ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard.
People disagree about a lot of things at work, from small issues like how a task should be done, to big ones like which strategic goals to prioritize. Ideally, these conflicts are settled with thoughtful debate and collaborative decision making, but that’s not usually how it works. More typically, you see leaders or the loudest voices win out, leaving others resentful. And sometimes people don’t even try to hash out differences of opinion. They prefer to avoid a fight.
Our…