Steve Stoute shared his management style, which includes encouraging his team to engage in healthy conflict with one another.
”There’s something wrong” if a business has “no conflict,” Stoute told The New York Times.
“Getting people comfortable around challenge in a respectful way is a very important value,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is have people embrace the idea that it’s OK to disagree.”
Stoute, 54, the UnitedMasters CEO who counts major names like Jay-Z, McDonald’s, the New York Knicks, and Google’s Lorraine Twohill among his clients, actively promotes healthy conflict within his teams. Aware that video conferencing tools like Zoom can make it easier to sidestep tough conversations, the record executive created a work environment that makes productive conflict resolution routine.
“The same way I talk about bonuses or healthcare or wins or losses, we talk about conflict,” Stoute said. “If tension gets overlooked, then the company will not reach its full potential.”
The Queens, New York, native is a heavyweight in the music scene, having concurrently served as executive vice president of Interscope Geffen A&M Records and President of Urban Music at Sony Music from 1999 to 2009. While at Sony, Stoute helped launch the music career of Will Smith and managed artists like Nas, Mary J. Blige, and super producers Trackmasters.
His business advice on supporting healthy conflict in the workplace is supported by industry experts who cite the benefits of tackling the hard-hitting conversations to build morale and authentic team connection.
”The work of being conflict resilient is entering into a landscape that doesn’t have a script because it’s motivated by a sense of curiosity about something of the other person,” Robert Bordone, the founder and former director of the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program, told CNBC Make It.
Kurt Gray, a social psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, advises approaching disagreements as conversations and not as “a chance to score points or try to make the other person look stupid.”
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