Comments on: Adversarial vs. collaborative communication styles

By: Eric Nehrlich, Unrepentant Generalist || Faking it || September || 2008

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:21:25 +0000

[...] are too polite to tell other people they’re wrong or full of crap. MIT tends to foster an adversarial conversation style, where mistakes are leaped upon, but more genteel members of society just nod politely and change [...]

By: Mathias

Mathias — Mon, 26 May 2008 01:28:28 +0000

I think there is a time for both, it really depends on what discussion you are trying to have. If you are trying to flesh out an idea, develop a vision, you will be better served by a collaborative style. An aggressive style will for instance likely stifle any brainstorm session.
On the other hand, once an idea has been expressed clearly, an adversarial style is useful – the best way to be convinced that a project is robust is by playing devil’s advocate and trying as honestly as possible to find its flaws. If you want to find bugs in an application, for instance, or decide how to improve your product, you have to try to find problems in what has been done.
That being said, I fully agree on the risks you point at with adversarial style; you’d better not go there unless you trust the others to know it’s not personal!

By: Beemer

Beemer — Fri, 23 May 2008 22:31:03 +0000

Despite the “advantages”, I’m still not convinced there are contexts where the adversarial communication style is really better in the long run.

The sometimes tricky thing about collaborative communication is that you need a rich diversity of viewpoints feeding into it. It’s easy for flaws and errors to be overlooked if the participants too like-minded. This is less of a problem with adversarial communication because it actively seeks out conflicting viewpoints, in hypothetical devil’s-advocate mode if necessary.

By: Bats

Bats — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:02:02 +0000

For one thing, if a discussion is framed as a battle, it creates opponents of people who perhaps should be on the same side (e.g. departments within a company), making it hard for them to collaborate towards their common goals after the â€œbattleâ€.

Like primary elections!

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:07:55 +0000

Seppo, I agree that there is a time and place for both, and striking a balance is appropriate, although I’m still looking for that balance myself. I think that the adversarial tone can work when there is a bond of trust and respect between the parties, as it takes some of the ego out of the equation, as there isn’t the worry about the loss of face. It also helps if there is a common understanding of the rules of the game, so that people understand (like you) that their job is to find weaknesses.

By: seppo

seppo — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:52:17 +0000

“One last issue with the adversarial style that specifically affects managers is that it is difficult to have a true discussion if there is a power differential between the participants.”

This is one of the biggest problem my current company has. It’s run by people who really believe in the adversarial style of communication. Their mentality is that if you fight, and win, then you’ve achieved the best possible result. People who don’t fight’s ideas aren’t worth considering, etc.

So, they’re baffled why employees are leaving left and right, why their ideas, once they’re out in the public sphere, are getting criticism they hadn’t heard internally, etc. The problem is of course, the power differential. If you pit a joe-schmoe employee against the CEO (and literally, our org chart is such that the CEO currently has a direct connection to *everyone* in the company), there’s no way to clear that power imbalance, *regardless* of the CEO’s intent. And I’m actually convinced the CEO’s intent is honest and good – he just doesn’t realize the underlying problem with this approach.

For me, I’m definitely a mix of the two – I find that I’m *extremely* adversarial to ideas/processes that come down from above, while I’m much more collaborative regarding ideas that come up from below. It works pretty well for me, because I *don’t care* about the power imbalance – I know the intent is good, and because I have that personal awareness, I feel like I can make adjustments to my tone accordingly. The problem comes when people are roughly at my level in the hierarchy – sometimes I take a really adversarial stance almost unintentionally, and sometimes I’ll take the collaborative approach to the point of being uncritical.

It’s a balance that takes a lot of conscious effort to strike, and I’m certainly not at a point where I could say I’ve got it down – but I think the overall balance is good, and it’s served me reasonably well so far.

By: Steph

Steph — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:22:52 +0000

Thank you for this! It’s helping me clarify some thoughts about recent interpersonal communication in which I engaged.