About 2 years ago I created 12 on-line Team Building & Development sessions for a company. We called it ‘Helping Teams Work’. It was meant to be short, less than 5 minutes, & give 1 concrete action step people can apply to their work on teams…
They liked it & I enjoyed trying to make content that did not require me to be present.
Below is the 4th of 12 ‘Helping Teams Work’ content sections.
- The 1st Biggest Team Leader Mistake
- The 2nd Team Meetings Making them good enough to get work done
- The 3rd Making team decisions through consensus
Team Based Conflict Management Approaches
Three ways to handle team conflict, and when each works best
Following good conflict management procedures can have a highly positive effect on the team:
- You’ll be able to reduce the disruptive effects of interpersonal conflict, making members willing to participate on the team.
- At the same time, you’ll allow the task-related conflict that comes from productive differences of opinion – differences that can help you come up with better solutions.
What to do:
- Refer to ‘Conflict Management Approaches’. Select the most appropriate approach for the situation.
- If you are dealing with an interpersonal conflict (“You don’t seem to care what will happen to my department” … “You always take her side” … “Can’t you ever shut up?”), rather than a task-related conflict (i.e., members disagree on elements of the project) you may have a problems with goals, roles, or procedures.
- Resist the urge to settle for compromising when a consensus is possible & appropriate.
- Utilize a PDSA approach. Looking for small areas of cooperation, consistently focusing on increasing the cooperation loop.