Do your strategy sessions often lead to frustration and disconnect?
Conflict isn’t a bad word – it’s just what you do with it. I’ll go as far as to say productive conflict is a bonus during strategic planning.
Which of the following two buckets does your team fit?
Productive Healthy Conflict. When developing a strategic plan, we all want the end result to lead to a clear understanding of what’s to come and a clean implementation. Productive conflict leads to innovation, effective questioning, and an openness and willingness to share ideas. When it’s good and you can experience a respectful exchange and active listening – WOW! It’s freeing and an incredible experience. This is where true growth begins.
Destructive Unhealthy Conflict. If your strategic planning sessions are chock full of destructive conflict, you need to ask for help. Doing nothing will result in nothing. This type of conflict usually happens when there’s a lack of trust, unclear vision, and unhealthy communication. It looks like criticism, silence/yelling, and closed body language. Often, it’s just a bunch of people talking over each other or one person dominating the conversation. The outcome is wasted time, resources, and frustrated teammates.
Do you want to answer the above question differently?
Which bucket does your team fall into?
Here’s a little insight into how to cultivate or continue fostering healthy conflict:
Build trusted relationships
Cast a clear vision for the future
Foster continuing education in healthy communication
Build trusted relationships. Consistency is key. People always want to know what to expect from other people. Trust is earned over a period of time. Break it once and you can probably repair it. Break it multiple times and it can be nearly impossible to mend the relationship.
Cast a clear vision. We talked a lot about this in our last blog (Strategic Planning 101). If you don’t define the destination, it will define itself. So often people have differing opinions about what’s the best next step for the organization. It has to be defined to help your team set goals and objectives to reach a very clear future state.
Foster continuing education in healthy communication. To set your team up for increased productivity and improved collaboration teach the first how to communicate well! Research from Harvard, Carnegie Foundation, and Stanford Research Center have concluded that interpersonal skills make up 85-90% of overall career success (Research).
Productive conflict can help flush out a true strategy that will lead to the desired outcome you’re looking to achieve. It’s really a game changer. When teams are really good at it, there’s no negative connotation to it! They may say it feels more like collaboration than conflict.
Want to keep reading about productive and destructive conflict? Take a look at our blog (Conflict Productive or Destructive)
Keep in mind, all conflict really is differing opinions at a crossroads.
Struggling with conflict in your strategic planning sessions? Different behaviors and perspectives can derail discussions if not managed effectively. The Facilitator’s Guide gives you the tools to turn conflict into productive dialogue—so your team stays focused and aligned.
Get the guide and lead with confidence!
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