Managing conflict at Board level and beyond

Conflict is often perceived to be a bad thing.  And it can be. Undermining performance, or worse escalating to destroy organizations and shatter reputations.

However, when managed well, conflict can spark creativity and innovation, be incredibly cathartic and lead to organizational transformation.

So, the ability to spot and manage conflict well is an important skill for board and C-Suite members.

In this short video featuring Patrick Dunne, drawn from the people section of his book called “Boards”, we will look at a few of the typical sources of conflict and some tips for managing conflict effectively:

Three common sources are conflicting or misaligned objectives, lack of clarity on roles and of course the fundamentals of human behavior.

Alignment

Being on a board without clarity or unity of purpose can be uncomfortable. Being in what I call the rabble state on the left of this chart can be just plain miserable.

The straight up and down monarchist state on the right may have the superficial appearance of alignment, behind the King or Queen, but in reality it’s all very fragile.

The place a Board or an exec team ideally want to be is in the triangle in the middle, all pointing in the same direction but with enough creative tension and diversity of thought to avoid Group think.

When it comes to the alignment of the board and the management team, you may wish to think of it as a Venn diagram:

Some boards that operate in a parallel universe with the management presenting the bare minimum, tolerating a few questions and keen to get back to doing what they were going to do anyway and the non-execs or trustees too distant and not as involved as they should be.  This is all pretty pointless as well as risky.

At the other end of the spectrum other bords and exec teams are falling over themselves trying to do each-others jobs with the non-execs getting too much in to the detail and getting in the way.

Yet there are others who find the right balance with real clarity over their own roles.

For the board this is usually ensuring that there is the right vision and strategy, resources and governance and for the exec to develop and deliver the business plan and to maintain financial and operational integrity.

As importantly it is also crystal clear what they do together, typically, strategy and the big decisions and where the right balance of oversight and support is.

During the pandemic most boards and execs expanded the inter-section and it will be interesting to see where the balance settles.

Self-Awareness

When it comes to human behavior, self-awareness is critical whether it’s for an individual, a sub-committee or executive groups.

This piece of research from Dierdorff and Rubin in the Harvard Business review shows just how critical. They tested people to see how self-aware they were, then put them in groups according to how self-aware they were, then gave them some decisions to take, some co-ordinating tasks to perform and some low-level conflicts to manage.

The results as you can see were striking in that the highly self-aware groups outperformed the lowly ones by a factor of two!

Another piece of research from Ethan Zell and Zlatan Kirzan, a meta study with a combined sample of over 375,000 people in large organisations sadly showed that self-awareness is not something that comes naturally. Indeed, their work showed only a correlation of 0.29 between peoples own self-assessment and objective evidence and the views of others.

Reflection and feedback are two tools we can use to help us increase our self-awareness.

One thing it is really important to be aware of is the level of pressure.

A balanced approach

The above chart shows a simple relationship between effectiveness and pressure. On the far left, there is no pressure and no output. On the far-right, headless chickens rush around without getting anything done. In the middle, there exists a pacey but reflective dynamic where things are well-controlled.

The masters of conflict management know when and how to raise or lower the pressure and keep a group in that central zone. If they spot someone, for example a department leader, halfway down the right-hand side of the chart, they will override their natural impulses to pile on the pressure and find a way to relieve it instead.

Understanding what causes us pressure and our own tolerances to pressure is again an important aspect of self-awareness.

Summary

Over the last few years there has also been much written about the many biases that we are susceptible to and it’s a long list! From the obvious ones such as anchoring, confirmation and mirroring bias to the more complex ones such as selection bias and post rationalization bias. If you want to know more on this topic then Daniel Kahneman’s brilliant book “Thinking Fast and Slow” is well worth a read.

Bias matters because it influences the way we view things as well as feel about them and that can lead us into unnecessary and unproductive conflict.

Another thing to be aware of is what our own and other peoples’ instinctive preferences are when it comes to dealing with conflict. This is really important if you want to be able to anticipate and prepare well for a situation which is likely to involve conflict.

The most widely accepted test on this is the Thomas Kilmann test. It consists of 30 forced rank questions and ascertains whether you are most likely to Compete, Collaborate, Compromise, Avoid or Accommodate in a conflict situation

CEOs when tested tend to be high in compete and avoid. They’ll die in a ditch over things they care about and disengage when they don’t. Sophisticated CEOs may throw a veil of collaboration over an issue along the lines of “morning everyone I’m really keen to know what you think about…..” but if it looks like the group are coming up with the “wrong answer” on goes the compete or avoid switch depending on the issue.

Really good board members and especially Chairs tend to be even across the five approaches and have the ability to pick and choose which is most appropriate given the issue, the dynamics of the group, the atmosphere in the room and the moment.

They recognize that all have their uses.

Remember as well that when preparing for a potential conflict situation it is as important to try and listen to what others are thinking as well as what they are saying and to be really observant of body language

Leap Confronting Conflict, the charity I chaired for many years and am now a proud Patron of has a wonderful little mnemonic, FIDO, for helping young people manage conflict more effectively. I think it is just as helpful for Board members and execs.

FIDO stands for Facts, Interpretation, Decision and Outcome and is designed to help the young people respond thoughtfully and achieve a better outcome rather than simply react and possibly make the wrong choice.

By starting with figuring out what the facts are and then what you can interpret from them and other You should start by figuring out what the facts are and considering what you can interpret from them, along with any other inputs. You should then slow yourself down to avoid a hasty reaction. This can also help you to work out your desired outcome and what might be realistic. These considerations will help you to make the right choices and figure out how to achieve it.

In summary, conflict isn’t necessarily a bad thing and in many ways can be very healthy for your business. Your ability to spot and manage conflict well is considerably enhanced through increased self-awareness, which can really help you to achieve your desired o