Episode 260: Workplace Conflict is Healthy? A Chat with the “Teamwork Doctor,” Liane Davey

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Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. For the past 25 years, Leanne Davey has researched and advised teams on how to achieve high performance. Known as the Teamwork Doctor, she's worked with teams from the front lines to the boardrooms across a variety of industries and around the globe, from Boston to Bangkok. And in working with hundreds of teams, including 26 global Fortune 500 companies, she's developed a unique perspective on the challenges the teams face and how to solve them. Beyond her work in the boardroom, Leanne is a New York Times bestselling author of You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done, and the book The Good Fight: Use Productive Conflict to Get Your Team and Organization Back on Track. She's also a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and has been sought by several media outlets, including CNN, NPR, USA Today, The Globe and Mail, and Forbes for her expertise on increasing productivity, enhancing engagement, developing leaders, and as one client put it, dealing with the damn drama. Leanne's client list includes Amazon, Walmart, TD Bank, RBC, AMD, Google, Bayer, and more. And Leanne is one of our keynote speakers at SKU Camp, our epic entrepreneurial bootcamp event held September 10th through 13th in Austin, Texas at the Line Hotel. Skucamp is a deep dive into learning crucial and timely topics for business leaders and a perfect time to work on your business instead of in your business. Skucamp features peer-led learning from the pros, idea sharing, outside experts, and some of the most maverick thinkers in the branded merch biz. And we just announced our speaker lineup, which you can check out at skucamp.com. In today's episode, we talk about conflict, workplace conflict in a positive way. We talk about how conflict is imperative to moving the business forward and how we as leaders and we as employees can create a healthier environment by using workplace conflict as a positive experience and not a negative experience. Today's episode is brought to you by Commitscue, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit Commitscue.com. Now here's our chat with Leanne.

It is really good to have you on the program.

I'm so glad to be here, Bobby.

So you define yourself as a water cooler psychologist and a teamwork doctor. What does that mean?

So it's very funny. In psychology, most people assume when you have a PhD in psychology that you're a clinical psychologist. I refer to that as a couch psychologist. You know, somebody wants you to talk about their— your mother or things like that. So that's not me. I'm an organizational psychologist, and so it's really about all of how the mind works, how people work, behavior in the workplace and in teams. So, I think a water cooler psychologist kind of gets that across when people are mostly thinking I'm going to be a couch psychologist. So, don't worry, no ink blots today.

Well, let's talk about workplace conflict. I mean, I never thought I would hear myself say that because that's the one topic most of us would like to avoid, myself included. But some of us have erroneously believed that all workplace conflicts should be avoided at all costs, but you have an opposite view, and the conflict is not only necessary, but it's crucial, and it's important if we're to grow and collaborate better as a team. So how do you describe healthy workplace conflict?

Yeah, so I differentiate between healthy and unhealthy conflict by talking about healthy conflict as tension, something that stretches us and pulls us and makes us think about perspectives we've never thought about. Or stakeholders that we don't normally advocate for, or scenarios that we wish wouldn't happen, but we really have to think about that they might happen. And that sort of tension, so the metaphor I use is that healthy conflict feels like yoga. It's very uncomfortable, but you know it's making you stronger and better. But unhealthy conflict in the workplace is more like friction. So, oh, nobody's listening. I've said the same thing in 3 different meetings. This is the same problem we've had for 3 years. And that kind of conflict with, you know, we're invalidating each other and not listening and it gets personal, I equate that to blisters. And there is nothing good about the discomfort of a blister. It just wears you down. So healthy tension, bigger possibility, you know, stretching and growing you. Unhealthy friction, wearing you down.

You said that conflict is actually the purpose of an organization.

What does that mean?

That shocked me.

Yeah. So, somebody, it was actually a CEO once, put up her hand in a session I was giving and she said, "Is conflict a sign that our team is unhealthy?" I said, "Au contraire. Conflict is a sign that your team is doing what it needs to do." So, it's funny, I do a lot of work in Silicon Valley. And with them, I always say conflict is a feature, not a bug. It's the point. And so, that is to say, If we could understand a problem in its totality as an individual, we wouldn't need a team. The only reason we need a team is because somebody is thinking about, you know, like let's take a product lineup. What's going to stay in our product lineup, right? There are lots of people who would love to have every whiz-bang awesome thing in our product lineup because there's going to be some customer who wants that. But the person who has to maintain the storage facilities, the person who has to make sure all the links on the website are working thinks, "Could we actually have— Nobody has bought this in 2 years," or "We sell 17 units of that. We need fewer." So, unless we have that dynamic tension of people who have different perspectives, different expertise, different stakeholders, we don't come to an optimal decision. So, the reason that we need it, the reason conflict is the purpose of teams is because that's how we go from complicated worlds and diverse sets of responsibilities to one optimal decision.

