Ever feel stuck in a loop of repeated arguments during collaboration? It’s a common challenge! But there are more effective ways to navigate conflict. Instead of reiterating your point, try sharing your perspective with “I statements.” This can help you express your concerns without sounding accusatory, shifting from confrontation to understanding.
It’s crucial to depersonalize ideas, keeping them separate from the individuals who propose them. During brainstorming, emphasize generating as many ideas as possible, rather than who came up with which idea. You can even evaluate ideas anonymously to remove personal biases. Additionally, try “giving away” ideas – letting others develop and build upon them, which focuses on the collective goal rather than individual ownership. This approach encourages open communication and keeps the collaboration moving forward productively.
Jenn Porritt, an HR and leadership coaching expert shares some practical strategies for productive collaboration at work.
That’s a great question. I mean, not every idea or lens that someone picks up might be acceptable or agreeable to others. So I think some key things to think about when you’re moving through a disagreement, first off is just don’t repeat your position over, and over, and over. I mean, how many times does that happen where someone just keeps saying the same thing? Just trying different ways of saying the same thing in order to try and convince others.
So instead, you might want to take a pause and use an “I statement” to share your interests or your concerns. So it could sound like something like, “I’m most concerned about,” or “what I’m mostly interested in is.” Or “I’d just like to make sure that our approach is, dot, dot, dot.”
So, to be open to suggestions that actually meet your interests or concerns. But to use the “I statement” really positions it like you’re not accusing others of something. And that will happen if you use the “you.” So keeping the “I” is important.
And avoid making conflicts personal, which I know can be really hard, especially in close teams. But it’s best if the ideas are held loosely and seen as belonging to the group as opposed to an individual. So just reinforcing if you’re having, say, a collaborative session, a brainstorming session, is to position it to say, we’re just looking for ideas. “We’re not looking for ownership. We’re not looking for the best. We’re just looking to generate ideas here.”
So trying to keep it a little bit more like, “here’s the problem, we’re putting it in front of us as opposed to owning it.” And in that vein, brainstorming sessions can actually really help people to generate ideas, as many ideas as possible without that personalization.
Another fun thing to do is you could rank or evaluate ideas. So talk about your ideas and evaluate them without referring them to, well, you know, “that was Dom’s idea” or “that was Jenn’s idea.” So taking the personalization out of it, and you can do this anonymously, either in person or virtually, just to keep the inevitable biases out of that process.
And there’s also something you could do called giving ideas away. So once the ideas are generated, allow other team members to develop them or to identify next steps, again, so it doesn’t matter who had the idea first.
Jenn has been immersed in human resources and training for more than 25 years and she’s committed to helping leaders evolve and grow to support successful organizations.
She holds a master’s certificate in organizational development and change from the Schulich School of Business and professional designations in both human resources (CHRL) and training & development (CTDP). She also holds coaching certifications from Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead, Team Coaching International, EQ in Action, Everything DiSC Workplace, Crucial Conversations, and Five Behaviours of Team Development.
Jenn’s career started in HR at the University of Wilfred Laurier in Waterloo, Ontario, then she moved to PriceWaterhouseCooper where she learned, tested, implemented, planned and oversaw hundreds of tools, trainings, courses, assessments, and management interventions. She has empowered more than 5,000 individuals and led more than 475 trainings.
Jenn is also the Subject Matter Expert for two of Dialectic’s new Learning Snippets programs: Leadership 101 and Collaboration 101. These are scenario-based microlearning programs that are designed to equip leaders and team members with proven tools and strategies.
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