Stop avoiding conflict on your teams

Overview
The article discusses how avoiding conflict in teams hampers progress and leads to disengaged employees. It urges managers to act as facilitators, bringing uncomfortable conversations to the surface, and emphasizes the importance of balancing caring personally with challenging directly.

Key Takeaways

• Avoiding conflict harms organizational progress and employee careers.
• Managers should serve as group therapist, coach, and decision-maker by surfacing uncomfortable topics.
• Direct challenge paired with personal care (e.g., Radical Candor) is more effective than silence.
• Structured conflict processes, such as ground rules focused on problems not people, improve engagement and decision-making.

Who Would Benefit

• Engineering managers and team leads.
• Technical leaders and CTOs.
• HR professionals focusing on team dynamics.
• Anyone interested in improving feedback culture.

Frameworks and Methodologies

• Radical Candor (caring personally, challenging directly).
• Structured conflict resolution with ground rules and safe spaces for all voices.