March 10, 2010

Expert advice on interactions within teams is difficult to decipher. On one hand, research and anecdote explain that a team has to interact smoothly to be effective. Achieving a good process of working together which enables consensus can be as important as generating good results, and that the two are generally connected. On the other hand, there is evidence and equally vehement opinion that diversity of team member perspectives is good, that conflict is healthy and that disagreement is an important vehicle for exploring the available alternatives so that a team doesn’t suffer from group think and blindly pursue poor and unchallenged alternatives. What is a manager to do?

IMD Research Fellow Willem Smit, IMD Professor Stuart Read and IMD Program Manager Rhoda Davidson have conducted research on whether consensus or disagreement lead to better results and under what specific circumstances.

Access the research as described in the technical note.