When you have low conflict, you often also have little trust. That doesn’t mean there’s no one within the organization who’s trustworthy. It just means no one has had the opportunity to earn or gain trust. With the organization described in Part 1 of this post, things had been so casual and conflict-free that they hadn’t struggled through tough decisions in a way that builds trust among team members. So, that’s part of what we did with leadership and staff: build trust. As a result of that work, their trust level for one another was ultimately much higher, which was much more healthy for the organization.

When there’s differences of opinion within an organization, often that’s pictured as knockdown, blowout arguments between strong-willed individuals. That happens. But as we noted in our last post, agreement-based organizations suffer from “safeness” and “niceness” every bit as much as angry conflict. Yet for some reason, this softer side of the problem is rarely discussed.

In alignment-based organizations, diverse voices are valued. There’s creativity, innovation and trust because people can comfortably speak their mind. They can have disagreements about how to do something or what to do next because they’re all aligned around a common purpose and clear understanding.

In agreement-based organizations, creativity is stifled and fear of “breaking the rules” or “rocking the boat” runs rampant. Staffers play it safe around conflict, which can be just as damaging as tearing each other’s eyes out. Teams, departments and staffers don’t work together well, and the organization as a whole suffers greatly.

The choice seems pretty obvious, so how do you create and sustain an alignment-based organization?

It’s helpful to come in with coaching as soon after “chaotic change” as possible. Coaching can help that grieving process happen more quickly, with less angst. The coach’s presence serves as a permission system to have emotion because those feelings actually contain important information that will help guide you from here to what’s next. The coaching and facilitation work we do can help people harness the power of that emotional experience. You know, the term “emotional intelligence” was created for a reason. There’s a lot of smarts in those feelings.