5 minutes
Do you remember dreading group projects in college? Perhaps you lost some sleep knowing you’d have to compromise and negotiate with your classmates, listen to various opinions and ideas and, most importantly, find common ground that everyone could agree on.
The cool thing about those group projects is that they teach many key skills needed for success in the workplace—and for successfully being a volunteer on a credit union board committee.
Composed of directors and other volunteers, board committees help guide a CU’s board to success and productivity. For example, today’s governance committees help ensure that a CU’s board of directors has a succession plan, holds productive meetings and undertakes director development courses. Of course, whenever you have several minds coming together to reach a common goal, conflict is sure to follow.
Most people try to avoid conflict, mainly because we don’t want to hurt one another’s feelings. But beating around the bush typically does not produce the best results. According to Jamie Notter, founding partner of Culture That Works LLC, LaGrange, Ill., and co-author of The Role and Function of Board Committees, conflict within committees should be embraced and even encouraged.
In fact, group work typically faces difficulty when conflict is viewed as a negative, Notter says, and avoiding conflict reduces a committee’s chances of being successful. By avoiding conflict, people’s real opinions and insights are not heard, rendering impossible deep learning and further expansion of the issue.
“The main idea of conflict resolution is having a shared conversation,” says Notter. “This means gathering data, or people’s thoughts and opinions, to come to an understanding of where each person is coming from. Having someone explain their point of view, why they want this or that, allows for more data to be shared.
“When you have all that information coming out, you have a better idea of why people chose the way they did,” he explains.
Six Steps to Take
Chapter four of The Role and Function of Board Committees presents six steps for resolving conflict. These steps help committees address their conflicts and resolve them in favor of accomplishing the group’s mission.
- Define the issues. Everyone in the group needs to agree that disputed issues are actually key issues. Also, a group may misidentify the cause of a conflict, causing them to misunderstand the situation.
- Determine who is in charge. Arguing over who is in charge of a group can be uncomfortable. But having a designated “leader” in the pack will help bring structure and clarity to the group. This can be as simple as acknowledging the committee chair as the leader, much as the board chair would be in a board meeting.
Appointing a leader goes beyond the titles. According to The Role and Function of Board Committees: “Every group develops its own sense of whose opinion gets more weight, whose expertise is valued more, and whose suggestions can be ignored without some kind of ‘penalty.’ In most cases, these dynamics are obvious and easily managed but, in other cases, the unspoken battles about control and decision-making can undermine a group’s effectiveness. Successful committees learn to recognize these dynamics and deal with them head on.” - Hear all points of view. Having conversations is vital for consensus-building. The best way to resolve conflict is to truly hear the opposing side. “Consensus is a shared level of shared understanding and commitment,” says Notter. “It’s not about agreeing. It’s about finding common ground between conflicting parties.”
Supporting this idea, John Oesch, associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management and an instructor for CUES Governance Leadership Institute™, says: “Everyone thinks they have to come to a consensus, but if everyone has done what they’re supposed to, then you will have a good thing to support” when agreement is reached. Conversation leads to shared understanding, which allows the lines of communication within a committee to be open and promotes success. - Build trust. This is vital in facilitating communication among committee members. When a committee member feels his or her opinions will not be well received—and chooses not to express them—the key to the group’s success could be missed. Starting committee meetings with an icebreaker activity allows members to get to know each other and helps break down barriers to communication.
- Eliminate destructive conflict. Focus on what needs to be accomplished for the CU and its members. That means putting aside personal differences. “There is too much room for other ‘stuff’—personal or political needs—when you don’t have a clear idea of what should be happening,” says Oesch. When destructive conflict arises, the leader of the committee should go back and remind everyone of the committee’s goals. “Consensus doesn’t mean they agree,” Oesh observes. “It means they support it.”
- Reach consensus. How a committee handles conflict directly affects its ability to find common ground. A key goal of any committee should be to present a clear, well-thought-out and investigated recommendation. “There are a million ways to do anything, so once you figure out what direction to go in, you won’t know what works best until you try it,” says Notter. By allowing all members to be heard and coming to the highest level of shared understanding, a committee should be confident in presenting a recommendation to the full board.
A key idea to take away from this is that consensus isn’t a goal in its own right. Rather, finding common ground should be a learning experience, making it a process that’s ultimately more beneficial for a board. Allow your committees to learn and grow from shared conversation. The more you open yourself up to knowledge, the better you will understand and govern.
Molly Parsells is a Copy Writer and Coordinator at CUES.
