3 Ways to Collaborate Even when Teams Disagree

Brief 

Friction between team members can be reduced by making time to build relationships, space to disagree and a shared goal of making progress, writes Adam Kahane of Reos Partners and an author on collaboration. “To the maximum extent possible, you need to enable people to employ their autonomy and agency and create space to freely find what they can align and collaborate on,” Kahane writes.

Insight

In today’s world, collaboration is getting increasingly difficult because polarization is becoming increasingly severe. We need to work with other people to make progress on our shared challenges, but the more we retreat into working only with “our people,” the more it becomes harder to work with “those people.”

The polarization around hot-button political, social, and cultural issues is amplified by mainstream and social media bubbles, and it’s quickly seeping into our workplaces. The consequences include no-go areas, flare-ups, division, conflict, and paralysis.It is even possible to collaborate in these types of environments?

Yes. I’ve seen it with my own eyes many times over the past 30 years all around the world, within businesses, governments, non-profit organizations, and across organizations in communities and countries. It is possible to work together—even with people you don’t agree with or like or trust—if you employ a few simple practices.

Give people space to disagree.

The key to enabling collaboration among people who disagree is not to force them to agree. Instead, give them space to disagree on some issues—to be true to their own experiences and beliefs—and to discover the matters about which they agree.

It’s almost never possible to get people to do things they don’t want to do, so you can’t rely on using force. To the maximum extent possible, you need to enable people to employ their autonomy and agency and create space to freely find what they can align and collaborate on.