The more difficulty a leader has in perceiving and dealing with their own conflicts, the more their team will suffer. A leader who faces and resolves their own conflicts is prepared and willing to handle those of the group. Conflicts are inherent to life in a group. Depending on how conflict is managed and confronted, it can produce positive or negative, constructive or destructive consequences.
Conflict as a Constant in Team Life
The team's trajectory should be understood as a continuous succession of conflicts, because no group is free from them, for a variety of reasons. With each resolution of a conflict, a new stage in the team's history begins.
The word conflict is generally seen as something negative, despite having several positive functions: breaking routine, mobilizing efforts for improvement and renewal, challenging the accommodation of ideas and paradigms, uncovering hidden issues, stimulating creativity, encouraging group interaction, sharpening perception and reasoning, and enabling the exchange of perspectives. Differences, at their best, are powerful engines of growth and evolution.
The Courage to Face Conflict
Every conflict must be confronted and reframed so that we can extract greater learning and move forward, rather than isolating ourselves and stagnating within our own mental models, which need stimulation to be reviewed, renewed, and expanded. That expansion is what allows us to see where and how we can evolve.
A group without any negative or conflicting aspects is a work of fiction. Excessive cohesion, groupthink, and the Abilene paradox are some of the difficulties that compromise group performance. It takes courage to acknowledge conflicts, willingness to address them, skill to resolve them, and wisdom to read their meanings and purposes.
Conflicts as Invitations to Grow
Conflicts invite us toward improvement, evolution, and progress. It is up to us to make every effort to extract the lessons, absorb them, and grow. When a leader approaches this with maturity and openness, the whole team moves forward together.