162. Agreeing to disagree (Condition #11: Conflict)

Building on the previous episode, a close cousin of psychological safety is conflict. One of the most obvious symptoms of a lack of psychological safety in a boardroom is a complete lack of conflict. Conflict doesn’t have to be toxic or personal. It can arise naturally and constructively from disagreement. Disagreement is pretty normal in an environment – like a boardroom – where there are complex decisions at hand with multiple viable paths to explore. If we all agree on a path right off the bat, then one of two things is happening: a bad kind of group think where it doesn’t occur to us to question each other and ourselves, or people feel unsafe expressing their doubts and concerns. I sometimes meet boards that can’t remember the last time they had any disagreement or conflict around a decision. That might sound like paradise to some CEOs out there, but to me it sounds like a place where effective decision-making goes to die. Conflict can be awful and scary – especially the bad kind of conflict where someone is being deliberately attacked. There’s no place for that in any decision-making environment. But conflict can also be inspiring, like the type of disagreements where we all sincerely want to understand multiple perspectives, especially the ones that run counter to our own beliefs. There may be some tension, but we can deal with it gracefully because we’re all fundamentally there for the same reason: to make the best decisions we can for the organization and its stakeholders.