Have you ever found yourself in a situation where cultural differences create a chasm in your team?
Navigating and resolving conflict is a competence that I believe we should all develop, both, professionally and personally. When we interact with other people, conflicts of different types arise: structural, instrumental, interest, personal... For each type, there are different ways of dealing with it... For me, without a doubt, the most complicated type of conflict to deal with is the conflict of values.
I was in India, I had gone to help a western organisation to orientate their ways of working in teams to be more based on self-organisation. In a session with one of them I noticed a particular dynamic: the team architect monopolised the conversation, and when I tried to intervene, I discovered that it was not just about hierarchy. Deeply ingrained values influenced how the team members interacted. One of the members who had been dissenting, when finally given the floor, simply repeated what the architect had said. He silenced his opinion.
For me, this was already a conflict with my own values. However, what was important was not that, but the fact that these deep-rooted values in the team contradicted the principles and values that the organisation wanted to implement.
This incident made me realise that it is not enough to change the organisational structure; we need to foster conversational skills and empathy so that we can all legitimise each other's way of seeing the world and try to reach common ground. And then we can start working from there different topics like defensive routines of silence or the fears present in the team.
How do you navigate value conflicts in your team and have you faced similar situations?
Opmerkingen