Yeah. And you've hired a bunch of smart people for their opinion and for them to bring in that, right? So then anytime you're going to bring together that many smart people in a room, you're going to have conflicting opinions. Can avoiding conflict be as unhealthy as a toxic environment?

Yeah, yeah, very much so. So, when you avoid conflict, you get into what I refer to as conflict debt. So, it's a little bit like building up credit card debt. And we all know how unhealthy that is. So, it's conversations that the business needs you to have. So, maybe there's a trade-off between two different strategic priorities and we just don't want to have that fight. And so, we just try and limp along doing both. We dilute our resources. We burn out our people. Very toxic. It can be toxic because we, maybe we've got somebody who's been a loyal member of the team for a long, long time. And they're really nice but they're not cutting it anymore. They can't keep up with the new systems. And it's creating a lot of work for other people on the team. But we're in conflict debt. We're not addressing it. And that also is toxic. And then, we can get into conflict debt personally where we don't say, "Hey, the way you're, you know, you come and vent to me every day and that's kind of bringing me down and it's distracting me from my work." And when we don't say that to the person, our resentment grows. Our own stress builds. You know, we lie awake on a Sunday night worried about, "Oh God, I'm gonna have to face it again." So, there are a lot of penalties we pay when we get into conflict debt that can be as toxic as many, many, many different kinds of problematic organizations.

Yeah, I love that analogy because it does build like a snowball. So it just gets so big that— how can we tell if our work conflict is healthy or not?

Yeah, so it's really about, first of all, are we hearing different perspectives from people? So, you know, If we're having an imbalanced conversation, so you want to watch out where some people are loud and taking up a lot of the oxygen and some people are quiet. That's a sign that your conflict is unhealthy. Is there a lot of listening? Can you hear one person reflecting somebody else's perspective in their comments? That's a good sign. If what we hear feels something like a ping pong match where there's just slamming back and forth and nobody coming closer together, that's a sign that it's unhealthy. If it's the same conversation you've had many times before and you hear language like, "Well, we'll have to agree to disagree." Agree to disagree, brutally unhealthy. So, there are a lot of signs that we're not making the tough calls. We're not getting to the other side of a conflict. Mired in it, stuck with it. That's a sign that conflict has become really unhealthy.

Yeah. You said that we should build a conflict habit. That was another great way of looking at it. What did you mean by that?

So right now, and I think the way that many experts have talked about conflict, we think about conflict as an event. So the difficult conversation, the fierce conversation, oh God, at 3 o'clock, I'm going to have to confront him. It's an event. So, you know what? We just don't have the energy or the skills or the emotional regulation to cope with those big sort of eruptions of conflict. But if we could have conflict much more frequently so that it's much lower impact, like it's just a little bit of feedback, like it's not the 17th time someone's talked your ear off for an hour when you're like, You have got to stop it, right? It's the first time where you think, "Hey, I'm glad I could be helpful today. But maybe next time, give some thought to how you might approach it and then come to me with what you think you might try." If we do that, we're not as upset. We're not as emotional. They're not as reliant on us. They don't get as defensive. So, Again, you're getting a sense that I love a stupid metaphor. The metaphor for that is we tend to let— we get into conflict debt. We don't cope with it. And all of a sudden, we need a conflict equivalent of a root canal instead of if we just flossed every day, had those right in the meeting, said, "Oh, I think we're not actually communicating with each other. Could I have a do-over?" Or if we walked out of a meeting with somebody and said, "Hey, what you said didn't—" Didn't land very well with me. Let me tell you how I heard that. Is that what you meant? If we were flossing these little routine kind of conversations, then we wouldn't need nearly as many root canals. So the habit of high-frequency, low-impact conflict, so much better, particularly for people like me. I really don't like conflict. So I sure don't, just like I don't like the dentist. It's probably why I use that metaphor. Conflict to me is kind of like root canal to me. But, you know, flossing, I can manage that. And a little bit of conflict, a little bit of feedback, that's okay. I could do that.

