Opal Leung's Blog

“Great organizations aren’t built on yes men. And great schools don’t create them.“

The Sauder School of Business is advertised in The Globe and Mail. Written on a green background are the words, “We respectfully disagree.” Although it is simple, it gets to the point.

What makes a strong team is not conformity, but room for conflict. This is not to say that arguments are the foundation of success. Rather, cognitive conflict breeds creativity and learning. Efficient teamwork does not necessarily equate with instilling common concepts among individuals. Instead, teamwork is the process of bridging gaps between different ideas and perspectives.

In Organizational Behaviour, we learn that conflict, to a certain extent, increases performance. Conflicts that are aimed to improve the situation and better the team’s performance is beneficial to the growth of the team. This is a concept that all of us should take with us when we graduate. It is not the supply and demand laws that we learn from economics nor the equations that are taught in accounting that drive our motivation . Rather, it is these values that should be taken to heart.