My Wharton colleague Adam Grant is a truly outstanding science communicator. So when Adam pinged me earlier this month to let me know he was launching a new weekly TED podcast called ReThinking featuring conversations with intellectual giants ranging from Danny Kahneman to Atul Gawande, I was thrilled. And I figured the time was right to share one of my favorite Choiceology Q&As of all-time — a conversation with Adam about the power of constructive conflict and how to harness it. I hope you’ll enjoy!
But first, as always, below are a few of my favorite recent listens and reads, and here’s a photo I snapped with my favorite book of the month – Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most by UCLA marketing professor Cassie Holmes.
Recommended Listens and Reads
Fail Better: We’re back with a new season of Choiceology, and this recent episode shares research on why we learn less from failure than success, featuring an interview with Northwestern University behavioral scientist Lauren Eskreis-Winkler.
A Recipe for Getting Things Done: In this recent CNN Q&A, I interviewed University of Chicago behavioral scientist Ayelet Fishbach about research-based tools we can use to get through our to do lists more successfully.
How Much Your Friends and Teachers Matter: This episode of People I Mostly Admire features an interview with Harvard economist Raj Chetty on his path-breaking research exploring inequality in the U.S.
Humor for Procrastinators: In light of my research on how to prevent procrastination, I got quite a kick out of this “completely valid list of reasons I can’t exercise today” from the Washington Post and hope it will make you chuckle too.
Our Virtual Behavioral Science Authors Series Is Back
This fall, the Wharton research center I co-direct is partnering with Psychgeist Media to bring you fresh, online interactive events with behavioral scientists on their latest books. Our events are free and open to anyone who registers at: http://bit.ly/3L5znG2
Q&A: Constructive Conflict
In this Q&A from Choiceology, my Wharton colleague Adam Grant explains why some conflict can be constructive and how to seek out the right kind of conflict.
Me: Could you explain the concept of constructive conflict and how it can be productive?
Adam: Let's just start by saying that I suffer from an affliction: which is the personality trait of agreeableness. On multiple occasions, I was sitting in an Uber and the driver was blasting air conditioning. I felt like I was in a frozen tundra and I couldn't bring myself to say, “Would you mind please turning this down?” The conflict was too uncomfortable for me, so I sat there with my teeth chattering, shivering.
I think the problem is that we think conflict is disagreement, it's tension, it's uncomfortable, it's emotional, and it's ultimately bad for relationships. And if you actually look at the science of conflict between people in teams, there's this great research which shows that there are different flavors of conflict. And the two that I found really helpful to contrast are task conflict versus relationship conflict.
Me: What’s the difference between task conflict and relationship conflict?
Adam: So, relationship conflict is what I hate. It's when conflict gets emotional and personal. It's, “I hate your guts and I wish you didn't exist.” And not surprisingly that is counterproductive if you're trying to work with another person or even just trying to have a debate or a dialogue on a charged issue. But there's another kind of conflict that turns out to be potentially productive. And that's called task conflict. That's intellectual and not emotional. It's, we're debating about different points of view and we're here to learn from each other. There is consistent evidence that if you can prevent task conflict from spilling over into relationship conflict, you will perform better in a team that's willing to surface those disagreements and sort them out. You will also be more likely to land at either a creative solution or a new insight, because you're learning from dissenting views as opposed to just falling into a pattern of group think.
Me: What are some best practices for fostering task conflict that doesn't spill into relationship conflict? Because it does sound like walking a tight rope.
Adam: One of the most basic comes from some research by Corinne Bendersky, where she randomly assigned people to frame their discussions as debates rather than disagreements. They had a thoughtful task conflict as opposed to a contentious relationship conflict, because we have a mental model around what a debate is. We know we're not necessarily going to agree with each other the whole time, and it's about the ideas, not about the relationship between us or how much I respect you.
And that's actually something else that Corinne found in some of her other research, which is, it is amazing that if you're about to sit down with somebody who has a very different point of view from you, if you just open the conversation by saying, “You know what? I respect the fact that you've thought carefully about your point of view or that you have strong convictions. That to me is a potential sign of integrity.” The other person then is less likely to feel personally attacked when you do disagree. And ironically, a little bit more likely to rethink some of those views because they feel like they're being treated as a genuine conversation partner who deserves equal status as opposed to an adversary or somebody whose views don't really matter.
Me: Am I right in thinking this has implications for whose advice you should seek to gain the maximum benefits?
Adam: I hope so. One of the ways that I've been rethinking my own collaborations is that we all have a support network — the group of people who encourage, motivate, and validate us. But we also need a challenge network — a group of people who we trust to stretch our thinking and let us know when we fall short of our potential.
Me: I absolutely love the idea of a challenge network that can help us stretch our thinking and improve. Thanks so much for taking the time to discuss this, Adam.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
To learn more about research on constructive conflict, listen to the episode of Choiceology where we dig into the topic, pick up a copy of Adam’s latest best-selling book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know or check out his new TED podcast ReThinking.
That’s all for this month’s newsletter. See you in October.
Katy Milkman, PhD
Professor at Wharton, Host of Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab, and Bestselling Author of How to Change