Certainly, the line between a healthy conflict and an unhealthy conflict can be a slippery slope, so here are some tips to promote healthy team conflicts. Each project decision consists of two parts: the content of the decision and the method by which the decision is made. The content is what was decided, usually on the design of the product itself. The method can be a technique or a justification. She answers the question: “How did we make this decision?” One of the biggest mistakes made by leaders is to avoid team conflicts. Yes, conflicts may be uncomfortable, but this tension is often a very natural, if not necessary, part of real progress and team engagement. A great analogy is the dating process. When we heard about a couple who had two weeks of long wind, and then we went to Las Vegas to get married, because they were so “in love”, we see red flags and we don`t see much hope of a lasting union. Why not? Partly because they got married during the honeymoon period and have not yet had the chance to work through the natural asperities that involve relationships, disagreements over housework, interrogative parents, finances, toilet seats, how to load the dishwasher, etc. Large or small, these conflicts are inevitable — instead, they are a necessary part of relational maturity.
In fact, the work of these conflicts is part of the glue that eventually consolidates the relationship. If designers don`t understand direction, they don`t have clarity about the underlying principles that fuel design. Although not all design processes articulate these principles in a concrete way, the project manager is responsible for understanding the designers. Good leads help their design teams internalize them so they can make decisions based on these principles. For example, a designer may waste time (i.e. money) organizing screens for a website that do not follow an implicit set of principles established at the beginning of the project. The lack of common understanding may be a common understanding that generally involves overcoming these obstacles first and then entering into a sensible conflict, that is, conflicts that lead to useful decisions. But these barriers create a form of conflict in itself – what I call “unhealthy conflict.” As soon as you come out, once you have collectively acquired the kind of excitement and different vision that I described in the example of colors, enter a circle and talk about what is really important. It may be different from the charter or the issue that brought the team together, but it will make you feel like it`s worth fighting for. Be brave. Pour your sense of restriction, “small” in relation to the organization in which you work, or the complexity of the situation you are addressing.