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TheRoleOfConflictInMeetings

Patrick M. Lencioni in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable , which I enjoyed reading, informs the reader that any meeting becomes boring if it doesn�t contain conflict.

At first, I interpreted that Mr. Lencioni wanted conflict between the participants, which I thought was stupid. After mulling over his writing for awhile, I interpreted that he meant conflict between opposing ideas, which I liked a lot.

I recalled meetings where I had been a participant that were spectacular. There was healthy conflict. The participants were willing to explore different viewpoints and a participant might favor one perspective one minute and then change their mind and favor a different perspective the next minute. These meetings produced great results and were fun for me.

Are your meetings designed to avoid conflict? Many meetings that I attend, rather than participate, seem designed that way. For instance, I attended a review of how a customer problem was has handled today. Rather than a review of the process, it was a review of current status. The omission of agenda items for things that went well and, especially, things that didn�t go well seemed directly designed to avoid any conflict.

Does a meeting that contains conflict require a special group of people or can any group make meetings better with the injection of conflict? I think conflict is a good thing as long as the environment is safe. Otherwise, I think the most likely result is people conflict rather than idea conflict.

In the example stated above, I insisted that group review what went well -- I viewed it as a safe discussion -- but shied away from insisting on a discussion about what didn�t go well. I was worried about how I would feel if that discussion hurt someone�s reputation, a safety issue that isn�t often discussed.

Help me understand the role of conflict better by sharing your answers to some or all of the following questions --

1. During a meeting, is it safe for you to offer an idea or make a suggestion that is contrary to any other member�s idea. Do you? What happens?
2. When conflict occurs during your group�s meetings, is it people or idea conflict? How do you know which kind of conflict it is?
3. Is people and idea conflict the only kinds of conflict?
4. Could you make your meetings better by injecting conflict? What conflict would you inject? Why do you think it would make the meeting better?
5. What questions should I be asking you? How would you answer?

SteveSmith 2002.09.09

With that reframe, I agree that a meeting without choices, alternatives or problems grows meaningless. Why would the people need to spend time gathered together?

1&2) I've just switched organizations, and haven't yet held any meetings other than 1-to-1.
3) With the reframe, meetings on opportunity alternatives, problem solving, or complex analysis / reviews all make sense. The term "conflict" doesn't posess all the necessary connotation to see these.
4) I would much rather blow off the meeting as unnecessary than feel I had to inject "conflict" to keep it alive. What purpose is this meeting serving?
5) Start from the need for the meeting, not the need for the conflict. The universe provides ample ammunition if you only look in the right direction!

-BobLee 2002.09.10

Your introduction of conflict in meetings recalled for me the two aspects of stress introduced by Hans Selye - Eustress (good stress) and Distress( bad stress). Apparently we can be energized by conflict/ stress or enervated. It may be difficult to discuss it as a "group" issue (everyone in the meeting) because it may be a personal perception.

For this reason I can't say whether I'd consider ideas or personal issues as triggers. I suspect that either might trigger a positive or negative in each of us.

I imagine that most of us have been in positive and easy meetings and also in tense and difficult meetings. I know I have. And to tell you the truth, I have been in difficult meetings where the outcome was a clear recognition of what was best for me and saved me from prolonged stress. Not everyone gets to act on these insights, and perhaps that is where the true "distress" comes from.

- BeckyWinant 2002.09.10

-- BobKing 2002.09.13

--- ErwinVanDerBij 2002.09.13

Each person in the room will respond based on the data they have, how they have interpreted the data and how they feel about the interpretation. All of which goes on inside the head, and no one else knows about it. So the results of analysis or the decisions that pop out can seem very odd to another person who doesn't have access to the same data or make the same interpretation or have the same response. Voila, conflict!

My experience is that when meetings start with the data, share interpretations and feeling responses, alot of the conflict dissolves and people are more able to come to shared awareness and agreement. (And often a better decision based on more information.)

So you start with the data by asking: What do we know about situation X? What have we observed about it?

