The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

by Patrick Lencioni

The optimal place to be on this continuum is just to the left of the demarcation line (the Ideal Conflict Point). That would be the point where a team is engaged in all the constructive conflict they could possibly have, but never stepping over the line into destructive territory. Of course, this is impossible. In any team, and for that matter, in any family or marriage, someone at some point is going to step over the line and say or do something that isn’t constructive. But rather than fearing this, teams need to accept that it will happen and learn to manage it. They must be willing to live through the messiness of recovering from slightly inappropriate conflict, so that they will have the courage to go back to the best place again and again. Eventually they’ll develop the confidence that they can survive an occasional step over the line and can even get stronger and build greater trust with one another when they do. But this will never happen if executives are clinging to the side at the shallow end of the pool in the world of artificial harmony.