Task vs. Relationship Conflict
Today’s post is a short one, highlighting some interesting podcast listening from the last week.
I listened to a fantastic episode of the Hidden Brain podcast entitled The Easiest Person to Fool (1 Feb 2021) featuring Adam Grant (The Saul P. Steinberg Professor of Management and Professor of Psychology at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania). Among the many topics covered was one that called my attention and had to do with conflict within teams.
Grant starts this part of the conversation by pointing out conflict is one of the ways that a team of people can be creative and make good decisions, but that many people feel that conflict is something that should be avoided, because it seems bad and counterproductive. He states, “The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy. If you’re in a group where people never disagree, the only way that could really happen is if people don’t care enough to speak their minds”.
“The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy. If you’re in a group where people never disagree, the only way that could really happen is if people don’t care enough to speak their minds”
Task conflict is a way in which a group of people can be creative. Task conflict (or cognitive conflict) is a disagreement about the content of the discussion. There may be different opinions or viewpoints that lead people to different conclusions on the topic. In contrast, relationship conflict is a perception of interpersonal difference between the people in the group. So, while task conflict is ‘people against the problem’, relationship conflict is ‘people against people’.
Grant performed a study that involved groups who had succeeded at a collaborative task and groups that had failed. The results suggest that failed groups tended to have much more relationship conflict, where they are busy disliking one another and not focusing on the work to be done. In contrast, high performing groups experienced more on task conflict, especially early on in their projects, and spend time working to better understand the ideas being presented. Interestingly, when task conflict occurs early in the work, the group will default to this kind of discussion later in the project when disagreement occurs.
While Grant doesn’t use these words, I’d characterize it as building trust by exploring and working through differences in ideas, so that differences between people, if they come up, do not have the same traction, because the group trusts one another enough not to take it personally enough to create relationship conflict).
This part of the podcast was just a small part of the whole episode that stuck to my brain. I think I might have to dig into some of the research on conflict. Definitely listen to this thought-provoking episode. Share your thoughts on the Hidden Brain episode or on task and relationship conflict.
Happy collaborating.
Scott Millar, through Collaboration Dynamics, often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. As the host of the Cool Collaborations podcast where he explores fun stories and insights of successful collaboration with guests from around the world, and then dives into what made them work. Cool Collaborations is currently available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