EstherDerby 091402

A Scrum daily meeting is an information sharing meeting, explicitly optimized to share where people are and will be and anticipate obstacles.

A brainstorming session, is a directed (facilitated) problem solving meeting where the combined intelligence and viewpoints are aimed at one problem. I think this kind of meeting may need conflict injected if it's too blandly "agree with the boss" in nature.

Difficulty arises when the purpose of the meeting is blended or perceived differently by the attendees.

--BobLee 2002.09.14

• your input probably won't be listened to, and
• too many of these meetings may indicate an organizational malady.
  

I also claim that scrum meetings are red meetings - their intent is to make clear what will be happening that day and whether anyone needs to adjust to avoid conflicts. This is a close-ended intent, though the decisions are limited in scope to that day. DavidSocha 2002.10.15

Take a look at Jerry's Exploring Requirements - Quality Before Design Facilitating in the Face of Conflict discusses essential conflict vs. inessential conflict. Essential conflict is ambiguity and disagreement on meeting matters, inessential is baggage from outside the issues, such as prior strife. Idea is to find the "third way" and a win-win solution instead of resorting to win-lose or lose-lose conflicts.

--BobLee 2002.10.17

http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/shape.html

If you aren't a SHAPE member, I suggest you check out whether membership fits for you. Reading SHAPE connects me to fascinating people and ideas.

SteveSmith 2002.12.03

--BobLee 2002.12.03

Bob, it's taken me eight days to recogninze that something was posted on this thread. You and Jim are fast.

I like the idea of a link from AYE. I'll drop a message to Jerry.

Thanks, SteveSmith 2002.12.11

Some comments I made just today in another context have some bearing here. "Meetings" happen for a lot of reasons, often several at once. One technique is to step to the meta-level and ask what the meeting is about. I think red / green / rainbow is one potentially useful system. The risk I see is that it may restrict what can be done in a meeting to only those things for which there are colors.

I'm also suspicious of simple distinction of "open ended" and "closed ended" for meetings. I suspect that there are at least several other useful distinctions. Whether the folks in the meeting are supposed to have mostly the same background or vocabular, or not. We have an example of that from AYE, where the "warmup session" was introduced in response to the observation that there was a large, and seemingly powerful shared vocabulary among many of the attendees. That's if I have my AYE mythology right. Mythology is another meeting parameter, with some meetings existing mostly to allow the (re)telling of the stories that define a culture.

Meetings go better when the folks attending have some similarity in their ideas about why they are there in the first place. For me, I like to identify "decision meetings", "announcement meetings" - which I do not call "communictaions meetings", and "working meetings."

• Decision meetings are to make one or more decisions. There are several common decision making styles in business. People can become confused that when they are in a decision meeting the decision is actually consensus based. Sometimes that's the case. Sometimes it isn't.
• Announcement meetings are to present information to a bunch of people, often a decision. Done usefully, there is give and take, and probing, to gain clarity on the information being conveyed. It isn't about questioning the decision, or providing input to the decision but about having an opportunity to gain clarity on a decision (or other information) that's alreay been made. With groups that are large, diverse, or both, the opportunity for give and take is helpful. It's hard to pick the one set of words that will get the same idea to everyone, in one try.
• Working meetings have one or more outputs, that are part of the process we're paid for. In software development some things that count are: requirements, reviewed requirements, design, reveiwed design, bugs and priorities, project plans, detailed plans for the next day, or week all count. I think of status meetings at working meetings where the output consists of what we've learned lately, and what we're going to do in the immediate future.

Of the three kinds of meetings I just named, working meetings are often open ended. The others, pretty much not so. I also think it's important to have some sort of exit criteria for any meeting.

What's that have to do with conflict? Only that mismatches in intentions between and among any of the participants can lead to one kind of conflict. The "What are we doing here?" kind. Disagreements about the content of a meeting are different in kind, and represent a different type of conflict, I think.

- JimBullock, 2002.12.03

SteveSmith 2002.12.11