During my work life I have come to the conclusion that in fact, all that matters are interactions with people; meaning the people you work with, as well as the interactions one has with the others in the context of a team and/or group; specifically a software engineering/developing group in this (and my) case / experience.
It is relevant that the quality of the outcome is affected by the quality of the interactions; and least not only that, also one's experience on the team will be affected. So communication is affecting (of course) a big part of that outcome. Given that communication, then, plays such a big role in the quality of the outcome, one has to realize that conflict, in a team, plays the opposite role, i.e. degrades the quality of the output. Conflict is one of the team traits that I feel are often mentioned; but at the same time its expected from everyone to be capable of handling it. Personally I don't like the word "conflict" itself. Its too broad of a term; when we talk about "conflict", it's very uncertain what we mean. Armed conflict? How would that translate into a Software development team - armed assault? Verbal violence? Personal attacks? Or fad arguments against one's own opinion? Passive-aggressive comments? Banter chit-chat in the interested person's absence?
Conflict is a dangerous word. Back in the 1920's, futurists (and later fascists) belived the world could be changed (for the better) only with conflict.
Fast forward 100 years later, the world has suffered the biggest armed conflict in human history, with millions of lives spent; the Futurists (which by then had become Fascists) had proven the way of changing the world they envisoned not to be the right one, therefore humiliating themselves and their thought school.
The Fascists, as a team, failed. Their "ways of working", their "tools", did not survive. Conflict was shown not to be the "herald" virtue it had been advertised for.
The Fascist's (failed) endeavours is a perfect example as in how conflict is toxic for a team (and im sure everyone agrees on this); even if used as an external tool for "improving" the team's own wellbeing (you won't make good friends if you make everyone an enemy).
I've come to cherish different grades of "hostility" (if you pass me the term) whilst communicating through the years:
- disagreement
- questions
- (counter)argument
- agreement
- violent agreements
Each of these carry a different grade of severity; heaviness in being addressed; and difficulties for the approach.
A disagreement is the simplest form; i.e. any reason that is incapacitating people to find consensus / understanding / common ground.
Typical scenarios can variegate from hearing only "no", to offensive expressions flying in the air.
A question, as such, is a simpler and more neutral form. They might be part of disagreements, or then gather people towards consensus, which is where they get the neutrality from. On a question, you typically have an answer; but the difference is, the discussion ends there. The answer satisfies the need for knowledge completely, no other question (argument or counterargument) is necessary.
An argument, or counter argument, you can have presented either as a reason in a (civilised or uncivilised) discussion, or as a question, posed as an answer to another question, or a follow-up question to an answer.
An agreement is then the situation of (peaceful) "yes"'es which highlight the fact consensus has been achieved, and everyone (or at least the relevant parties) are on the "same page".
A violent agreement, finally, tackles down to an argument being agreed on by all the involved parties, in a "violent" fashion. Think of someone all being involved in a discussion on a given topic; but all shouting wildly "yes" at eachother, as if every one's "yes" would be better than the others (spoiler: they are all good the same, but the passion transpares here the most).
The maturity of a team (and the individuals composing it) can be seen from how "conflict" situations are handled; more mature teams are more likely to not dig into the details of the issue, whereas younger, less mature teams will tend to split arguments up, hereby achieving the opposite effect, i.e. generating more tracktion for the respective cause - the conflict will spread. Mature teams will most likely steer clear from disagreements with the help of questions, to hover over into arguments, and from there to agreements (be them violent or not).
