Chad Silverstein explains why "false harmony" (teams avoiding conflict to preserve surface-level peace) is harmful. He argues that avoiding conflict leads to sabotage and unresolved grievances; trust is necessary to enable honest disagreements. He advises addressing conflicts promptly but with emotional readiness, practicing the skill of timely, constructive conversations, and seeking help if needed.
Chapters
False harmony is the worst. When you can see right through a team that's fake and just telling people what they want to hear. People who are just trying to be people pleasers and keep everyone happy. I've been there, I've done it. And it's the worst. It is just the worst. When you're avoiding conflict because you want to keep the harmony and keep the peace. All you're doing is just. It's a recipe for disaster. Literally, you're just waiting for something to happen where someone's going to sabotage because they weren't able to speak their mind. They're not able to tell you the truth when something bothered them because it's so important for everyone to like each other. The component in this day is trust. You have to have trust to be able to fight. You have to have trust to be able to tell people the truth and not worry about them sabotaging you. And again, it is true what we say in the book, which is conflict is a conversation to be had. I mean, there's so many times where someone is so upset with someone and they could just have one conversation and put things to bed. And by not doing that, you don't realize you're sabotaging yourself, because this is how you'll have people come out of the woodworks down the road, come after you do something to get you in trouble, and you don't even know about it. And it's because you didn't address the conflict and maybe it was a misunderstanding and you chose to ignore it. So just because conflict is a conversation to be had doesn't mean it's always going to be resolved. You can agree to disagree. The question is, are you addressing it? And you have to kind of mind for it. You have to look for where there's conflict and try to just get it out of the way by addressing it. And the quicker you can do that, the better, and not do it when you're upset. So it's kind of like a little bit of a dichotomy because, yeah, you want to address it here and now, but if you're not in the proper state of mind, if your emotional intelligence isn't at that level where you feel like you can have, you know, a nice conversation with someone about whatever it is because you're so heated up, then don't have it. Wait, wait. And then, and then, and then inject yourself. And that's, that's a skill that you have to build. And some people do that and they rush to do it too quick. Some people, they delay it and don't do it at all. So wherever you are on that continuum, it's important for you to have awareness of that and start thinking about where you might have conflict with someone right now that you have not addressed personally or professionally. And get some help if you need it, but address it. It's not going away and it's only going to show its ugly head some other way down the road. It's a fact.
