By Dr. WANG Ming-min

Internal strife causes immense suffering for many professionals and leads to numerous pointless and wasteful actions. Skillfully resolving internal conflicts and avoiding such wasteful actions requires a systematic approach across three levels: addressing the root causes, building effective mechanisms, and shaping a positive culture, shifting the team from internal friction to collaborative creation.

Internal strife is essentially a combination of conflicting interests, lack of trust, and misaligned goals. When team members focus their energy on mutual suspicion and buck-passing instead of concentrating on business objectives, organizational efficiency drops sharply. Typical manifestations of internal strife include: sabotage between departments, resource competition, lack of transparency, and inconsistent decision-making. These behaviors not only induce various pointless actions, consuming a lot of time and energy, but also damage team cohesion.

To avoid internal strife in the workplace, the key is to build a culture of trust, starting with a change in mindset.

(1)Cultivate a sense of psychological security. Google's "Project Aristotle" research found that the primary characteristic of high-performing teams is a sense of psychological security. Managers should proactively show vulnerability (share their own mistakes), encourage experimentation, and celebrate learning rather than just success, so that team members dare to express different opinions without fear of punishment.

(2)Establish a feedback culture. Promote regular one-on-one communication. Managers should not only provide performance feedback, but also pay attention to employee growth and concerns. Encourage 360-degree feedback so that voices from multiple perspectives can be heard.

(3)Advocate a culture of "tolerance for mistakes". Leaders should be willing to tolerate mistakes and regard failures as valuable experiences. Encourage innovation and experimentation, create a sense of psychological security for the team, and allow employees to express different opinions without any worries.

(4)Leaders should act as a "compass" rather than a "commander." They should guide the team and clearly explain "why" they are doing it, rather than giving detailed instructions on "how" to do it. Leaders should handle problems, allocate resources, and evaluate performance fairly and impartially, maintaining maximum fairness and transparency.

(5)Timely intervention and mediation. When signs of internal strife are detected within the organization, timely intervention is necessary rather than indifference. Understand the demands of all parties through one-on-one communication, organize team meetings to promote reconciliation, and introduce third-party mediation when necessary. Prevent problems from escalating into conflicts.

Internal strife isn't entirely negative; moderate conflict and competition can stimulate innovative thinking. The key is to transform destructive infighting into constructive conflict. When team members can openly express differing opinions and collaboratively seek solutions, internal friction becomes a driving force for co-creation. Through systematic mechanism building and culture shaping, teams can extricate themselves from the quagmire of internal friction, focusing their energy on creating value and truly achieving highly efficient collaboration where everyone works towards a common goal.