Building a Culture of Healthy Conflict in Tech Teams
summary
Argues that conflicts should make ideas win not people, gives a concrete PAUSE model — Prepare, Actively listen, Understand, Share, End — and a downloadable worksheet to follow in real situations; shows how misaligned incentives (build vs buy, promotion metrics at Google) create unhealthy fights and how simple rules (stop, ask open questions, apologize, agree a future protocol) restore safety. Cites the IKEA effect (builders value outcomes ~20% higher) to explain buy-in, and recounts a junior engineer leaving after dismissive meetings as a failure case.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Introduction
- 4:55Conflict causes in tech
- 11:37Healthy vs unhealthy conflict
- 15:27Benefits of healthy conflict
- 23:49Signs of unhealthy conflict
- 31:05Preventing unhealthy conflict
- 38:01Resolving unhealthy conflict
- 50:23Q&A
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