How to Establish Productive Conflict

Productive conflict of probably one of the biggest “asks” that I make in You First. In the whole book I had to leave that until the last chapter because I felt we had to build towards that because it’s such a difficult thing to do. Productive conflict is conflict that happens in a place where different points of view and uncomfortable things are put on the table and actually resolved in a way that is respectful, but allows us to move things forward.

Unproductive conflict is the kind of conflict where we go black-white, back-forth, and we actually don’t get anything resolved. There’s very little listening in unproductive conflict.

Of course the third category is no conflict and some of our most toxic teams are teams that have no conflict at all, they’re bobble head teams. Everyone is so quick to agree and that’s really harmful so we’re trying to get that really delicate middle zone between no conflict and that conflict that becomes aggressive and unproductive it’s the sweet spot in the middle that becomes our productive conflict.