Many factors can cause conflict within a team, levels of experience, opinions, personalities, priorities and many more. Conflict can be beneficial or detrimental to the team and the project. Often times our goal is not to dissolves the conflict but turn negative conflict into positive conflict. Conflict is a natural part of humans collaborating together towards a common goal. Conflict can bring all the different ideas and viewpoints together to enhance to outcome. It is up to us as humans to determine how we will allow these conflicts to either positively or negatively affect the end result.
Factors
Different levels of experience or education can cause some people to feel their opinions are of higher value than others. For example, John Doe has a master’s degree with 15 years of experience so he feels that he has more knowledge than the rest of the team. His conflict resolution type may be, competing, where he insist on making his view point the sole view of the rest of the team and does not want to consider any other ideas but his own. Whereas Mary Jane has a master’s degree with 2 years’ experience and she feels her ideas are more current and more relevant that that of the older team members.
Priorities and personalities will play a big role in conflict. Some people have a strong personality where others may tend to be more quiet and reserved. Both parties could have very good opinions views or ideas but may present them differently. Some people tend to be more competitive where others may lean more to compromise or avoidance all together as not to, rock the boat, so to speak.
When all these different personalities and opinions come together in one organization conflict is bound to arise. This conflict can affect all aspects of the organization including, staff and customers as well as the leadership this conflict may be obvious or more discreet but harmful none the less. According to Angelo, some sources of conflict can include passive-aggressive behavior, deflection and other negativity within the organization.
Deflective Behavior
Staff and leaders may become defensive thus deflecting the focus onto coworkers or even customers shortcomings causing rumors or gossiping in an attempt to turn the negative attention to someone else. To resolve this type of conflict we would need to reassure staff of their worth and acknowledge their successes within the team. Help them feel appreciated and needed. Focus on the positives in hopes of overcoming the negatives.
Aggression
Passive aggression occurs when team leaders hear, through the grapevine, that employees are upset about certain standards. Aggression can also occur when there is a new leader and experienced staff members with strong personalities do not want or like change, they can often bully the new leader or other members that do not agree with them.
COM FPX 3700 Assessment 4 Conflict Negotiation and Resolution CM
There are many conflict types that can negatively affect the team and organization but every leader or conflict revolutionist will need to approach every situation individually. One would need to consider every aspect the type of conflict they are dealing with in order to successfully resolve the conflict and turn the negative conflict into positive conflict (Angelo, 2020)
Conflict Resolution Style
For beginners the source of conflict needs to be identified and considered. I am going to talk more about the collaboration resolution style. Every situation needs to be approached with confidence while setting clear cut expectations that the whole team is aware of. The team leader must remain consistent and fair, must lay out clear roles and responsibilities, convey open and honest communication in every aspect of the team and also let the members know exactly what they can expect from, you, the leader. Mutual respect is a must in collaboration. We have to have a positive environment where every team member can feel confident that their opinion matters and is just as important to the outcome and anyone else’s. The leader must be consistent in reinforcing the fact that negative behaviors are not acceptable and will not be tolerated and then consistently build on the positive behaviors. Our goal here is to turn negative conflict into positive conflict. Collaboration is when all ideas can be brought to the table some ideas may be tweaked or eliminated altogether but after discussion all parties concerns will be satisfied (Delack, et al., 2022).
Negotiation Strategies
COM FPX 3700 Assessment 4 Conflict Negotiation and Resolution CM
There are multiple conflict negotiation strategies but we are going to use the Integrating negotiation strategy we are going to build on the collaboration style and focus on finding creative solutions to resolve conflicts. We will focus on accepting responsibility and we will work to find a solution that is both meaningful and acceptable to both the team members and the organization. The likely outcome using this strategy would be enhanced team participation as it encourages feedback, giving team members the feeling of empowerment and respect. We would encourage team members individualized opinions and integrate them into the organizational views (Holmes, et al., 2017).
Using these strategies we have effectively resolved the conflict as well as enhanced team morale which will in turn positively affect leaders, staff and customers.
References
Angelo. (2019). Managing interpersonal conflict. Nursing Management., 50(6), 22–28.
https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NUMA.0000558479.54449.ed
Delak, B., & Širok, K. (2022). Physician–nurse conflict resolution styles in primary health care. Nursing Open, 9(2), 1077-1085. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nop2.1147
Holmes, Y.M., Beitelspacher, L. S., Hochstein, B., & Bolander, W. (2017). Journal of Buisness Research, 78, 81-92. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.04.009