I like turning it on its head, just the word itself, as ugly as it can be. I love turning it on its head and saying, you know what, this is a muscle I actually need to use so it doesn't atrophy. And so it's not just so that we don't get to the cataclysmic event, but so it's something that I can get used to using and it doesn't feel to me like it's an emotional it, you know, just this emotional cataclysmic event every time I have to— It's just a skill. —struggle and confront. Yeah, that's a really great way of looking at it. Yeah.

And the other line that helps me, because it is about skills, it's also about mindset. The line that really helps me with my own mindset is some things are worth fighting for. So one of the exercises I do with teams is I say to every single member of the team, tell me who's not in this room. That you are fighting for? And when people can say, well, nobody else— like I'm responsible for suppliers. Nobody else in this room has relationships with our suppliers. If I don't fight for them— oh cool. Okay. You know, sales is saying, well, for me, it's our customers. Like they don't want to look at the same, you know, same swag opportunities they had last year. They want new exciting things. They want differentiated things. If it's just all the stuff all their competitors have, It's not going to gain any attention. It's not going to earn them anything. I got to fight for them because we could want to rationalize our SKUs and have fewer. But I got to be here fighting for new and sexy and interesting and exciting. So, you know, when we go through that exercise of understanding who's not in the room that is counting on you to fight for them, then it just becomes easier to say, okay, I get that. I get my obligation. It's not me being a jerk or anything. It's no, Some things are worth fighting for.

Yeah, it takes the focus off of us and what we want and the fact that we are trying to win something on behalf of something else, someone else. One secret you share to introducing healthy conflict to our business is to start by adding meaningful dissension to our discussion. Yeah. What do you mean by that? And you have a few examples you can share?

Okay, I'm going to do another stupid metaphor. My metaphors per minute is at a good rate today.

It's a really good thing though.

So you know when you create a New Year's resolution to kind of eat healthier, And then you find a recipe for like bran muffins with bran flakes and bran sprinkles. And you take one bite and it's like, you can't even swallow. So sprinkling conflict is like, don't walk into your team now that you've listened to this podcast and you've kind of— you're all excited and, you know, throw out the issue that's been around for 5 years that nobody— like, don't do that. Don't take a big mouthful of bran. Just how about You still have like Captain Crunch or whatever cornflakes. But how about you just sprinkle a little bran on top? So, sprinkling a little bran. It's things like in your meeting, if somebody throws something out as if it's a fact and you're not sure it's a fact, a little bit of sprinkling conflict is like, "Oh, where did you get that from?" Or, "Where could I see that study?" Or that sort of thing. It may be adding a little bit of conflict by bringing in different stakeholders. I love that plan. And when I think about it from our suppliers' perspective, it sounds amazing. Now, if I think about it from our shipping and receiving team, like how would that go down with them? How would they feel about it? Sprinkling conflict is just finding little ways to just put a little bit of tension. Not a huge like, but just a little bit to build up that muscle. Because what a lot of us seem to want when we go into team meetings is for everybody to be like, as if we're on an episode of Family Feud, right? And we say the most inane thing and everybody's response is, "Good answer! Good answer!" And so, we have to take people from that expectation to the spot where, no, no, when we put a little tension on things, that's normal. It's good. It doesn't mean we're not doing a good job. We don't have to emotionally react or be defensive. So starting to sprinkle a little bran on the Captain Crunch instead of going straight to the big conflict muffin. Yes.

And I love just the phrase meaningful dissent. Like, it's just a really healthy sound as opposed to just dissent, period. As employees, what do we do inadvertently to contribute to a dysfunctional workplace or an unhealthy workplace? What do we do that's not even—

we're not even cognizant of? Suck it up is one of the big ones, right? Sometimes, it's the people who are the hardest working. You know, nice people is a big problem. Really nice people. And a lot of people suck it up for those reasons. And so, we don't know that the conflict debt is growing. They take on one more task instead of saying, I need your help in prioritizing. I can't do everything. Which of these comes first? So, I think the one that hopefully is the most surprising to people is sometimes when they're trying to be a good team player, trying to be the person who the boss doesn't have to worry about. Sometimes, those behaviors are actually perpetuating conflict at allowing us to avoid conversations that we really need to have. So, that's a big one. I think on the more dysfunctional side, we are terrible at listening. We're terrible at listening. And so, we miss what people mean. We get really wrapped up in how things land with us and what the impact of their words and tone and everything else are. But we don't go searching for what did they mean? What was their intent? How do we— and I talk a lot about two truths. The other thing we do is we We go into a conversation trying to ram our truth down other people's throats. And if we could go in first wanting to be able to understand their truth, we would have so much more productive conflict and so much less of that awful friction. So that's just a few. Goodness, you can imagine 25 years of doing this work, I could go on all day about self-inflicted wounds of conflict.

