🎶Conflict! Huh! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!🎶

Well, according to Patrick Lencioni, that isn't entirely true! And I agree with him! In his book "Death By Meeting' Mr Lencioni introduces the concept of mining for conflict. It's the concept of looking for or noticing when team members disagree on essential topics, bringing the disagreement into the open, and discussing it.

What does this have to do with testing and coaching?

When I'm testing, I'm looking for ideological conflict. It could be between:

• two people.

• behaviours described in a story.

• the product we wanted and the product we have.

When I'm coaching, it's much the same. There could be conflict between:

• What you do and what you want.

• Who you are and who you'd like to be.

• What you know and what you believe.

In both cases, avoiding the conflict doesn't help. Or, to use Mr Lencioni's words:

"...the only thing more painful than confronting an uncomfortable topic is pretending it doesn't exist."