Smoothing means we pretend there is no problem. We sit on a beautiful mountain and admire the view.
Forcing means one person makes the decisions and everyone does as told. There is often a lot of noise if you do not obey.
Confronting means there is disagreement. If the disagreement is managed politely and without anger then we confront the problem and make progress.
If, however, we have lots of disagreement and we become argumentative, then we have chaos. Have you ever experienced the “silent treatment”. It is a battle with no weapons. The noise is deafening but there are no words.
In the middle of all these is compromise. We all disagree, but proceed anyway. We all feel like this is not the best solution but we use it anyway.
There is one more technique - alignment.
Team Formation Stages
Forming is very formal. Everyone acts politely and there is no disagreement. Every time we add a new person to a team we go back to forming and start over again.
Storming is the time when we are trying to find our place and set our boundaries. There is disagreement and there is friction but little of this is helpful.
Norming is when we all agree to listen to each other and try to cooperate. The corresponding conflict resolution style is confronting. Confronting means we work to address the problem. Confronting the problem requires that we work together and not in opposition.
Notice that in this second diagram, in addition to changing the names above the icons, I also added a two dimensional grid with labels. The labels on this grid are Love, Antagonism, Dissonance and Distracters. Dissonance is our tolerance for differences and our willingness to hear each other. We need dissonance. Antagonism is compelling or forcing. It is friction. The opposite of antagonism is love, or compassion.
The grid actually has four dimensions but it is difficult to show the other two on a flat image. The first of the other dimensions is energy or effort. The final dimension is time. We can increase the amount of love, dissonance and energy we put into a relationship. We cannot change time and must flow with it.
Now, let us go back to the first diagram.
Alignment is a style of conflict resolution where we hear each other and want to find a solution because we care. When we are aligned then we manage ourselves. The expectation is that you are aligned with the goals of the organization. The expectation is that you are concerned about the good of the team and the department and the people around you.
An aligned management style allows a team to reach the performing stage. When a team is “Performing” it is almost effortless because it has very little friction. Performing is the ideal for a team. Alignment is the tool that allows a team to reach performing. When the team is performing we are each self-motivated, self-managed and aligned.
Roles allow us to strive for alignment. First, roles define boundaries and set expectations. Thus, roles reduce friction—which is antagonism. Second, roles assign responsibility. If two people have responsibility then there is friction. If no one has responsibility then we tend to ignore the dissonance.
Consider, for example, the duties of a governance body. In some organizations access to governance is restricted and dissonance is kept to a minimum. As long as the governance body is relatively benign the end result will be a governance body that never gets out of the Forming stage. The conflict resolution style preferred by this type of body is smoothing. To be effective, the governance body needs feedback. Most importantly, the people on that team need feedback that tells them when something is wrong. Thus, they need dissonance.
If you take a calm, collected group of individuals and increase the dissonance you should be able to move from smoothing to confronting. The problem is that human nature causes us to react to dissonance with anger and thus we naturally pass through storming before getting to norming. The way to minimize the duration of time spent in storming is to have well defined processes and procedures. The key is to convert those processes from personal property to community property. The goal is to make the documents themselves neutral. There needs to be consensus that the documents are not biased. If the documents are used as weapons then storming continues. The goal is to focus on neutral, mutually agreeable documents and thus make the process non-threatening.
In order to get into the norming phase of a project the team culture must be non-threatening. And the team must be responsive to dissonance.
The vector that takes a team from norming to performing is love or compassion. The result is a natural alignment of interests. People tend to fear alignment because often what we are told is alignment turns out to be deception. Thus we need time to build trust before we will show love and we want a prolonged demonstration of love before we are willing to align. If you want to incubate alignment, then generously dispense love and become intolerant of antagonism.