Constructive conflict is vital to creating innovative teams

 

Teams produce better results when they cultivate a little positive criticism. FILE 

By  David Burkus

It’s tough to find examples of successfully challenging the boss, even tougher to find stories of leaders who specifically ask to be challenged.

The most common is a tale of Alfred P. Sloan at General Motors. During a meeting in which GM’s top management team was considering a weighty decision, Sloan closed the meeting by asking.” “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?”

Sloan then waited as each member of the assembled committee nodded in agreement.

Sloan continued, “Then, I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about.”

What Sloan was looking for was something many of us seek to eliminate: dissent.

There’s a lot of discussion on how leaders ought to cast a vision, gain buy-in, or steer a group to consensus. There’s a lot less discussion on how leaders ought to cultivate a culture that values the right kind of criticism.

Concept

That criticism is what Sloan was looking for, and what research tells us we need in order to make the best decision.

When ideas are still being developed or decisions still being considered, criticism and constructive conflict are vital to testing the value of the ideas and helping increase that value.

Conflict is an indicator that diverse viewpoints are being considered and that the competition for ideas is still ongoing. During this competition, ideas are strengthened through further research, consideration or through the blending of different ideas into one stronger concept.

By contrast, when everyone in a group always agrees, it can indicate that the group doesn’t have many ideas, or that they value agreement more than quality suggestions.

In one study of conflict and decision-making, participants were divided into three experimental conditions —control, brainstorming, and debate. Each team was tasked with generating ideas for the same challenge: how to reduce traffic congestion in the San Francisco Bay area.

The “control” teams were given no further instructions and told to develop as many ideas as possible. The “brainstorming” teams were given the traditional set of brainstorming rules, chief among them the notion that all judgment should be suspended and no idea criticised or debated.

The final, “debate” teams were given a set of rules similar to the “brainstorming” teams but instead of deferring judgment, they were to debate and criticise ideas as they were generated.

When the results were calculated, the winners were clear. While teams in the brainstorming condition did generate more ideas than the teams given no instructions, it was the teams in the debate condition that outperformed the rest, producing an average of 25 per cent more ideas than the other two conditions in the same period of time. Even after the teams had disbanded, the influence of criticism on generating ideas continued.