How a CTO can Reduce Friction Amongst Teams

It's common for friction between groups of people to lead to the assumption of malicious intent when none exists. Directly identifying when this occurs and the ways to address its causes can help.

Photo by Sandeep Singh on Unsplash

Have you experienced a scenario in which you observed friction developing between teams? People are starting to assume malice and, as a result, are becoming disillusioned that they will find a compromise.

This is an important issue as the energy wasted due to team friction can be significant. In addition to contributing to emotional fatigue, it leads to worse decision-making. Teams may opt for poor compromises to avoid perceived conflict or seek conflict in response to a perceived threat to their progress.

As a leader, consultant, and coach, I've encountered this scenario frequently. Leaders can significantly influence whether this occurs at all. Let me share with you some of the approaches I have used successfully. These approaches can combine to reduce the occurrence of this situation drastically.

Before we dig into the approaches to resolving this, let’s examine why this happens.

Why does conflict happen between teams?

The pros and cons of tribal identity

The tribal nature of teams can have pros and cons. Some characteristics of groups of people are instantly recognisable.

Teams form identities that can be comprised of many things, such as:

• Visual motifs, dress code, swag

• Values, attitudes.

• Shared goals, work cadences, preferences

• A built-up knowledge of each other

These aspects can be harnessed to strengthen the bonds within a team.

Conversely, these commonalities can emphasise differences between teams.

I theorise further that your familiarity with the people around you encourages you to speculate about the aspects you can’t easily observe in other groups.

Bias at play: Fundamental Attribution Error

One explanation is Fundamental Attribution Error. This form of bias is where we make assumptions about why someone forms a position based on internal factors and discount the effect of external factors.

Studies show that individuals are more likely to explain their actions and behaviour based on external factors. However, they are more likely to explain the actions of others to be influenced by internal factors.

“We do it this way because the system doesn’t let us do it any other way”

“They don’t help us with this because they are selfish”

Find out more about Fundamental Attribution Error.

What can the CTO do?

What finally cuts through and makes a difference may differ based on your situation. These actions provide you with some options. Multiple factors may be contributing to the friction.

Educate on bias and Fundamental Attribution Error.

One of the most common responses to addressing bias is to help people become more aware of it and why it occurs. It can be easy to assume that people are aware of bias. Sure, they may know about it as a concept but may not have considered the situations it may present itself in the workplace.

To compensate for the misleading conclusions that bias may lead them to, you can encourage the team members to consider what other factors could be at play influencing the perspectives and actions of the other team. What could they do to understand the perspectives of the other team better? What could they ask? What curiosity could they demonstrate?

You can educate by using your various ‘one-to-many’ channels of communication as I have laid out in:

How to improve understanding and empathy with an organisation communication plan

You and your leadership team can then address particular examples of this occurring in your coaching of teams and individuals. Referring back and linking to the potential contributing factors of bias can help better identify when this might influence their thinking.

This issue can occur between teams in both directions, quickly devolving into animosity as the combination of conflicting priorities mixes with presumed bad intentions.

Message: Encourage your teams to ‘Assume best intentions’.

Along these lines, a specific message resonated with me when I heard it from Mike DeVico, former President of Experian Marketing Services. I have since used it in organisations I have led: ‘Assume best intentions’.

This statement explicitly addresses the importance of deliberating and counteracting the position our bias puts us in. It also sets an expectation from leadership that you start with this assumption and will first exhaust other explanations.

Encourage being specific about who is being engaged.

Another issue that can reduce empathy between teams is to cease viewing them as comprised of individuals.

“Marketing wants us to do this”

“Management won’t let us do what we need to”

In response to this behaviour I encourage people to be specific about who we are speaking about. Who in the Marketing team wants what? Who in the management team won’t let us? How specifically? What might be their motivation?

When we assign individual characteristics and attitudes to groups, it’s too easy to get stuck in supposed impasses. This approach is rarely useful and should be discouraged.

Encourage collaboration on a shared goal or purpose.

A common cause of conflict that may lead to misalignment, which in turn may lead to assumptions of malice, are goals at the team level that lack any shared context. A team may feel it has limited options to satisfy a goal when all it knows is its context and may believe that is the only expectation of them.

For instance, a security team may advocate for actions that help keep the company safe.

Another team may advocate for delivering capabilities that help customers do new things. The shared goal may require the company to satisfy both needs and for teams to work together to find options that satisfy both.

Facilitating the creation of shared goals relevant to multiple teams can help address the tension.

I cover this in more detail here:

Encourage teams to share their purpose, services, preferences and expectations.

Another approach that can reduce team friction is having them use some of the available communication channels to share information about their team with other teams.

It’s common for teams to engage others just when they need something. Friction to collaboration can be reduced by investing in proactively building awareness of a team's contribution and what it may need to succeed.

They can answer questions such as:

• What are the services they provide?

• What support do they rely on?

• What is their purpose?

• What is their vision?

• Who are their stakeholders?

• What are their goals?

• What are their measures of success?

• What are their contractual obligations?

• What are their preferences?

Of course, to answer these questions, a team must first get a good grasp of the answers :) They should also actively listen to the questions that come in when they share.

This concept is also recommended in some Team Topologies training I completed. We arrived at this practice independently, but its appearance in the Team Topologies body of knowledge suggests that other companies have found it useful as well.

I covered these ideas and more here:

Learning prioritised: How we used 'Boot camps' for newly formed teams

I have provided several practical responses to this challenge you can experiment with when you observe these issues.

Some leaders fall into the trap of feeling they cannot do anything or that the teams ‘can just sort it out between them’. The problem with this attitude is that as leadership, you must help define the system of interactions and context within which the teams work. You should be more aware of the shared context within which they must succeed and the cost of compromises in decision-making.

Other leaders may fall into the opposite issue of wading in and attempting to mediate each time there is an issue. Mediation may occasionally be required, but beware of becoming a dependency for teams to make decisions together when there may be an effort that could help them do this more routinely.

What examples have you witnessed of people assuming malice when other explanations were more likely? What did you do? How did it turn out? Share your experiences in the comments.