because we're interpreting the situations we find ourselves in more effectively.

To foster a culture of transparency and inclusion, it's essential to identify and transform the beliefs that hinder open communication and mutual respect:

LIMITING ASSUMPTIONS

? "If I speak up, I might face retaliation or backlash." - This fear suggests a lack of trust in the team's respect and fairness.

? "The team values and welcomes my opinions and contributions, no matter what it is." - This belief highlights the team's respect and appreciation for diverse thoughts, fostering an inclusive environment where everyone's opinion is valued.

? "Being too honest could damage relationships in the team." - This assumption indicates uncertainty in the strength and resilience of team relationships.

? "The team becomes stronger with honesty and transparency." - This perspective reinforces the idea that open dialogue strengthens team bonds and promotes growth through mutual accountability for honesty.

? "My input might not be valued or taken seriously." - This reflects doubt in the team's appreciation of diverse perspectives.

? "My input doesn't have to be perfect to be taken seriously by my team." - This belief encourages a culture where team members feel confident to share ideas, mitigating insecurities about worth or competence, and highlighting a non-judgemental, supportive environment.

HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAM EXERCISE

It's vital that your team becomes aware of any counterproductive beliefs and assumptions which may have become part of the team's culture, preventing them from feeling they can engage candidly and openly.

Start your next team meeting with this quick, powerful exercise (15 minutes duration):

1. Begin by introducing the contents of this resource. It's recommended to forward this email to them ahead of the meeting so they can consider the behaviour, concepts, and assumptions.
2. Ask team members to sit or stand in a circle, ensuring everyone can see and hear each other. Create a psychologically safe "container" by setting some ground rules. These can include:Every opinion is valid and should be respected.Listen actively without interrupting when someone is speaking.This is a judgement-free zone. The aim is not to critique, but to understand each other better.
3. Invite each team member to think of a time that they had one of the unconscious assumptions mentioned above, in the context of work, and preferably in the context of working with the team.
4. Starting with you, or a volunteer, have each team member share their experience: the assumptions and emotions they faced, the outcome that resulted from it, and the wisdom that grew from that experience.RULE: No-one is allowed to speak or interrupt while each person shares.TIP: Openly use a timer to limit each share to 2-3 minutes to keep the discussion focused.
5. After everyone has shared, invite the group to identify common themes or lessons learned from their experiences, emphasising the benefits of engaging candidly and openly, and/or the opportunity cost of not doing so.
6. Close the exercise by thanking everyone for their participation, and feel free to summarise any key takeaways.

This short but powerful ice-breaker exercise builds trust and facilitates a collective learning experience.

The group setting fosters a sense of unity and understanding, allowing team members to challenge limiting assumptions and emotions together.

Build this into your weekly team meeting (each week I provide new material for this, spotlighting a distinct high-performance behaviour) - you'll be surprised to find how much more open your team becomes each time.

Comment to let me know your team's experience!

I hope you've found this valuable and useful!

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