Jason’s team is overworked. Everyone knows that Charles should be working on the big system rewrite, but he’s been off on his own pet project for months. After hearing complaints that Charles isn’t helping with the new system, Jason calls the team together and asks them to vote on what projects should be dropped to get the workload down. It’s no surprise to anyone that they vote to drop Charles’s pet project — no surprise, that is, to anyone except Charles, who has never heard anything about this from Jason and who figured he was doing the right thing.
Jason’s team is feeling the crunch partly because Jason doesn’t seem to stand up for them with other teams. He hates to say no to new projects, but he also doesn’t ask for more people to help manage the load. Jason is cool, everyone agrees, but it is so hard to get him to actually act on resolving conflicts or making difficult decisions. As a result, the team is overworked, struggles to prioritize a way forward, and is nursing several grudges among its members.
Lydia’s team is also feeling crunched, and she has her own Charles to deal with. She promised Charles that he would get time to work on this project, but it’s clear that priorities have changed and so his work will need to change with them. In her 1-1 with Charles, Lydia explains the current workload, and tells Charles that his team needs him to help with the system rewrite. Charles is unhappy, and Lydia doesn’t enjoy this conversation, but she knows that as the manager of the team, she’s responsible for making sure they’re focused on the most important projects.
Lydia knows that this project is important for the team to own, so while she pushes for more people, she makes sure that the team knows why she decided to take on this big project. She works with the team to prioritize the work, and guides them through their disagreements on what technology to use by following a structure for presenting options and soliciting feedback. Lydia’s team describes her as tough but fair, and though disagreements happen, the team is good at getting through challenges and collaborates well.
When put in such stark terms, it seems pretty clear that Jason is not handling conflict well, while Lydia is taming it. While it seems like Jason’s democratic style should lead to an empowered team, his inability to say no or to take the responsibility for any decisions means that no one feels very secure. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen next on Jason’s team because instead of guiding the team, he’s having the team guide itself.
Having a team that is constantly bickering and disagreeing is painful, and can be very dysfunctional. But there is such a thing as artificial harmony, and conflict-avoidant managers tend to favor harmony above functional working relationships. Creating a safe environment for disagreement to work itself out is far better than pretending that all disagreement does not exist.