Leveraging Tension

As a facilitator of collaboration, you may read group comfort and harmony as great dynamic. But as uncomfortable as conflict between opinions can be, tension plays an incredibly important role in the collaborative ideation process. Avoiding or smoothing over tension can actually undermine the quality of your collaborative outputs.

Understanding the value of tension and building skills to engage with it can meaningfully change your facilitation practices and help your team co-create genuinely novel ideas.

IDEO and IDEO U have created useful guidance around skillfully leveraging tension to drive more creative collaboration:

• Observe the dynamic: What opinion is each team member pushing forward? Why might they have this view? Sit back and pay attention to establish empathy.
• Give it a name: Name the tension out loud or write it down. “There’s tension around X right now.” Mapping out seemingly conflicting interests or goals is a great tool for synthesis and identifying opportunities.
• Just start making: Debate and reaching consensus can be draining and not useful early on. Move a team forward through tension by just starting to do, whether sketching on a whiteboard or modelling with construction paper and glue.
• Assume good intent: teammates may direct shared passion in different ways. Remember that you’re all working towards the same goal, and reinforce this through language or actions, e.g. “I’m glad we’re in the same room solving this problem together.”
• Turn tensions into powerful stories: Treat the lessons learned as a story resource that can be carried through to a broader group or context and bring others on board with your new approach (especially when it involves leaving behind something familiar).

Finally, Coyle emphasizes that instead of aiming to produce a perfect collaborative engagement, focus on the first five minutes of interaction, the first disagreement, and the first adaptation or learning moment to build the team dynamics you’re aiming for.