Chapter 7: "Managing Conflict"

Unhealthy Sources of Conflict

-Competition over power, rewards, and resources -Conflict between individual and group goals -Poorly run team meetings -Personal grudges from the past -Faulty communications

Teams with _____________ levels of trust can tolerate task-related conflict and use the conflict productively.

High

Impact of Conflict

- Can be negative or positive. - Can help the team operate better - Can also lead to emotional problems that damage communicaton. Studies show that conflict in work teams depends on the type of conflict and the characteristics of the team. BENEFITS: 1) Encourages the team to explore new approaches 2) Motivates people to understand issues better 3) Encourages new ideas. 4) More creativity 5) Enhanced organizational commitment PROBLEMS: 1) Can create negative emotions and stress 2) Can interfere with communication and coordination 3) Can divert the attention from task and goals. 4) Can destroy team cohesion 5) Damaging to social relations (Winners/Losers) **Conflict outside of the team can also encourage a shift in authoritarian leadership, negative stereotyping of others, and increase conformity.

Healthy Sources of Conflict

-Focus on task issues -Legitimate differences of opinion about the task -Differences in values and perspectives -Different expectations about the impact of decisions

Virtual Team Conflicts

-More likely to occur because of miscommunications -Harder to resolve To manage: -stop using electronic messages to advocate opinions or express emotions - leader intervention -face to face meeting

Structure for Negotiation of a Conflict:

1) Separate the people from the problem. Diagnose the conflict. Hear both sides. Identify goals and clear understandings of all issues. Encourage both side to understand their emotions and consider the other sides. 2) Focus on shared interests; issues NOT positions. Identify how each side could get what they want. See what issues are incompatible. Recogonize that both sides have legitimate interests. 3) Develop many options to solve the problem. Try to generate alternatives. Look at areas of shared interest. 4) Evaluate the options using objective criteria. Define what fair standards and procedures might resolve the conflict. Agree on principles BEFORE the solution. Do NOT give into pressure. 5) Try Again. Establish monitoring criteria to ensure that agreements are kept. Discuss ways to deal with similar issue in the future.

______% of people in a conflict failed to realize when they had interests completely compatible with each other, and 20% failed to reach agreement even when their interests were compatible.

50

Confrontation

Acting aggressively and trying to win is one way to deal with a conflict. However, winning can become more important than making a good decision. In an emergency situation, people are more likely to accept a confrontational style because they value a quick resolution.

Unproductive Conflict

Are about emotions and personalities and a team typically tries to esolve these with one side trying to dominate the other.

Conflict Resolution Approaches

Avoidance Accommodation Confrontation Compromise Collaboration TWO DIMENSIONS: 1) Distribution 2) Integration @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Add more text from the chapter

Win-Lose Perspective

Based on a belief that what is good for one side is incompatible with what is good for the other.

A "constructive controversy" uses __________________ styles that focus on issues and ideas and not on personal criticism.

Communication

Productive Conflict

Conflict about issues, ideas, and tasks that are typically resolved in a cooperative manner. With productive conflicts, team members focus on cooperatively solving the problems.

Sources of Conflict

Confusion about people's positions, personality differences, legitimate differences of opinion, hidden agendas, poor norms, competitive reward systems, and poorly managed meetings. The source must be identified in order to determine if the conflict is healthy or a sympton of a hidden problem that needs to be uncovered. ie; Legitimate differences in opinion is a healthy conflict. LEGITIMATE conflicts are caused by a variety of factors: differences in values, objectives, beliefs about the motives and actions of others, and different expectations about the results of decisions can all lead to conflicts, BUT from these come better team decisions. HIDDEN CONFLICTS that are NOT about the teams task may come about due to organizational, social, and personal sources Organizational = competition over scarce resources/status differences among members. Social = Poorly ran meetings, poor group norms, etc. Personality Differences/Poor social relations = may stem from grudges, past losses, misinterpretations, faulty communication, or inappropriate criticism and distrust.

Conflict may reduce the team's ability to reach ______________ , hurt social relations in the team, and reduce acceptance of its decisions

Consensus

When conflict is dealt with ______________________, it stimulates greater team creativity.

Constructively

Low levels of conflict in decision-making tasks may ______________________ the quality and creativity of decision making, but this effect vanishes when the conflict intensifies.

Improve

Avoidance, Confrontation, and Accomodation

Include: -winners & losers -trouble implementing decisions.

_______________ or facilitators can help teams to manage their conflicts by controlling communications and building trust.

Mediators

Developing a healthy solution to a conflict requires open communication, respect for the other side, and a creative search for _________________ satisfying alternatives.

Mutually

Managing conflicts requires using __________________ tactics to find solutions acceptable to all sides of the issue.

