Katie, an IDEAS Associate and Leadership Coach, lives and works throughout North Africa helping to create thriving communities and increase longevity of expatriates working in the region. In this blog: Healthy Conflict at Work, Katie explores the importance of conflict and how to address it properly.

"I hate conflict," she says.

But she also hates bad decisions. Are the two related? YES!  Poor decisions are often the result of not having enough healthy conflict.

Healthy conflict, what in the world is that?!?!?

I worry about bringing up topics I know might be controversial or uncomfortable. It's easier just to let it go. Then later, of course, I'm often disappointed that I didn't speak up. I find it easy to blame the current work situation on someone else's poor thinking.

So how do we make headway in this scary realm of conflict?  There are many steps in moving forward and they take practice to do well. But one of the first places to start is realizing that there are two kinds of conflict:

Task Conflict: This is the disagreement or discord centered around cognitive issues, the topic, the events, the logistics etc.

Relational Conflict:  This is the friction, dissension or even hostility centered around interpersonal incongruence that is frequently more emotional in nature and feels very personal.
We all know how distasteful and disturbing relational conflict can be.  But what about task conflict?  Simons and Peterson, conflict experts at Cornell University, found two benefits of task conflict. First, it increases the quality of group decisions. Secondly "task conflict can lead to increased satisfaction with the group decision and a desire to stay in the group."

The problem comes when passionate opinions, mistrust, or strong tactics in a task oriented conflict are mis-attributed personally and emotionally, changing the conflict to a relational one, which is detrimental to groups and individuals.

So what can we do to have less relational conflict and more task conflict, leading to better outcomes for teams and organizations?  These steps can help:

1. Begin to learn to identify between the two types of conflict.  You could listen to conflicts of others and see if you can tell the difference, or review your day and try to identify where each type of conflict took place.
2. Intentionally begin to notice when there is disagreement on a task, but it's done so strongly that you begin to mis-attribute it - taking it personally.  Explore the idea that it is possible that the other party is only expressing stronger emotions about the topic, not about you.
3. Do some team building exercises around personality, values, or conflict styles.
4. As a team talk about how conflict was handled in your families of origin.  This builds the trust foundational to being able to have healthy task oriented conflict.
5. Catch yourself, when you've started out with sharing strong opinions about a task, but let it shift to becoming about personalities. Confess that to the group and re-start.
6. Watch your self-talk when you are listening to someone else share about task issues. Be conscious of if/when you begin to tell yourself that there strong opinions are negative thoughts or emotions about you. Stop, admit it, and shift your thinking.
7. Work through relational conflict with others either one-on-one or with the help of a mediator, so that you can move forward in your team to have the healthy conflict needed to accomplish your goals.

Speaking specifically of those who work in non-profit organization's Patrick Lencioni, business management expert, said they "tend to have a misguided idea that they cannot be frustrated or disagreeable with one another. What they're doing is confusing being nice with being kind." Kindness is a character quality connected to being loving and caring. Being nice has to do with being pleasant and agreeable. It's worth considering the difference between these two words, and how one can be kind even when disagreeing.

Listen, your work is important. No one person has all the intellect, insight and ideas to accomplish something great on their own. So we really need to hear from one another and wrestle with ideas and decisions. We need the good kind of conflict to accomplish anything significant.

So, what is it you need to do to become more comfortable with healthy task-oriented conflict?