During team meetings you feel like you’re talking to a blank wall. When you think about taking a vacation, you get a pit in the bottom of your stomach because you know the success of your company rests entirely on you. You know your team isn’t operating at its full potential, but you’re not entirely sure why.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We’ve found that one of the primary reasons a team is held back is because conflict within the team isn’t embraced. Productive conflict is essential to a vision-based culture, a culture in which elite teams thrive. In a vision-based culture, a leader defines the vision and team members are empowered to work together to make this vision a reality.  Different opinions are celebrated, and conflict is not merely tolerated, but embraced. Team members feel the freedom to truly share their opinions.

At Inspire Network, we suggest three basic operating principles to embrace conflict:

View reality like a beach ball

Leadership development expert Susan Scott, in her book Fierce Conversations, uses the metaphor of a multicolored Beachball to explain the impact of team members’ different versions of reality.  In Scott’s model, each team member stands on their own colored stripe of the beach ball; meaning that each sees the world from their own unique perspective.  When challenges arise, one team member may interpret the situation from their blue perch, while another sees the situation from their red stripe.  But, in fact, no one’s color is better than another’s.  No one’s truth is truer than another’s.

Our co-founder, Saša Mirković, has stated that it’s sometimes tempting to feel that the weight of Inspire Network’s success rests solely on his shoulders. But as a leader, he has learned to shake off that burden and remind himself that he is not alone on that Beachball.

Be Radically Open-minded

Elite teams don’t merely accept the reality of others’ different perspectives.  They’re smart enough to understand that those varied points of view are assets.  If every team member has a valuable piece of the truth, then radical open-mindedness is the only productive response to others’ views.  Being radically Open-minded means not only that you accept others’ perspectives, but actively encourage everyone to bring their ideas to the table.

Be Radically Assertive

Being radically assertive takes the principle of radical open-mindedness up a level. Not only are you open to others ideas, but you actively participate in working with other team members to tackle problems, and develop new ways of fulfilling your organization’s purpose.

Being radically assertive includes embracing conflict.  Embracing conflict is about being free to give feedback to anyone.  Anyone at any level.  About everything.  This is the essence of productive conflict and is essential to generating fresh ideas, building trusting relationships, and delivering a superior client experience.

Read more about Inspire Network’s way of embracing conflict here.