Frontline Management training in LucerneDisagreements in the team: should managers encourage confrontation over working methods?
Frontline managers sometimes have to resolve disagreements between employees who advocate different ways of working. Should they encourage this confrontation to improve the decision, or stop it before cooperation suffers?
1. What the literature establishes
Carsten K. W. De Dreu and Laurie R. Weingart (2003, Journal of Applied Psychology) distinguish conflict over the substance of work from relationship conflict, which involves interpersonal tensions. Their meta-analysis finds, on average, negative associations between both forms of conflict and team performance, as well as team members' satisfaction. It therefore does not support the assumption that disagreement about work is inherently beneficial.
2. A second synthesis clarifies the conditions
Frank R. C. de Wit, Lindred L. Greer and Karen A. Jehn (2012, Journal of Applied Psychology) offer a more conditional interpretation: the relationship between task conflict and performance depends, among other things, on its association with relationship conflict and on the performance criterion used. More favourable links emerge particularly when disagreements about work are less closely associated with personal tensions. For managers, the issue is therefore not just the subject of a disagreement, but how participants interpret and conduct the exchange.
3. The hasty conclusion: generate more debate
These findings justify neither suppressing disagreements nor creating them to stimulate the team artificially. Challenging a method against an explicit criterion is not the same as questioning the competence or intentions of the person proposing it. Managers can organise a comparison of alternatives without treating the intensity of conflict as an indicator of quality. (our executive and employee training programmes)
4. What the evidence cannot guarantee
These meta-analyses bring together different teams, tasks and measures; they do not establish that a particular managerial instruction will necessarily improve a decision. Nor do the observed associations rule out the possibility that performance difficulties fuel conflict. Finally, describing an exchange as 'professional' is not enough to establish whether participants experienced it as an attack.
5. A practical check in Lucerne
In Lucerne, where tourism, hospitality, regional financial services and industrial SMEs operate alongside many family-run businesses with short decision-making lines, one might imagine a disagreement between reception and housekeeping over which rooms to prioritise: this is a hypothetical example, not an SHR client case. As an application exercise for the 'Management de proximité' programme, the manager could spend four weeks recording each disagreement requiring a decision, the alternatives proposed, the decision criterion and any remarks directed at a person. They would then check the proportion of decisions with an explicit criterion and ask participants separately whether the exchange remained focused on the work. This monitoring would make an observable practice and the associated perceptions verifiable, without claiming to demonstrate a causal improvement in performance. To go further: explore the Frontline Management training in Lucerne in the canton of Lucerne, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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