The upside of positive team disharmony

It has been said that an organizational team is like an orchestra, with each member playing a role in creating the melody. But working in perfect harmony is not what makes a team great. It is actually productive disharmony that leaders should seek.

As with the yin and yang of so many things in life, not all harmony is good, and not all disharmony is bad. While many of us aspire to create a positive and productive team culture and environment, striving to maintain congeniality at the expense of exploration and exploiting differences only serves to undercut the value of being a team with diverse views. When team members ‘go along to get along,’ that’s when a team experiences negative harmony — and it almost always translates into poor results.

In this article published in the Fall 2021 issue of Rotman Management, Andy Atkins shares why a high performing team needs to explore diverse perspectives to be able to reach its full potential and create something extraordinary together. Our research tells us that there are four factors that distinguish effective teams. Andy shares what these four elements are and why every team needs to demonstrate them to deliver high performance.

(This article appears in Rotman Management Fall 2021.)