Team researchers and experts in the past decade have believed that conflict, originally seen as a bad thing for teams, could actually help teams perform better if the conflict was about tasks or ideas and did not get personal. To test this idea, two researchers ran statistical tests on 30 studies published since 1994. Both task conflict and personal or "relationship" conflict—not just the latter—hurt team performance. Both types also hurt worker satisfaction, though relationship conflict was worse. Conflict generally had a stronger effect on teams doing nonroutine work like projects, versus those whose work was fairly routine like factory production work. This may be because of time pressures or because the decisions made were more complex.
The researchers noted there may be circumstances where task conflict is helpful, but only if team members are very open and trusting with each other. The bottom-line conclusion: "it seems safe to stop assuming…task conflict improves team performance."
Source: De Dreu, C., and L. Weingart (03), "Task Versus Relationship Conflict, Team Performance, and Team Member Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis," Journal of Applied Psychology 88(4): 741.
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© 2009 by Jim Morgan. All rights reserved.