The Hidden Cost of Unresolved Conflict: The Partnership Pattern Default of 'If only they would be more ... (fill in the blank)'

When between-team frictions have become predictable (because of their frequency), it's not only a financial cost/risk but a building barrier for nice little silos. Here we see departmental identity ("we're the quality guardians" or "we're the client advocate") become defining and create an inflexiblity that makes cognitive diversity very hard.



Conflict is unavoidable in passionate work and unwanted in any organisation that want to succeed. 



And anyway, who would want to be surrounded by people who think like them all the time eh...? 



Oh, wait, there are a few people who want that...I'll rephrase that...



Who should be surrounded by people who think like them? 



No one should be surrounded by people who think like them all the time. Particularly anyone in business. Cognitive diversity is the only way to create sustainable business where more than one person is needed.



Conflicting ideas, styles, roles is how we find collective solutions or new ways of responding, creating or doing. 



However, unresolved conflict is different.



Research shows that 75% of major projects fail due to between-team friction. Psychological injury claims in Australia have doubled to $288,542 per case. When employees start documenting feeling "disrespected," "undermined," or "unsupported" by other departments, you're not just dealing with productivity loss , you're potentially facing WorkCover claims that could hit $300K per incident.



Even though the conflict appears to be about 'things' like timelines, responsilbilities, outcomes, conversations etc, it is much more likely to be about the partnership patterns at play. 



If we have done the work to figure out the pattern, it frees us to alloctate blame to the pattern and not the person. 



Partnership Patterns™ uses clinically-informed psychology to transform the collision between your best people into collaboration that actually works. This allows for the psychological flexilbity required to deliberately design new patterns for succes.



See the brochure here