Setting the Stage for Healthy Conflict

It is a fact that if you combine people, a common environment, and enough time there will be conflict. It is not a possibility, but an inevitability. We must then learn to plan, prepare, and manage this conflict in a healthy manner. We can start this process by understanding and extolling the benefits of having and mining for conflict.

Can I be honest with you? I can't be honest with you.

Organizational cultures don't always support truthtellers. Recent high-profile examples in the energy and finance business demonstrate the crippling effects a culture can have when it does not embrace authenticity. Does your organizational culture embrace honest questions, tough conversations, authentic inquiries? Tolerate them? Shun them? Punish them? Change is possible, but it often begins with you.