My family was actually pretty averse to conflict. I think I learned an appreciation for listening and consensus-building at home, and an appreciation for debate elsewhere.
Totally agree with this. Some of the comments on the article itself were pretty good too and made similar points. Particularly about being aware of the fact that we were not all brought up this way and that it may not be so inclusive to make any assumptions that people are comfortable with this form of communicating.
If any community wants to push things in this direction, it’s probably very important to have strong moderators who are very capable of navigating choppy waters and helping members from various backgrounds feel safe.
One of the other articles linked above put it this way:
So leading a good fight is a skill that can take a long time to develop. To try to accelerate that process, my Stanford colleague (and former HP executive) Debra Dunn and I have been pulling together a list of methods. Here are five of the tricks used by some of the best bosses we’ve observed:
- Don’t let the arguing begin during the initial generation of ideas or solutions. Make it safe for people to suggest crazy or controversial ideas. After you have some ideas, then invite people to push back on them.
- Bring everyone into the fray. Gently rein in people who talk too much and encourage those who are silent to speak up.
- Don’t just listen to people’s words, watch non-verbal behavior. Are they smiling? Really listening? Glaring, smirking, or rolling their eyes? Model constructive non-verbal behavior and coach people who (perhaps unwittingly) interject negative expressions.
- Learn people’s quirks. Some have remarkably thick skins; nastiness doesn’t faze them. Others are so thin-skinned that even gentle critiques send them into a rage or a funk.
- After the fight is over, do some backstage work. Soothe those who feel personally attacked and whose ideas were shot down. If anyone made personal attacks, call them on it and coach them to do otherwise.