IDEAS: How to embrace conflicts and achieve true disruption?
Often, at a successful company you would hear the team go “Yes boss!” after every brief but when you are getting a smooth-sailing start-up together, conflicts are unavoidable.
Like every other start-up founder, your ideas are your pet projects and there is a certain way you see them come to life. When someone on your team has a sharply different point of view than your own, you might be tempted to avoid the conversation altogether or to try to convince them that they are wrong. Neither are productive approaches of conflict resolution which is an essential skill for all the budding entrepreneurs.
Most leaders and founders want to be liked: It’s indeed one of the fundamental tenets of human behavior. That motivation drives an unconscious desire to avoid conflict and we choose to rather “get along,” “not ruffle feathers” and “be a team player.”
The issue with this mindset is that profitable ideas and better ways of getting things done often stem from a constructive conflict that adds great inclusivity to your product or service.
Start-up incubators like SINE are full of bright and ambitious individuals with different points of view, revolutionary ideas, and disparate backgrounds and conflicts during the ideation phases are inevitable.
So how can you find the right balance? How can you leverage conflict and achieve true disruption with the ideas?
Here are a few sure-shot ways that help you use conflicts to your advantage:
1. Focus on the ideal customer:
Any brainstorm session must be led with a clear agenda and a shared understanding of what we are here for and what is of the highest importance to your ideal customer. This helps everyone involved understand why the conflict exists and what the consumer needs are. This also helps the efficient management of customers, especially in a B2B business module.
2. Offer instant and constructive criticism:Any ideation process is based on values like empathy, insight, and most importantly constructive criticism. Criticism is an effective tool that time and again brings focus back to the problem that everyone is trying to solve and disruption everyone is trying to achieve in the process.
Ask simple yet pressing questions that not only increase the capability of people to listen, but also helps the team develop their inquiry skills. One of the most important questions to ask is “What’s missing?”
What’s missing: for the consumer, in our product, or in our communication? It can be applied to any situation, any setback or any phase of your ideation.
3. Always stay curious:
Inquisitiveness and genuine interest in listening to what the others have to say helps you create an environment that welcomes conflict. Giving one another the permission to give and receive feedback and use your fine communication to first identify the real problem, which will evidently lead the team towards the ideal solution.
Towards the end, we can conclusively state that conflicts open the room for diverse perspectives, critical thinking and new ways to solve old problems. Empathetic listening and the creation of a shared understanding of your brand’s value proposition set the stage for collaboration and problem-solving leading to breakthroughs and disruption.