Productive Battles
I have been reading Adam Grant’s new book, Think Again—an entertaining and informative guide for learning how to question our own opinions and assumptions, and increase our ability to get others to do the same. In one chapter, “The Good Fight Club”, Adam discusses productive conflict. This chapter resonated with me because it made me think about my most productive coauthoring relationships, in particular coauthoring with my good friend Violina Rindova.
In identifying productive conflict, Adam distinguishes between relationship and task conflict. Relationship conflict is personal and emotional, layering animosity on top of friction. Task conflict, in contrast, involves clashes about ideas and opinions, but isn’t personal. It’s about figuring out the best way to solve a problem. His and others’ research has found that whereas relationship conflict leads to lower group performance and less creative outcomes, task conflict can be productive. It surfaces competing perspectives and forces group members to debate their strengths and weaknesses, while also identifying points of agreement. As Adam explains, “Relationship conflict is destructive in part because it stands in the way of rethinking…Task conflict can be constructive when it brings diversity of thought, preventing us from getting stuck in overconfidence cycles. It can help us stay humble, surface doubts, and make us curious about what we may be missing” (Grant, 2021: 80).
Three additional factors are necessary for productive task conflict. First, you have to be open to persuasion and focused on arriving at the best solution. If your objective is “winning”—proving yourself right and those with differing opinions wrong—task conflict won’t be productive, and will likely devolve into relationship conflict. Second, you have to trust the individual or individuals you were debating with are also interested in getting to the best solution. Trust in others’ motives helps keep the discussion from getting personal, even if it gets heated. Finally, you and whomever you are debating need to be conflict tolerant. If either of you are conflict avoiders, then task conflict is less likely to generate a positive outcome.
This resonates with me because productive task conflict has been central to my best coauthoring experiences. Indeed, just yesterday I had a meeting with two coauthors where one of my coauthors and I had a prolonged exchange about how to phrase an interaction hypothesis. It got a bit heated, but was never personal, and our third coauthor eventually pointed out that we were arguing about different things, which allowed us to step back and rethink our positions, eventually arriving at a mutually satisfactory solution. There were no personal hard feelings, because we were all just trying to come up with the best solution.
This brings me back to coauthoring with Violina. We have been coauthors for more than twenty years, are still at it, and we have coauthored almost all my most highly cited articles. I have said many times that when Violina and I work together we come up with better ideas than either one of us would have come up with alone. This is for a variety of reasons (sharing a common perspective while having different areas of expertise, etc.), but a big one is are our ability to engage in productive task conflict. It’s safe to say that we are both blunt, and neither of us are conflict avoiders. This can be disconcerting for others who join our collaborations. However, we also implicitly trust each other, we know that we are both trying to make our articles better, and we don’t personalize the disagreements. Finally, while our opinions are often strongly held, we are open to being persuaded, and willing to experiment with alternatives to see if they work better.
I think another factor that often limits productive task conflict is a desire to arrive at “the answer” too quickly, and the unwillingness to go back and rework or rethink what you’ve already done. We will scrap things we’ve worked hard on (or the other person has worked hard on) if we don’t think it’s working. Our shared values in getting to the best solution are critical here.
As you select and work with coauthors, try and stay open to persuasion, develop trusting relationships with your coauthors, and become more tolerant of conflict, even if that’s not your natural tendency. This can be harder when working with more senior or junior colleagues; senior coauthors therefore need to make sure they encourage junior colleagues to speak up, and listen to what they say; junior coauthors need to challenge senior coauthors when necessary, and offer alternatives they can consider. Remember, focus on “succeeding,” not “winning.”