Keep conflict at the right level. Click here.

At the other extreme, if your day goes past in blissful harmony you can be sure that you are not finding optimal solutions or making tough decisions. Everything from coffee-machine debate through to shouting matches at meeting-room whiteboards will help deliver better ways of doing things. Up to a point, of course, after which it becomes harmful.

Your job as a manager is to ensure the right level of conflict for your project, company, and culture. In many companies any deviation from the Official Line brands you with that most heinous of crimes: not being a team player. In many companies it's better for your career to let the ship sink than to point out that you're taking water.

Here are some of the personality traits you're bound to find in your office. How you manage the mix of these traits will determine your success.

The Passive Voice
You stand up and announce the plan. Your team agrees, the meeting breaks up and they flow back to their desks to implement the grand scheme. You sit back and sigh contentedly about how talented and correct your decisions are. That might work for a fast-food franchise, but it's a disaster for a technical team. After all, Fearless Leader has been known to be foiled again and again. Your project might need shaking up, with alternative solutions suggested and defended, then accepted or rejected.

A bunch of people all thinking alike—or at least not able or willing to speak their thoughts—are not going to give you optimal results. Since many technical types are rather shy and awkward, they are often reluctant to speak up—especially in a culture where conformance is highly valued.

Most of us are conditioned to conform, and it's not by chance that artists are often less conventional, outside of the social norm. Most people like to agree, but works of art aren't made by committee. Recognizing this, some companies teach people to use conflict. They train their staff to speak—or shout—their minds. There are also so-called "creativity consultants" who claim to help teams unlock their latent potential. The key is granting permission to differ.

You have to give people permission to question, permission to express their concerns and doubts, without the fear of repercussions. And "granting permission" doesn't just mean sending out a memo encouraging people to drop suggestions in the box outside your office. It means actively encouraging debate.

One thing to try is to join with other senior team members in reviewing your work publicly. Your constructive criticisms will help the more junior staff to voice their opinions. Invite comments as often as you can, and make sure that you welcome them. One interesting peculiarity is a communal willingness to believe that any competent-looking diagram is correct. You'll have noticed this if you've ever sat in on a bad presentation, wondering if you're the only one who realizes the speaker's a jerk.

I Beg to Differ
At the other end of the scale are people who are always eager to shout out their opinion. I include myself in that category. More concerned with getting to what we believe to be the right solution than conformance, we're ready to comment and question anything.

It is, however, important to channel the energy that comes from the belief that the other guy is just plain wrong. Focusing on the other guy and his wrongness is bad. Instead, you need to concentrate on what is right and good for the project. When you can do that, conflict will release a huge burst of creative energy. That energy must always be tempered with the willingness to accept other views, to admit error. Try saying "OK, I was wrong" in a meeting—it'll shock them into silence.

Some people, however, can't tell that they are creating bad conflict. This will usually happen when they go too far, refusing to admit that they are wrong. You can always tell when something has gone too far if you pay attention to the other people in the room. Just as you're supposed to look at people while you're presenting, you can do the same thing during a raging debate. Don't focus on the person with whom you are locking horns; watch what the rest of the group is doing.

If most of your people are reluctant to voice their opinions in public, they are likely to crawl under the table and hide when a real debate starts. For them it would be hard enough to voice their opinion at all, let alone have some monster tell them in no uncertain terms that they are wrong. It's much easier for them to keep their thoughts to themselves.

Every person in a meeting should have something to contribute—or they shouldn't be there. To extract the thoughts from the silent folks, you'll have to make the loud ones back off. This will require a bit of order, something that is missing from most meetings. You need someone who can take control of the meeting—and I don't mean take it over. A meeting leader should be able to guide the meeting to get the most out of each member, whether prone to mouthing off or clamming up. He or she will be able to take discussions that are getting too heated or too long off-line, so as to avoid derailing the rest of the event.

One Role Only
You must be aware, however, that you can't be both a meeting leader and a contributor. Decide beforehand which role you will play. As project manager you may find you're itching to pitch in on some technical fight, but that's not compatible with being referee. And remember: Listening and presenting are mutually incompatible; you have to actively switch between them.

Controlled conflict works well for thorny technical issues, but it must be allowed to run on an equal footing. Constructive debate is pointless if hierarchical authority is more important than technical merit. The most junior engineer can provide an insight, and should be allowed to speak as much as the gnarly old guys. Make sure your decision-making process is defined by who is most competent to decide, not who wears the right color of hat.

There are many ways to make things happen such as persuasion, leadership, teamwork. And then there is intransigence: making things happen by brow-beating everyone else into submission. You can spot people with this approach immediately in meetings. They come in two unpleasant flavors: "I'm going to do it my way, no matter what you say or do," and "we're all going to do it my way, and I don't care if it kills us."

The first kind are generally sad little people who don't do much harm beyond making the rest of the team do their work for them. Whatever they produce will generally be thrown away as it won't be relevant to what eventually happens.

The ones who won't budge from their opinion and insist that they are right are much more dangerous, especially in positions of power. Working with these people is spectacularly demotivating: You know that you're going to have to do the job twice—once the right way, and once to satisfy their irrational demands. One particularly obnoxious specimen I know is renowned for being unable to admit he is wrong—preferring to storm out in a huff.

Unfortunately, a large number of people would rather see the company collapse than accept that someone else was right. Of course they have an image of themselves as crusaders battling against heathens. There seems to be only two real alternatives: fight constant pitched battles or find another job. A third possibility is to do the right thing anyway, and hope that the bully doesn't notice, but you can't do that forever. After a few years these people are surrounded by yes-men and those who are too ground down to argue.