Healthy Conflict

It seems to me that I have been asked about half a dozen times over the past week, ‘How is your relationship with ______?” – in which ______ was a team member or stakeholder in a project that is altering the customer experience.   The way in which I answered these questions began to fall into a pattern, and it seems to be culminating into a general method of assessing working relationships.  So I’ve mulled over it a bit more, and here’s what I have come up with …

In general, my assessment of a working relationship seemed to be based largely on the level of conflict and the friction of negotiating toward a common goal and a strategy that was mutually acceptable.    I’ve commented before that I spend at least double the amount of time persuading others to support a design than I do crafting it, and all things considered that might be a gross understatement.

But to lurch back toward the point I was setting out to make, a good working relationship seems to be based on the manner in which the work product is negotiated, and I think I’ve arrived at a ratio of healthy conflict that defines a good working relationship:

• 75% of the time, the other person trusts in my expertise and accepts my decisions.
• 20% of the time, the other person questions my expertise, demands that I explain a decision, and then either accepts it or negotiates to a mutually acceptable modification.
• 5% of the time, the other person completely ignores my expertise, digs in, and insists on having things done their way.

Here’s the reasoning I think that this ratio is about right:

75% Faith

A project team is assembled of people from certain areas – software developers, systems analysts, product managers, operations managers, marketers, and the like – each of whom is an expert in their domain of knowledge.  While they all contribute to the definition of the final solution, the negotiation between them must entail a high level of respect for the expertise of other people.

Said another way, a database programmer may have a suggestion for the way in which the product should be marketed – but should ultimately defer to the judgment of the marketer in decisions pertaining to marketing.  Just as the marketer may make a suggestion about the way in which he things the database should be schematized, but ultimately defer to the expertise of the database programmer.

Even so, I don’t think that an expert, however experienced and knowledgeable, should ever demand or expect complete faith in 100% of all instances.   If that ever happens, he has intimidated his colleagues to the point where they do not feel that they can question something they find to be  unusual, which is not by any means the sign of a healthy relationship.

20% Debate

Debate should account for about 20% of a healthy relationship.  This need not be a protracted argument to come to a decision, but may be as simple as someone asking “why do you propose to do it that way?” followed by an “oh, I see” after a brief explanation has been tendered.

A certain level of debate is healthy, in that it causes an expert to check himself from time to time, and be ready to explain any decision he has made.  Where that doesn’t happen, experts tend to become high on their own fumes and to be less diligent in their work, knowing that they will never be questioned.

There is also the possibility that a non-expert will contribute “out of the box” thinking that an expert will often fail to exercise – because expertise in an area is often based on assumptions of what will and will not work, and it sometimes takes a person who doesn’t accept that a given idea is impossible to get an expert to pause to explore whether it actually might be possible.

A lack of debate can also be a sign of a lack of engagement – a person who doesn’t care about something will not bother to ask questions or make arguments.  Or worse, it is a sign that the “expert really isn’t contributing any expertise, and is telling the rest of the group things that they already know.

5% Inflexibility

The last mode of interaction, inflexibility, is not at all healthy, but I have nonetheless decided to include it because it is entirely inevitable.   People in positions of power like to exercise their authority at times, and even the most complaisant and respectful leader still feels the need to wield his power to see his orders carried out without question.

That’s not to say that inflexibility is the sole demesne of executives and managers – as there are quite a few little tyrants in the lower echelons, people who insist on having their way as a method of feeling empowered, or who sense that if they do not interfere in the work of others they will be perceived as non-contributors.  While they are largely gnats in the grand scheme of things, their buzz can be quite the nuisance at times.

So perhaps the ideal ratio would eliminate this manner of behavior altogether, but I don’t expect it is a realistic expectation to do so, and as such I’ve included it as a “no more than” percentage rather than a desirable goal.

Possible Broader Applicability

While I have meditated on this in the context of a project team, my sense is that this notion of conflict and the ratio of types might be germane to other working relationships as ell: superior-to-subordinate, peer-to-peer, and so on.   But admittedly I haven’t thought much about that broader context, so this is merely a musing without much deliberation.