Productive Friction
It’s not about how much tension a team needs, but about how it deals with it.
At some point in almost every team workshop, someone says: “We’re far too harmonious here. We don’t know how to disagree.” And someone else says, a few minutes later or in the next workshop: “Things blow up all the time with us. We need to calm down.” Both statements treat tension like a temperature. Too cold, too hot, and somewhere in between lies the right setting.
The idea is tempting because it’s so simple. All you’d have to do is create the right amount of friction. But it leads us astray. Whether tension becomes productive depends far less on how much of it there is than on how it’s handled.
Tension is, first of all, bound energy. It arises wherever different things meet: two interests, two perspectives, or two sides within yourself. You can waste this energy, you can discharge it destructively, and you can use it. Look more closely and you’ll find several skills here that have nothing to do with quantity. Building tension deliberately when something needs to be clarified. Using it instead of letting it fizzle out. Keeping it from discharging in the wrong place. And releasing it again, the way an archer eases the drawn bow and sets it aside when the shot wasn’t needed.
When that doesn’t work, people tend to switch into energy-saving mode. They reach for pigeonholes, they simplify, they polarize, or someone bangs on the table and says: this is how we’re doing it now. From the outside, that looks like bad style. From the inside, it’s an attempt to cope with a situation that takes more strength than is available right now.
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Some people try to relax and end up lax; others try to be intense and end up tense. Productive friction needs both at once: relaxed and intense at the same time.
There’s something else that gets lost in the temperature question. People differ in how much clarification they need. Some want to address whatever might be resolved, and consider it a matter of decency to do so. Others prefer to set friendly boundaries, because they know that being annoyed with others mostly harms themselves. Both inclinations are legitimate. And beyond a certain point, they’re no longer compatible, at least not without effort.
So both deserve a little tribute.
To pragmatic boundary-setting: it doesn’t make every drama its mission. It doesn’t accept every invitation to a fight as if its honor were at stake. People tend to think of it as cool, but often it’s simply self-respect with a very calm pulse. It says kindly: good luck with that, but count me out. And remarkably often, it’s the one still in a good mood the next morning.
To committed clarification: it doesn’t let the unspoken stand, because it knows that otherwise things will quietly ferment. It doesn’t just lift the carpet; it also looks at what’s underneath. People sometimes find it exhausting, but often it’s simply care with an elevated pulse. It says: let’s look at this now, then it’ll be easier. And remarkably often, it’s right.
If you can enjoy reading both tributes, you’re already a step further. Because then the question is no longer which inclination is the right one. The question is how far each side can meet the other without losing itself, and what it gets in return.
A harmony that is only pleasant because crucial differences aren’t allowed to show is no better than constant fighting. But the answer isn’t more friction. The answer is a better way of dealing with the friction that’s already there.
