All in all, more than a hundred studies have examined conflict types in over eight thousand teams. A meta-analysis of those studies showed that relationship conflict is generally bad for performance, but some task conflict can be beneficial: it’s been linked to higher creativity and smarter choices. For example, there’s evidence that when teams experience moderate task conflict early on, they generate more original ideas in Chinese technology companies, innovate more in Dutch delivery services, and make better decisions in American hospitals. As one research team concluded, “The absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy.”

Relationship conflict is destructive in part because it stands in the way of rethinking. When a clash gets personal and emotional, we become self-righteous preachers of our own views, spiteful prosecutors of the other side, or single-minded politicians who dismiss opinions that don’t come from our side. Task conflict can be constructive when it brings diversity of thought, preventing us from getting trapped in overconfidence cycles. It can help us stay humble, surface doubts, and make us curious about what we might be missing. That can lead us to think again, moving us closer to the truth without damaging our relationships.

Although productive disagreement is a critical life skill, it’s one that many of us never fully develop. The problem starts early: parents disagree behind closed doors, fearing that conflict will make children anxious or somehow damage their character. Yet research shows that how often parents argue has no bearing on their children’s academic, social, or emotional development. What matters is how respectfully parents argue, not how frequently. Kids whose parents clash constructively feel more emotionally safe in elementary school, and over the next few years they actually demonstrate more helpfulness and compassion toward their classmates.

Being able to have a good fight doesn’t just make us more civil; it also develops our creative muscles. In a classic study, highly creative architects were more likely than their technically competent but less original peers to come from homes with plenty of friction. They often grew up in households that were “tense but secure,” as psychologist Robert Albert notes: “The creative person-to-be comes from a family that is anything but harmonious, one with a ‘wobble.’” The parents weren’t physically or verbally abusive, but they didn’t shy away from conflict, either. Instead of telling their children to be seen but not heard, they encouraged them to stand up for themselves. The kids learned to dish it out—and take it. That’s exactly what happened to Wilbur and Orville Wright.

When the Wright brothers said they thought together, what they really meant is that they fought together. Arguing was the family business. Although their father was a bishop in the local church, he included books by atheists in his library—and encouraged the children to read and debate them. They developed the courage to fight for their ideas and the resilience to lose a disagreement without losing their resolve. When they were solving problems, they had arguments that lasted not just for hours but for weeks and months at a time. They didn’t have such incessant spats because they were angry. They kept quarreling because they enjoyed it and learned from the experience. “I like scrapping with Orv,” Wilbur reflected. As you’ll see, it was one of their most passionate and prolonged arguments that led them to rethink a critical assumption that had prevented humans from soaring through the skies.

THE PLIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PLEASER

As long as I can remember, I’ve been determined to keep the peace. Maybe it’s because my group of friends dropped me in middle school. Maybe it’s genetic. Maybe it’s because my parents got divorced. Whatever the cause, in psychology there’s a name for my affliction. It’s called agreeableness, and it’s one of the major personality traits around the world. Agreeable people tend to be nice. Friendly. Polite. Canadian.*

My first impulse is to avoid even the most trivial of conflicts. When I’m riding in an Uber and the air-conditioning is blasting, I struggle to bring myself to ask the driver to turn it down—I just sit there shivering in silence until my teeth start to chatter. When someone steps on my shoe, I’ve actually apologized for inconveniently leaving my foot in his path. When students fill out course evaluations, one of their most common complaints is that I’m “too supportive of stupid comments.”

Disagreeable people tend to be more critical, skeptical, and challenging—and they’re more likely than their peers to become engineers and lawyers. They’re not just comfortable with conflict; it energizes them. If you’re highly disagreeable, you might be happier in an argument than in a friendly conversation. That quality often comes with a bad rap: disagreeable people get stereotyped as curmudgeons who complain about every idea, or Dementors who suck the joy out of every meeting. When I studied Pixar, though, I came away with a dramatically different view.

In 2000, Pixar was on fire. Their teams had used computers to rethink animation in their first blockbuster, Toy Story, and they were fresh off two more smash hits. Yet the company’s founders weren’t content to rest on their laurels. They recruited an outside director named Brad Bird to shake things up. Brad had just released his debut film, which was well reviewed but flopped at the box office, so he was itching to do something big and bold. When he pitched his vision, the technical leadership at Pixar said it was impossible: they would need a decade and $500 million to make it.

Brad wasn’t ready to give up. He sought out the biggest misfits at Pixar for his project—people who were disagreeable, disgruntled, and dissatisfied. Some called them black sheep. Others called them pirates. When Brad rounded them up, he warned them that no one believed they could pull off the project. Just four years later, his team didn’t only succeed in releasing Pixar’s most complex film ever; they actually managed to lower the cost of production per minute. The Incredibles went on to gross upwards of $631 million worldwide and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

Notice what Brad didn’t do. He didn’t stock his team with agreeable people. Agreeable people make for a great support network: they’re excited to encourage us and cheerlead for us. Rethinking depends on a different kind of network: a challenge network, a group of people we trust to point out our blind spots and help us overcome our weaknesses. Their role is to activate rethinking cycles by pushing us to be humble about our expertise, doubt our knowledge, and be curious about new perspectives.

The ideal members of a challenge network are disagreeable, because they’re fearless about questioning the way things have always been done and holding us accountable for thinking again. There’s evidence that disagreeable people speak up more frequently—especially when leaders aren’t receptive—and foster more task conflict. They’re like the doctor in the show House or the boss in the film The Devil Wears Prada. They give the critical feedback we might not want to hear, but need to hear.

Harnessing disagreeable people isn’t always easy. It helps if certain conditions are in place. Studies in oil drilling and tech companies suggest that dissatisfaction promotes creativity only when people feel committed and supported—and that cultural misfits are most likely to add value when they have strong bonds with their colleagues.*

Before Brad Bird arrived, Pixar already had a track record of encouraging talented people to push boundaries. But the studio’s previous films had starred toys, bugs, and monsters, which were relatively simple to animate. Since making a whole film with lifelike human superheroes was beyond the capabilities of computer animation at the time, the technical teams balked at Brad’s vision for The Incredibles. That’s when he created his challenge network. He enlisted his band of pirates to foster task conflict and rethink the process.