MZMORALE ZEROthe antithesis of employee engagement
DIRECTIVE 111 / BELONGING

MAKE CONFLICT PERSONAL

Turn a disagreement about work into an assessment of character.

Allow colleagues to argue about a decision until they begin questioning one another's motives. Refuse to mediate because healthy teams resolve interpersonal differences themselves. Once cooperation breaks down, describe the problem as a personality clash.

THE MECHANISM

Task disagreements escalated into relationship conflict through managerial neglect.

Primary: BELONGINGFEEDBACKPOWER
RATIONALE
Unmanaged conflict requires less managerial effort and can still be described as evidence of passionate debate.
SUCCESS INDICATOR
The team remembers who disagreed long after it forgets what the disagreement was about.
COMMON FAILURE
Keeping disagreement focused on the work and intervening when task conflict becomes entangled with relationship conflict or persistent interpersonal hostility.
SCIENTIFIC CONTEXT

Evidence, with limitations.

Claim

Relationship conflict is negatively associated with team performance and satisfaction; task conflict is not automatically beneficial.

Evidence

De Dreu and Weingart (2003) reported negative average relationships of both relationship and task conflict with team performance and satisfaction. Effects varied with task characteristics and the degree to which task and relationship conflict overlapped.

Limitations: Meta-analytic associations are not proof that eliminating disagreement improves all teams; task context and conflict type matter.

Sources

These references offer context, not a completed review or a test of this instruction.

PREVIOUS

RATE FROM MEMORY

NEXT

LEAD BY ABSENCE