Leadership & Conflict go hand-in-hand

After you read the teasers below, I hope you will click on Mike Myatt's blog post at Leadership and Conflict.

• "Every workplace is plagued with manipulative people who use emotion to create conflict in order to cover-up for their lack of substance."
• "The fact of the matter is that conflict in the workplace is unavoidable. It will find you whether you look for it (good idea – more later) or not."

The Good Fight: How Conflict Can Help Your Idea

I am a fan of using conflict to help develop a team.  So I enjoyed The Good Fight: How Conflict Can Help Your Idea, a blog post of Paul Kotter (author of Leading Change).  Paul writes:  "Some leaders value consensus so much that they feel they need complete agreement on everything. They stamp out disagreements over the issues because they fear their subordinates might get their feelings hurt, some teammates will harbor grudges, or the team could lose cohesiveness. . . . I will say that avoiding conflict can actually be ruinous for achieving buy-in for an idea."

Paul advises:  "Good ideas need active, engaged support for a considerable time until they reshape how we think about and do things for the better. To make positive, lasting change, you need to energize people, and at a deep enough level to make buy-in — then ultimate implementation — achievable. And you need conflict to accomplish that."

Read Kotter's blog post at: The Good Fight: How Conflict Can Help Your Idea.

Pick your battles: What Do Florida Bar rules and John Maxwell Have in Common?

In rendering legal advice, in-house counsel may be challenged in "picking their battles" because their legal advice is governed by a professional code.  Because in-house counsel often give a blend of legal and business advice, John Maxwell's thoughts on picking your battles may come in handy.