Killer Aces Media cofounder, poker player, Drupal evangelist, dude.

I just read this article on OPEN Forum by the Behance team title Can Good Teamwork Involve Fighting? Great article!

I think fighting is an integral part of a strong team — with a few caveats, of course.  Here’s some thoughts on how to encourage productive fighting for the betterment of the team or project.

1) Come to a resolution at the end.

At the end of the debate or meeting, it’s important that someone wraps up the points of the fight, and that the team comes to a resolution.  Like that axiom for marriages (don’t go to bed angry), don’t leave a meeting angry.

It helps to have an uneven number of team members and/or a strong leader.  With an uneven number of team members, you can put the conflict to a vote*.  With a strong leader, they can weigh the options and pick a resolution.

* At KAM, we vote with percentages. What I mean by that is I might say, “I’m only 60/40 in favor of X, but you’re 90/10 for Y, so we should probably go with Y.”  Or we may choose to not fight too hard for something. Eg., “I believe 90/10 that X is the right way to go, but I don’t care that much about it, so we’ll go with your idea.”

Even if there are still unresolved points of contention by the end of the meeting, someone should summarize where the team does have (near) consensus.  Throw out the rejected ideas, embrace the stronger points.  Basically, move the argument along so the team knows where it stands.  It’s not helpful to rehash the same old arguments at tomorrow’s meeting. There’s probably new issues to fight over.

2) After the fight, everyone’s on the same page.

Once a resolution is reached by the team, it’s important for individual team members to not hold grudges or undermine the team’s decision.

If your idea is not what wins, you can’t keep reminding people (especially external people) that the team made a “bad decision” by not adopting your views.  After the fight, after the meeting, everyone’s back on the same page supporting the same conclusion.

This reminds me of what my pastor used to say after a contentious church election.  We may be divided during the debates and election process, but once someone wins, we are one unified congregation again.

3) Strong teams encourage dissenting opinions.

I want to hear all sides.  Heck, the Supreme Court even publishes dissenting opinions — it makes their final judgements stronger, not weaker.

If your team is always harmonious and everyone seems to share the same opinions, that’s a bad sign.  There’s two huge problems I see:

1. Team members may not feel comfortable enough sharing their dissenting opinions.  If the team can’t talk openly with each other behind closed doors, that points to a problem with the team dynamics and/or leadership.
2. If dissenting opinions aren’t presented, the team doesn’t get the benefit of seeing the problem from all angles and may miss out on awesome solutions or opportunities.

4) Everyone’s on the same team, with the same goals.

It’s helpful that we all want the same thing — success of the company or project.  That helps make fights productive.  If fights are becoming especially heated, it’s helpful to remind everyone what the overarching goal is — ie., company/team success.  Then if needed, refocus the fight on accomplishing that goal.

5) Pick your battles.

Fighting for the sake of fighting isn’t helpful.  And if you’re the one who’s always playing devil’s advocate and starting an argument, people will want to stop talking to you.  Save your “fight juice” for the battles that are important.