Building Effective Project Teams

Managing Conflict

Session 5

With the end of the semester quickly approaching, the pressure to complete the many assignments you have been given can easily cause you to become impatient with other team members resulting in serious conflicts. Conflict involves incompatible behaviors; one person interfering, disrupting, or in some way making another's actions less effective. The training sessions we are providing and the ideas presented on this form are designed to help your team function well together. This particular training session is designed to acquaint you with important information about procedures that your group can use to deal with conflict in a positive manner.

Because people come together to satisfy a wide array of psychological needs, social relations in general are awash with conflict. In the course of their interactions, people must deal with differences as well as similarities, with aversions as well as affinities. Indeed, in social relations, Sigmund Freud's parallel of humans and porcupines is apt: like porcupines, people prick and injure one another if they get too close; they feel cold if they get too far apart. As we learned in the previous session, Groupthink has been used to describe the collection of faulty behaviors that groups may engage in when they become highly cohesive. In order to avoid groupthink, it is important to differentiate between cooperative (or constructive) conflict based on the win-win negotiating attitude and competitive (or destructive) conflict based on the win-loose attitude.

Competitive and Cooperative Conflict

In the competitive mode, the parties pursue directly opposite goals. Each mistrusts the other's intentions and disbelieves what the other party says. Both parties actively avoid constructive dialogue and have a win-lose attitude. Unavoidably, the disagreement persists and they go their separate ways. In sharp contrast, the cooperative conflict cycle is a mutually reinforcing experience that ends up serving the best interests of both parties.

Techniques You Can Use to Develop Cooperative Conflict

First, it is important to understand the circumstances that increase the chances of intragroup conflict. Major conflict triggers include:

ü Ambiguous or overlapping jurisdictions. Unclear job boundaries often create competition for resources and control. Organizing into sharply defined roles can help remove this trigger.

ü Competition for scarce resources. Resources in this context refers to time, authority, power, and valuable information.

ü Communication breakdowns. Communication is a complex process beset by many barriers. It is easy to misunderstand another person if communication is hampered in some way.

ü Time pressure. Deadlines and other forms of time pressure can stimulate prompt performance or trigger destructive emotional reactions.

ü Unreasonable standards, rules, policies, and procedures. These triggers usually lead to conflict between the person making the rule or policy and the ones who are required to obey. If the instructor is making unreasonable demands, the Intermediary should discuss the problem with the instructor immediately.

ü Personality clashes. It is very difficult to change one's personality, however, every attempt must be made to modify one's behavior for the good of the team instead of demanding personal rights.

ü Status differentials. As long as productive organizations continue to be organized hierarchically, this trigger is unavoidable. Leaders must show a genuine concern for the ideas, feelings, and values of others.

ü Unrealistic expectations. Dissatisfaction grows when expectations are not met.

Once a conflict has developed, it is important to turn that conflict into a cooperative conflict. Techniques to resolve conflicts include:

ü Problem solving. Take the time to identify and correct the source of the problem. Focus on factual information and promising alternatives rather than on personalities and scapegoats.

ü Superordinate goals. Superordinate goals are highly valued but unattainable by any one individual. You might say, “Look, we’re all in this together. Let’s forget our differences so we can get the job done.” Although this can work in the short run, the underlying problem is still present and will strike again.

ü Compromise. Compromise is based on negotiated give and take. However, most people do not have good negotiating skills. They approach compromise situations with a win-lose attitude so one or both parties usually ends up feeling cheated.

ü Forcing. Sometimes, the group leader must exert authority to resolve the conflict. Forcing relies on the formal authority and power of a superior position. Forcing does not resolve the personal conflict and may serve to compound it by hurt feelings and/or fostering resentment and mistrust.

ü Smoothing. The group leader says something like, “Settle down. Don’t rock the boat.” Again, this is only a short term solution as it does not address the underlying problem.

Problem solving and skillfully negotiated compromises are the only approaches that remove the actual source of the conflict. Good leaders have highly developed problem solving and negotiating skills. The group leader should be able to resolve conflicts, especially if the other group members lend their support. The point is that structured techniques can help your group overcome problems like Groupthink that will cause your group to generate an inferior project. Similarly, the roles that were assigned to you are important because they will help your group function better as it attempts to resolve conflict. To review, remember that the roles include Presider or Meeting Leader, File Manager or Project Master, Meeting Coordinator, and Intermediary. Each role is important because it will help your team to function effectively as it makes decisions. This should help your team to produce a better quality project.