Silence doesn’t always mean employees are cohesive, content and have high-functioning team communication skills.
What’s not being said by members of your team might be more damaging than when folks are outspoken about unproductive interpersonal conflict.
How can you differentiate between healthy and unhealthy conflict?
Healthy conflict focuses on goals, ideas and direction. Healthy conflict is spoken to the parties involved (not triangulated to others) and is a sharing of concerns, fresh perspectives or new ideas that challenge someone else’s ideas.
Unhealthy conflict is conflict that isn’t shared (whether it would have been healthy, or not—not sharing it means it is not helpful) or conflict that is interpersonal and starts showing up with some of the tell-tale signs that any sense of harmony is surface level at best:
- Folks are quietly resistant to sharing information or resources with coworkers.
- Ideas aren’t shared freely; team members seem passively disengaged.
- Meetings are quiet with little conversation—and challenging topics are avoided.
- Team members police each other, pointing out infractions of rules or procedures publicly or to supervisors.
- You hear sarcastic remarks and offhand comments (they may seem innocent but there’s actually an undercurrent of nastiness).
- Folks hesitate sharing ideas or concerns, saying that they worry about upsetting others, feel like they’re walking on eggshells or don’t think anything will ever change anyway.
Unspoken concerns, unacknowledged tension or invisible power dynamics can quietly erode important team communication skills like trust, collaboration and engagement.
Why What’s Unsaid Matters
Any unspoken issues on a team, left to fester, can create a toxic workplace.
Ignoring any underlying tension is unhealthy. It can result in:
- misalignment.
- resentment.
- stalled progress.
- poor communication.
Think about a time you’ve been in a group where there are unspoken disagreements or interpersonal issues. How did it feel?
When people don’t feel safe to speak up and conflicts are left unresolved, that tension is stressful and negatively affects psychological safety. The result? The team’s effectiveness and job satisfaction will suffer. Any destructive conflict negatively affects your team and their productivity.
High performing teams with strong team communication skills can build healthy conflict around ideas, by sharing their concerns, offering new perspectives and new ideas for decision-makers to consider and ensuring everyone else knows what they know—all of which fosters creativity, innovation and success.
Defusing Tension on Your Team
Many folks who see signs of hidden conflict or interpersonal conflict ignore it, hoping it goes away. Unfortunately, it’s rare for unspoken conflicts to go away without any intervention or discussion.
Leaders who want to be proactive know how to recognize signs of trouble on the team and address it before tensions escalate. They will anticipate potential triggers for tension and use pre-mortems to mitigate it. For example, if there’s a new software being rolled out, ask everyone, “What could cause this to fail?” This will allow everyone to share their concerns, which can then be addressed.
They also work to build trust and strengthen relationships among team members and actively repair bad conflict—because when coworkers trust each other, they can have healthy conflict around ideas.
There are common reasons for interpersonal conflict. Sometimes personality differences, which influence communication styles, will strain relationships. It’s also possible that misunderstandings arise when team members come from diverse cultural backgrounds (with clashing norms). This is why developing cultural intelligence is critical.
Other times, conflict arises when folks are frustrated by a lack of transparency or perceived power imbalances. For example, consider the effect on a team when leaders tolerate bad behaviour by high performers.
Addressing the Elephant in the Room
One of our certified executive leadership coaches likes to use a tool called Bilateral Ventilation to uncover what’s not being said by a team.
Katharine Cherewyk starts by asking everyone in the room to name what they see or sense (without assigning blame).
Some powerful coaching prompts that can encourage team members to share candidly are:
“What are we not talking about that we should be talking about?”
“If there were no off-limit topics, what would you share with everyone?”
As more people speak, a collective truth begins to form. Often, Katharine finds solutions emerge naturally once the issue is acknowledged.
If you find that folks are reluctant to share at first, you can also start by having them write their answers on slips of paper that will then be shared with the group. Then you can move to discussion when everyone feels more comfortable.
How to Lead Through the Unspoken Tension
As leaders, we need to model how to be open about sensitive topics. This means creating safe space for difficult conversations (we like to call them essential conversations) without responding defensively.
This might look like starting a meeting by saying: “Everyone can raise any topic here today, even if it’s hard.” This indicates it’s safe and you’re inviting honest, candid feedback. You must be able to handle hearing potentially uncomfortable things without getting defensive or upset. It’s critical for team members to feel safe to share without any worry there will be retribution.
To model vulnerability, leaders can offer to share tensions that are challenging for them. This might be a mistake they have made or difficult feedback they’ve received. This encourages others to share openly and trust it’s a safe forum in which to share uncomfortable truths.
Remember that using “I” statements is typically an important strategy for diffusing defensiveness. For example: “I noticed X and I felt X…” versus “You always make me feel…” is much less confrontational. People who feel they’re being attacked or criticized won’t usually share vulnerably themselves.
Ensure that every team member contributes their thoughts because feeling heard and valued builds trust. Then, repeat back what you’ve heard in a factual way: “What I hear is…” so that team members feel their concerns were heard and they have an opportunity to clarify.
Follow-up with Questions
After people share their thoughts, leaders can also ask follow-up questions to determine whether there are other underlying concerns. For example:
“What details should we know to make this a more honest conversation?”
“Is there anything else that we’re avoiding here?”
“It seems there’s frustration about X. Let’s talk more about that.”
“I’m hearing we should do X or Y. Is it possible there’s another option?”
It can be tempting for leaders to jump with advice from their learned experience. Using coaching skills provides an opportunity for team members to find their own solutions.
Another way to foster strong team communication skills is to build regularly occurring, safe opportunities for team members to raise issues. It can be helpful for the team to agree on ways to handle conflict (for example, no gossiping or triangulation, raise concerns with the person directly, and assume good intentions).
When routine check-in meetings become normalized and team communication skills are healthy and strong, folks will share honest ideas more freely.
Coach’s Questions
What signals are you unintentionally sending to your team that make them feel some topics are off-limits? How do you respond when someone disagrees with you or raises a tough subject? How does that affect their openness? What have you noticed with your team that you’ve hesitated to address directly? What’s one courageous question you can ask them this week?