But yeah, that's very helpful. As leaders, help us feel normal or not. But since you've worked with some of the most successful companies on the planet, is it safe to say that most companies are dealing with some degree of dysfunction in the organization and it's quite normal to have a fairly— I don't know if the word dysfunction is too strong— dysfunctional environment?

Yeah. So I would say dysfunction is, you know, small d dysfunction is quite common. But, you know, to truly be dysfunctional, No, fortunately, lots aren't. We're just staggering around and figuring it out. But I do think what's very typical is that most organizations are very poor at conflict. Probably two-thirds of them are poor because they have insufficient conflict. And a third of them are poor at it because they have nasty conflict with collateral damage and that sort of thing. But there are very few in the sweet spot. Who know how to have productive tension, who've minimized the friction. So, if you are thinking, "Oh my goodness, we do all of those wrong things and none of those right things," yes, you are highly typical. Right.

So, it's kind of what I'm looking for. I think many of us, I think as entrepreneurs, we're very hard on ourselves in terms of our team, especially culture has become so important. And it's just like sometimes, it can be this big shadow, this big burden that we carry all the time. About it. And it's so liberating to know that conflict is actually very normal and not only normal, but it's a must.

Yeah. Yeah. It's imperative. Right. And then, you know, in my book, I also have a bonus chapter about conflict is normal in relationships. Conflict is normal with children. Conflict is normal at the church or the synagogue or the mosque. Like, you know, conflict is a part of relationships. And what we want to do in all of those domains is foster more of the healthy conflict. So, if you have conflict over planning your vacation because somebody wants to be on the go all day, every day, and somebody else wants to sit still and not move for 7 days, well, okay, how do we have that conflict productively to hit on a vacation that kind of works for everybody? And how do we do it in a way that's that's not judgmental, that's not, oh, you always want to move nonstop on every— no friction. So it's not just at work, it's everywhere in our lives. When we have relationships, we need productive conflict and we need to really actively manage that friction.

Do you have a few tips on how leaders can not become demoralized by sort of the constant erosion of conflict? Because many of us can take it pretty hard. Yeah. And, uh, you know, uh, everybody thinks just employees that have Sunday scaries. Bosses have Sunday scaries too. And so, you know, how do you not let this— obviously everything we've talked about to this point is part of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The conflict is a normal part.

But what are the tips? The biggest thing is anything that scares the crap out of you around these kind of messy people issues, the best advice is always lean into it. And that's surprising for most people, but drama despises daylight for the most part. It's like cockroaches. So, if somebody's very emotional, if there's a lot of dramatics and you just look at them and calmly just say, "Oh, this is important. What do I need to understand?" First of all, they'll have an outlet for the real things that they actually need your help with. They will not feel invalidated and therefore become more emotional or angrier or become more passive-aggressive. They'll feel like, "Oh, I have a constructive outlet for it." So, the most important thing for leaders is to say the best way of addressing your Sunday scaries, the best way of reducing the drama, the best way of making conflict work for your organization is every time your gut, your spidey sense is tingling, that stuff you want to shine light on as opposed to trying to sweep it under the rug, which would feel good in the moment but is truly a source of compounding conflict debt that you will be penalized for over and over and over.

Is part of this as a leader, is part of this becoming normal and accustomed to conflict a way of making sure everyone feels— it's a way of feeling comfortable with conflict and helping employees feel comfortable with conflict. I mean, that's a big thing I think is us as leaders helping them understand that this is a normal behavior and it's actually healthy. How do I make sure I create a space like that?

