The Power of Creative Conflict and a Beginner’s Mind in Innovation
How embracing new perspectives and challenging assumptions can drive innovation forward
Say nothing.
Sorry?
Exactly.
It is the default position in meetings.
What is?
Saying nothing… naught, nada, rien.
People in groups are controlled by a hidden gravitational force. This energy is negative; fear, uncertainty, and doubt are its key components. When It manifests itself, it is called skilled unawareness.
This ability to make sure that you don’t really explore or collaborate in the collective experience of working in teams is extraordinarily strong. What makes this obstacle to performance so difficult to overcome is that actually not acknowledging its existence is part of its cycle.
So… what are we talking about here?
Well, in essence, it’s the avoidance of conflict: in any shape or form, any conversation that brings on disagreement is immediately toned down, smoothed over, brushed under the carpet. There is an unspoken rule that statements, ideas, proposals, criticisms that upset the status quo are verboten, prohibited.
Think about it:
When you are in a meeting, conversation and dialogue kicks off, you can observe a pattern that recurs basically all the time in groups.
What’s that?
Well, you see that there are two dimensions at work in the team dynamics:
The first element is what people say; the actual words used between each other.
The second facet is the unspoken feelings and thoughts…
And you will see that there is an actual negative relationship between these two.
Really?
Yeah!
The bottom line is that you never say what you really feel or think. There are three principles operating here and holding you back: self-censure, compromise and consensus. (This is the work of Chris Agyris on Organizational Learning)
This means you hold yourself back from what you truly think and feel.
Why is that a problem?
Well, the issue is that filtering your inner dimension means teamwork just ends up as a form of groupthink, killing your potential for high performance. Restricting your inner content means that all the superb ideas, out-of-the-box thinking stuff, crazy proposals, real feedback, are banned.
Instead, you, as a group, pursue compromise and consensus as the key mechanisms of decision-making, and this will always result in underperformance. Eventually, it will even become a cycle of failure, where no one says what is actually obvious to any outside observer.
What everyone is doing is ensuring that nothing which has any difficulty attached to it is surfaced, and when someone does bring it up, it is immediately neutered by everyone adapting a middle-way position. So, what happens is that the merit of an idea, its value, is reduced radically to accommodate someone’s opinion.
Can you see the problem here?
It basically means that the rules of the inner-game of collaboration kill off any attempt to be innovative before you even get started, and that even talking about this reality is avoided by business teams.
So, how can you reverse this?
Well, you have to out this characteristic of group-work with your teams. Change the rules, get people to focus on the merit of ideas. This is a real behavior change.
It will not be easy, you will have to get trained facilitators to help manage the team dynamics.
What you are actually doing is getting people to adopt a beginner’s mind.
Would you be surprised to learn that being open-minded is impossible without training? That you can just turn a light switch in your mind and reverse years of conditioning?
Skilled unawareness has resulted in learned incapacity, which is taboo. That’s how it remains: silently screwing things over. It is like a permanent “Murphy” ghost in the machine.
Unlocking self-awareness is the antidote to skilled unawareness.
What we are talking about is rewriting the unspoken rules of groups, which ensure we remain excellent at being incompetent.
You need coaches, facilitators, and simulations to help make this teamwork revolution.
Beginner’s mind means surrendering your ego in lieu of the value of ideas, that you encourage authentic communication and collaboration; because it is actually at the crossroads of disagreement that creative conflict emerges and offers a land of innovation and the development of high performing culture.
