Your team can be too nice

Don't let your team be too nice. I'm talking about a team so obsessed with harmony that nobody will challenge a bad idea or confront poor performance. The former CEO of Xerox had a great phrase for this: terminal niceness. You see it when somebody raises a concern and another person on the team immediately says, well, let's keep this positive, or, I don't want this to become confrontational. Listen, sometimes that's appropriate, but sometimes the disagreement is exactly what the team needs. Most teams have somebody who plays what I call the harmonizer role. This is the very nice and diplomatic person who keeps destructive conflict from taking over, but you shouldn't allow them to stop productive disagreement. So the next time a meeting gets tense, don't automatically jump in and smooth it over. Ask yourself, are people attacking each other, or are they finally arguing about something important? Because those are not the same thing.