Negotiating

Negotiating Conflicts

Negotiation or bargaining is the process by which two sides engaged in a conflict exchange offers and counteroffers in an effort to find a mutually acceptable agreement. One of the most important dimensions in understanding how negotiation works in conflict resolution is whether participants have a win-win or a win-lose perspective. The GOAL is to develop integrative, win-win agreements that are beneficial to BOTH sides. INTEGRATIVE agreements are MORE rewarding than compromises to improve ongoing relationships. The key to developing them is focusing attention on interests rather than positions and developing trust and rapport between the conflicted parties. Win-lose is due to incompatible interests. Win-Win has potential to satsify to BOTH sides, improves ongoing relationships, and helps to develop integrative agreements.

Conflict is a _______________ part of a team's operation, and some conflicts cannot be fully resolved.

Normal

Compromise

One way in which to balance the goals of each participant and the relations among the teams is for everyone to "give in" a little. Lose/Lose because no one truly gets what they want.

Mediators

Operate by gaining the trust of participants, managing hostilities, developing solutions to conflicts, and gaining commitment to the solutions from the participants. Mediators help control the communications between people on both sides of the conflict to ensure courtesy and respectful communication. They create controlled opportunities for each side to express their views and listen to and acknowledge the other side's perspective. This helps reduce the impact of miscommunication and confusion about the other side's position. Mediators search for small areas of agreement in order to build trust and demonstrate that there is common ground.

Win-Win Perspective

Participants believe a solution that satisfies both sides is possible.

Preparing for Conflicts

Preparing for conflicts means developing approaches to identify conflicts in early stages and creating an environment that supports constructive controversy so that disagreements can be expressed. Teams need to create a communication climate where members feel safe to raise issues and voice disagreement. Leaders need to facilitate team meetings in a manner that encourages participation from all members. In addition, teams should regularly conduct group process evaluations to help identify problems and periodically set aside time for task and social reflexivity sessions to identify unresolved issues and team process problems. MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT of preparing for conflicts is to create a psychologically safe communication environment that allows for constructive controversy to occur, and it requires a high degree of trust. Teams can engage in other preemptive conflict management strategies to help avoid conflicts Preemptive conflict management strategies include: the development of cooperation and trustbuilding among members, team contracts that identify how to handle difficult situations, and the development of norms for managing communications within a team. These actions help the team effectively address conflicts and reduce the destructive impact of conflicts when they occur.

Conflict in Work Teams

RELATIONSHIP CONFLICTS have a negative effect on team member satisfaction and team performance, but the effects of TASK conflicts vary. TASK CONFLICT is sometimes divided into task and process conflict. TASK conflict occurs when people performing NONroutine tasks (such as those performed in professional project teams) differ about what is the best approach - usually resulting in a positive outcome. Hurts functioning on routine task, and improves functioning on non-routine task. PROCESS CONFLICT occurs when people who are performing routine tasks have differences over how the team is manageing the tasks and coordingating the role of assignments. - they often create disagreements about their roles, which can devolve into relationship issues. Typically result in a negative outcome.

______________ conflict is detrimental regardless of the type of task a team is performing.

Relationship

Accomodation

Some team members may decide to give up their position in order to be agreeable. They are being cooperative, but it costs the team the value of their opinions and ideas.

_____________ conflict disrupts performance on a routine task but can improve performance on a nonroutine task.

Task

Conflict

The process by which people or groups perceive that others have taken some action that has a negative effect on their interest. Conflict is a normal part of a team's life. MISCONCEPTIONS include the following: -Conflict is bad and should be avoided. -Team members misunerstanding one another causes conflict. -All conflicts can be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. A team WITHOUT conflict might be suffering from unhealthy agreement, have a domineering leader who suppresses all conflict and debate, or be performing its task in a routine manner and not trying to improve how it works. DEFENSIVE AVOIDANCE takes place when rather than trying to manage their conflicts, a team, trys to ignore or avoid them - causing controversy. (ie; Abilene Paradox) The consequences are poor decision making and more problems later in the groups life. CAUSES change over the team's development. INITIALLY, there is little conflict, everyone is polite, and this gives way to teams conflicts about operating rules and status issues as they sort out roles and rules. Once they are TASK ORIENTED, conflicts arise about how to perform tasks. Often, the FINAL stage have little conflict because team members are focused on implementing the decisions they have made earlier. The RESOLUTION of a conflict depends on what type of conflict it is. For TASK ISSUES, the solution is an agreement, for RELATIONSHIP ISSUES, an agreement, periodic checks on how well the agreement is working, and opportunities to redefine the agreement are needed.

Avoidance

This approach tries to ignore the issues or denies that there is a problem. By not confronting the conflict, team members hope it will go away by itself.

Many conflict reduction approaches are designed to build _____________ among the parties in a conflict.

Trust

Collaboration

When both sides of a conflict have important concerns, the team needs to search for solutions that satisfy everyone. This requires both cooperativeness and respect for others' positions. Appears to be the best solution, however, it cannot always be achieve in practice. For the most part, it is a win/win scenario thought. -EVERYONE wins! -Greater commitment to decisions. -Best when equal status and time to work through problem. -Time consuming; difficult.