Conformity or Conflict

A recent post from Amy Edmondson on Linkedin includes this:

“A culture of fear in the workplace limits people from performing at their best.
Any kind of derision leads to fear which leads to conformity… but never to ingenuity and creativity.
You’re not going to get new thinking from fear. Ever.”

Amy Edmondson

I agree, however I would also add that:

…any kind of derision leads to fear which leads to conformity (or conflict).

Tackling the fear that can cause both conformity or conflict seems to me to be the logical solution. That is, as much as conformity stifles creativity, so too does our fear of conflict.

So, imagine if we agreed, as a team, that one could use a real-time intervention procedure and app to object to “any” behavior one perceives as derisive instead of trying to ignore, react angrily to, or maliciously gossip about.

I believe that would be a good start to resolving the conformity or conflict that any level of such derision can cause?

I hope that someday organizations will realize this and their teams will be encouraged to try the solution I am proposing at SpatzAI.com, an AI toolkit to resolve micro-conflicts (or conformity) in teams.

This toolkit also includes a peer-review network to adjudicate on the validity of any challenges made to a team member’s objections.