23rd July, 2024

Why We Need MORE Conflict in Our Teams

With Rachel Morris

Dr Rachel Morris

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On this episode

It’s nice to be nice – but that niceness is stopping teams from dealing with healthy conflict when it comes up. This leads to poor decisions, hidden resentments, and a lack of accountability. When we’re afraid of conflict, we don’t say what we really think, and problems stay hidden.

In this quick dip episode, Rachel explains how building trust and encouraging healthy conflict is an essential skill for leaders in high-stakes jobs like healthcare. Trust and psychological safety allow us to be vulnerable and speak up without fear – and we can build trust by getting to know each other better and showing empathy.

When we avoid conflict instead of addressing it, meetings become box-ticking exercises and decisions don’t get followed through on. People can start backbiting and forming factions, all of which leads to a dysfunctional team where nothing gets done.

But we can start creating environments where healthy conflict is encouraged, by establishing trust. Talk to someone you usually don’t chat with – ask how they’re doing and share something personal about yourself. This helps build trust and makes it easier to have honest conversations later.

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Reasons to listen

  • To understand how avoiding conflict in teams can lead to poor decisions and hidden resentments
  • To learn how building trust and psychological safety can create healthy conflict and better team performance
  • To discover practical techniques for encouraging honest conversations and resolving disagreements within teams

Episode highlights

00:02:05

A team where no-one upsets anyone

00:05:47

Psychological safety

00:07:51

Fear of conflict

00:10:37

Avoiding accountability

00:11:26

Inattention to results

00:13:56

Tools for better conflict

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] Rachel: If you are a professional in a high stakes job and you can’t just clock out at the end of the day, it’s likely that you are also a leader in some capacity. So whether it’s leading a team, line managing people, you might be head of your department, but you’ll probably be supervising trainees. You may be mentoring people, you may be a trainer maybe in charge of various committees, so you will be leading in one way, shape or form. I always think that if you are a doctor or a nurse or a physiotherapist or…

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