Most people instinctively avoid conflict, but as Margaret Heffernan shows us, good disagreement is central to progress. She illustrates (sometimes counterintuitively) how the best partners aren’t echo chambers — and how great research teams, relationships and businesses allow people to deeply disagree.
Unfortunately, most organizations will go out their way to avoid conflict and essentially stop thinking and stop progress. Why? Heffernan points out that it takes a significant amount of courage, effort and work:
to seek out people with different backgrounds, different disciplines, different ways of thinking and different experience, and find ways to engage with them.
It is not that organization don’t want to embrace and engage with these divergent and disruptive thinkers it is that they can’t. And as Heffernan points out, organizations limit their thinking and progress:
because the people inside of them are too afraid of conflict.
Fortunately, Heffernan doesn’t leave us hanging without a solution to this problem. The challenge is that the solution is an age old human shortcoming of not facing the hard truth or reality that circumstance demand. Perhaps Heffernan’s closing challenge needs repeating:
But truth won’t set us free until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it.
I completely agree (not trying to be an echo chamber). I find it frustrating that disagreements have a stigma attached to them and people seem to think that if I disagree with your idea I am disagreeing with you. In the past it used to be people would have disagreements over ideas and people could have great debates and then go for lunch with eachother and enjoy the company and individuality that the person brings. Now when you disagree with someones idea it is taken as though you disagree with them fundamentally as though their idea were a part of who they were.
To me that is the wrong way of approaching it a disagreement.
Great post.
Great point. Some people are unable to separate the idea from their identity and healthy debates are stymied because people take things so personally.
People who are useless love to cover this fact by assuming that they are misunderstood innovative geniuses, while others are dumb status quo lovers.
Just want to clarify. You agree with the premiss that it is good to dare to disagree and that embracing positive conflict is also a good thing. Those who want to avoid conflict are status quo lovers and similarly those embrace conflict for the wrong reason are playing the role of the misunderstood genius. If so I would tend to agree–not exactly in those terms but I agree to the thought.