Conflict is part of design
Conflict is not bad. It is necessary for forward progress, and is a sign that people are invested and care about the subject. In the words of Adam Grant, “The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy. If you’re in a group where no one disagrees, it’s because people don’t care enough to speak their mind.” Conflict occurs when choices are being made, and design is about making choices. Ergo, conflict is inherent to any productive design process. The challenge for leaders is to embrace conflict, while avoiding the toxic and disruptive side effects. Conflict is a healthy part of the process of design. The bigger and more mature the team, the greater the chances that there will be conflict.
The design process, at a crude level starts with an idea, that is repeatedly refined before it becomes a solution. And conflict exists throughout and takes different forms, it can validate and elaborate and nourish ideas or kill or wound them. Fundamentally conflict creates the justification for decisions. The skill a designer must master is how to mitigate the toxic effects of conflict, in the pursuit of healthy conflicts. Every relationship in every team in every workplace will have conflict and disagreements from the big things like who to hire, to the smaller issues like what to put first on the agenda.
There has been extensive research demonstrating that conflict has a major effect on team cohesion and performance. However, the key issue is not how often there are conflicts, but how it is managed. The goal for designer is not to have less conflict; it’s to have the right kind of conflict. There are many variants of conflict, but let’s keep it simple for now. Organisational psychologist Adam Grant suggests we should learn to identify two fundamental types of conflict – relationship and task.
Relationship conflict
Relationship conflict occurs when people disagree about opinions, have personality clashes, different preferences or ways of interacting. Annoyed with a colleague because it feels like he’s always talking down to you? That’s relational conflict – an emotion driven response that puts person against person.
Task conflict
Task conflict is where creativity happens. It is necessary for team productivity and innovation to flourish, it is where we disagree about approaches, design solutions, research methods and decisions regarding resources, work assignments, policies etc. Task conflicts are person and person against the problem.
Know thy conflict
It sounds simple enough to see the difference, but I can assure it is not. Humans come to conclusions based on assumptions that lead us to biased beliefs and misguided judgments – which turn leads to conflict unless resolved. Or in other words what can start as a task conflict escalates into a relationship conflict. Conflict can be both beneficial and detrimental to our teams’ dynamics. Conflict can be beneficial in environments where different views are valued and needed for a broader understanding of a design challenge. However, when conflict revolves around a task subject that people feel is more binary, at that point it can evolve into a relationship conflict.
Knowing when conflict is beneficial and when it has the potential to lead to break your design team and can be a powerful skill to bring into a team. When harnessing conflict it’s important to comfortable distinguish between task and relationship conflict. But to make it difficult both are often present in a team, are often related, and if left unresolved can lead to serious issues.
Let’s be honest most designers like a debate and they can discuss tasks and how to accomplish them all day. This type of conflict can become heated (except if your Swedish, but more on that later). The important skill as leader to bring to these talks is to enable everyone’s voice to heard, encouraging different perspectives and collectively valuing all of them. The ultimate goal as the facilitator is to manage the task conflict to eventually arrive at a solution, without isolating any individual from contributing to it.
Facilitating task conflict
Different brands, products, teams and projects create different task conflicts. Whilst relationship conflict can result in broken relationships, task conflicts only results in a teams debating endlessly only. Endless debating is an early warning signal of issues in a design team, it can signal that a team are hearing each other to only reply to it. They lack skills to listen, build a connection and resolve things – what surprises me is that it is a common trait in designers.
We are of course coming to the bit about Active Listening – that rare ability in designers to hear and understand what someone else is really saying. Active Listening is simple enough in principle, pay attention and focus on every word. Pay attention to the points being made and do not start preparing your response as they speak! But when you do respond start by paraphrasing what you’ve heard, including any emotions you sensed. I can assure you that it takes practice, patience and persistence to master.
Of course Active Listening alone will not resolve every conflict. Some simply cant be solved immediately and if left unchecked can spiral into a more serious issue. To avoid this I encourage teams to write unresolved task conflicts down as problem-solution statement and share them. This approach forces a conflicted team to define the conflict and articulate possible solutions clearly. The act of writing the conflict, stress tests their convictions and surfaces assumptions, but all the time keeping the discussion task-focused.
To set up a problem-solution statement system, simply create a chat channel for problem-solution statements. Define what a problem-solution statement means and remind the team to bring their unresolved problems to the designated channel. Explain to the team that presenting their problem-solution statement will keep them focused to resolving design challenges and not personal assumptions.
Managing relationship conflict
Relationship conflict occurs at a personal level when individuals confront opinions that are different to their own. The conflict challenges them to evaluate fundamentally personal ideals and perspectives within themselves. This type pf conflict is harder to spot as it can occur across a spectrum of behaviours, ranging from the obvious personality clash to unfair treatment and harassment. It can be obvious like a heated argument or less so – like intentionally excluding an individual from a meeting.
As design leader we especially need both the skills and confidence to intervene early before they escalate. Handling relationship conflict in a proactive and positively not only boosts team’s morale it retains valuable talent. This all starts with a reflection on management style and and investment in understanding your team:
Understand what really matters to your team?
What are an individuals personal trigger for stress?
Do your designers feel secure and supported?
Is there a shared sense of belonging and inclusion?
It goes without saying that building a strong relationship with a team will enable you spot conflict early. However you also need to engage in challenging conversations as soon as you begin to observe early signs of relationship conflict. It will be almost impossible to recover as a leader if you’re giving poor behaviour tacit approval by tuning a blind eye to it.
Consensus not conflict
Do you know that feeling, the one where you leave a meeting where we all discussed something important for a solution, we all considered the pros and cons, and we all agreed on a resolution! Now imagine doing this everyday, sounds like paradise right? Welcome to Sweden’s temperate and open-minded consensus driven business culture, characterised by easy communication, low internal competition and anti-hierarchical organisation structures, it’s like being in a lovely committee meeting. Like all statements about national traits, this description is a massive oversimplification.
However, conflict avoidance is a real thing in Swedish design culture and creates radically different dynamics. Swedish designers often remain silent and try to avoid disputes or deliver their views in soft words and phrases that skirt around but never confronting an issue head on. The result is a distinctive Scandi style that is characterised by a minimal, clean approach that effortlessly combines functionality with beauty. Devoid of anything superfluous; showcasing only the essential elements.
Scandi designs is effortlessly beautiful, and utterly boring
Yes I think it’s beautiful, however when it all looks beautiful – It’s boring. When everyone agrees in the room, the tension that can deliver standout design dies. David Ogilvy once said, “Search all the parks in all your cities. You’ll find no statues of committees.” He was emphasising the importance of the individuals in moving ideas forward. And in a culture that avoids standing out, this has proved to be a real problem for me.
Swedish design is I think in need of for what Jonah Berger, the author of Invisible Influence, called the designated dissenters. A team member whose role is to play the devil’s advocate even with their team. Pointing out holes, bringing alternate ideas and, ultimately disrupting the group think of the collective. I will let you know how it goes when I try it out.