User:Seasaltpitachips/sandbox

Team Conflict

Types of Conflict


 * 1) Relationship Conflict, also known as A-type conflict, emotional conflict, or affective conflict is when there is disagreement among group members about personal or social issues, such as personality differences of differences in norms and values. Relationship conflict includes conflicts about personal taste, political preferences, values, and interpersonal style.

Measuring/Assessing Relationship Conflict: How often do people get angry while working in your team? How much relationship tension is there in your team?


 * 1) Task Conflict, also known as cognitive conflict or C-type conflict, is the presence of disagreement regarding the content and outcome of the work being done such as the merit of ideas, plans, and projects . Task conflict can include conflicts about the distribution of resources, procedures, and policies, and judgments and interpretation of facts

Measuring/Assessing Task Conflict: To what extent are there differences of opinion in the team? How much conflict is there about the work you do in your team? How often do people in your team disagree about opinions regarding work to be done? How frequently are there conflicts about ideas in your team?


 * 1) Process Conflict is a disagreement regarding how to approach a task and the delegation of duties and resources.

Measuring/Assessing Process Conflict: How often do members of your team disagree about who should do what? How frequently do members of your team disagree about the way to complete a team task? How much disagreement about the delegation of tasks exists within your team?

Effects of Conflict on Team Performance Results show that for team performance, both task conflict and relationship conflict are disruptive. When there is a strong relationship between task and relationship conflict, task conflict predicts worse performance. However, when there is no relationship between task conflict and relationship conflict, then task conflict does not predict worse performance. However, for team member satisfaction, relationship conflict is more disruptive than task conflict.

Causes of Conflict

Conflict within a group begins with an initial disagreement from disagreements about different opinions to disagreements about the group's leadership to disagreements over scarce resource. When there is an initial disagreement, competing co-workers attempt to bring the disagreeing co-workers to their side. If they are unable to persuade their co-workers, the disagreement grows into anger. Conflict arises grows the initial disagreements when persuasion gives away to arguing and emotions take the place of logic. The once united group then splits into subgroups, factions, and coalitions to compete against each other until there is a resolution. Once cooperative relationships turn into competitive relations.

There can be many causes of conflict including:


 * 1) Perceived breach of faith and trust: When confidence is broken, it creates an emotional response that elevates to conflict. A breach of trust unleashes our strongest emotions that frequently lead to conflict.
 * 2) Unresolved disagreements: When disagreements are left unresolved, associated feelings and emotions will remain in force. Suppressed emotions can erupt sometimes in excess.
 * 3) Miscommunication: We do not always state the picture in our minds. Our errors with communication often lead to frustration, especially if neither person is willing to accept responsibility for it.
 * 4) Personality clashes: Everyone has their own ambitions, goals, and perspectives which come in the way of helping them see the other’s point of view.
 * 5) Differences in acquired values: Value systems are a strong drivers of behavior and are frequent sources of conflict.
 * 6) Underlying stress and tension: Stress gives people difficulty with thinking about a problem clearly.
 * 7) Ego problems: With the "I'm right" mentality, it is hard to see the other person's point of view.

Team conflict can be healthy and unhealthy for the team depending on what type of conflict it is. A conflict is healthy when the conflict is about legitimate differences of opinion about the team's task. Focusing on task issues can help team members create creative solutions for the problem they had. Conflicts become unhealthy when there are conflicts between individuals and group goals, power, rewards, and resources. For example, interpersonally destructive conflict leads to lowered effectiveness. Interpersonal conflict easily becomes personal because team members are willing to denigrate each other's skills, abilities or functioning in some way to attach each other. Moral conflicts can also become unhealthy because they are likely to last longer. People have conflicts over varying morals but personal values are not so easily changed. Because people have difficulty viewing other opinions in shared terms, it becomes difficult to reach compromise and the conflict becomes more prolonged and resentment grows (and stays) between the opposing parties. Differences between team members due to characteristic styles of working which may cause prolonged mutual antagonism and friction because working styles are not easy to change. Conflict over high stakes distributional needs are also unhealthy because they are about who gets what and who gets how much. These conflicts are not easy to solve because they come win-lose situations.

Conflict Management

An analysis of conflict management resulted in seven categories of conflict resolution strategies which are voting, compromise or consensus, discuss or debate, open communication, idiosyncratic solutions, avoided or ignored, and rotating responsibilities. A group of teams that demonstrate the theoretical ideal of managing and preventing conflict because of their consistently high or increasing performance and satisfaction used the following tactics for resolving the various types of conflict :
 * Resolving Relationship Conflict: With the presence of negative non-verbal behavior or having to deal with an overly dominant personality, this group reported avoiding or ignoring the behavior to ensure that it did not disrupt the group. For example, “One member was smart and made good contributions to the group, but was very insulting, so we listened to his points and ignored the bad faces he made.”
 * Resolving Process Conflict: With the presence of time management and dominating group member issues, the primary management strategies included rotating responsibilities and discussion or compromise. For example, one team’s solution was for most of the team to pull the load of the work until one member did most of the work later in the quarter.
 * Resolving Task Conflict: Teams reported using compromise, discussion or debate, and open communication to secure solid understandings behind group decisions by considering the pros and cons of different opinions, alternatives, and possible solutions. For example, one team dealt with conflict by allowing every member the chance to explain his/her views and then go through a discussion to pick the most convincing argument.

Seasaltpitachips (talk) 21:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)seasaltpitachips Seasaltpitachips (talk) 21:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)karsegal