Yeah. So first of all, you can use your words to— I sound like a kid, use your words. So you can use your words to just say, Okay, you know, this is a hard conversation. So, I really appreciate everybody hanging in with it. And if this conversation gets emotional, let's make this a safe space. It's okay. You know, you can just use your words. But even as I was just saying those words, the other thing I'm doing is using my tone and my body language. So, one of the ways humans work is we have mirror neurons in our brain that pick up on the emotional state of people around us. So, there is a thing called emotional contagion. So, it turns out that when we're in groups together, one person's emotion tends to spread to others. And new research suggests that when we try and suppress how someone is feeling, the contagion spreads further and faster. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, what we want to do is we want to convey, even with our tone, that yeah, this is a hard conversation. I'm really going to ask everybody's help to stick with it, to try and have it slowly in a measured way so we can hear each other. We will create as much time as we need to get through this conversation and make sure everyone feels heard. Part of what you're doing in there is just saying, it's okay. It's okay. We can have this conversation. That brings the emotional tenor of the conversation down a bit. And it's amazing what you can get through. I think one of the biggest reasons why people bring me in is just to have me there being like, okay, this is what I do all day, every day. This is okay. Like, I've seen this. My mother had triple bypass and I remember her surgeon talking to me and he was basically like, triple, yeah, I don't normally stoop to doing triples. I'm more like a quadruple or a heart-lung transplant kind of guy. And just hearing him talk that way, I was like, oh, I'm calm now. Right. So part of it as a leader is just saying like, this is okay. We have conflict. We'll make the time. We'll make this the safe space. And those mirror neurons, that emotional contagion becomes a contagion of optimism instead of like, oh no. Yes.

I love that how you were able to just say with your tone and even using your words to say, hey, conflict is okay. It's okay for us to be in conflict about this. Perfectly fine. I love the normalcy of all that. How, I don't know that I can phrase the right question the right way, but how is a leader, this may be too situational, do you distinguish between conflict around a substantial idea versus folks that just want to vent? Because the business that we're in is a very high-stress business with lots of deadlines, lots of moving parts. And sometimes people just want to vent. And as a boss, you sometimes feel like you got to fix every problem. So you walk around with your tool belt all the time and you're ready to try and fix a problem. Sometimes, these problems aren't fixable.

Yeah, well, it's also even if they are, sometimes people feel very condescended to when you try and jump in and solve their problems. What they want is to vent. And so, if you come in and start fixing, what you signal to them is, "I didn't think you could solve this for yourself. I don't have confidence in you." So, some people are very offended when the boss tries to solve their problem. There's one of the best YouTube videos I've ever seen in my life is called, It's Not About the Nail. If you just go onto YouTube and search, "It's not about the nail," I can guarantee you laughs of that situation where somebody just wants emotional support. And what you do is you try and solve their problem. It's a very, very funny video. So, what I do is somebody comes in, they just start to go, and I just simply say, "Okay, one sec. Okay, what do you need from me? Do you just need a safe place to vent? If so, close the door, sit down." have at it. Do you need help from me? What do you need? And it's just amazing how asking that question and the person may even stop and go, oh, what do I want? Actually, I just want to vent. Or they may say, I don't even know how to broach this. I need you to talk me down. I need you, right? That sort of thing. So, it's a great practice to get into to just say, what do you need? And then, let them go. The other thing I will say though is it's really important if they're venting to make sure they're only venting. So to me, venting is, so venting, if you think about it from the actual, where the metaphor comes from, it's when the buildup of steam is creating so much pressure that something's gonna explode. So venting is, there's a lot of pressure building up in you, you need to release that pressure. So if somebody's venting, my deal is, you can say anything you want about yourself. I was so upset by that meeting. I'm so worried. I'm not measuring. You can say anything you want about yourself. The minute you start talking about somebody else, now you're gossiping. So, if it's somebody who's not in the room, can you believe she said that? That's gossiping. That's where I go, whoa, whoa. Okay, I'm happy to be a safe place to vent, but tell me how it felt when she said that. I don't want to hear about her. So that's a key thing as a leader or even as a colleague to know we want to be safe people to whom somebody can let off a little steam. But that does not go so far as we want to be a place where they can complain about somebody else when they're not present. So yeah, thank you.

Thank gosh. I had so many more questions to ask you, Leanne. We're out of time. And I wanted to— we'll save those for SCU Camp because you are You are kicking off our Business Boot Camp, SKU Camp in Austin, September 10th through the 13th. And what can leaders expect from your workshop when they join us?

Yeah, we're gonna go deep into this. We are gonna talk about how do I build a productive conflict culture in my organization? So, how can I change people's mindset about conflict, help them think differently? What are the key skills that I can teach people in a really short amount of time and that will build that muscle we need? And then back to flossing, right? How do I support a healthy conflict habit in my organization. Not leaving SKU Camp with conflict muffins, but simply with a little bit of way to start to sprinkle it and build up everybody's tolerance for productive conflict in your organization. And I can't wait. I can't wait either.

Leanne, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today. And SKU Camp, we'll see you in Austin in the fall.

Yay! Thanks, Bobby.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SkuCast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SkuCast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for listening.