Teams and Conflict in the Workplace

Causes Of Conflict in Teams

It is a fact that a team can spend too much time dealing with conflict in the workplace. Often, team conflict has a negative effect on productivity, good decision making, and team member retention. In moderate to large organizations MILLIONS OF DOLLARS can be spent on dealing with conflict in teams.

Most team conflicts involve disagreements over task-related matters, with team members bringing diverse perspectives, information, and expertise to bear on an issue. Too often, CONFLICT IS SUPPRESSED or ignored, or the conflict leads to deadlock and inaction.

Some team members will have different priorities to others; put a higher value on one aspect of their team's purpose than another. Their different responsibilities can create conflict along with their different skills. Even their sources of information can cause conflict.

When there is an ABSENCE OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION SKILLS, conflict in the workplace will either escalate or it will be pushed back under the surface to smolder until more fuel is added and it explodes. As frustrations and resentments grow, relationships may become irretrievably damaged so that team cohesiveness is lost, and also the ability to make good decisions.

WHEN CONFLICT IS BROUGHT OUT IN THE OPEN and settled well, the GAINS in PRODUCTIVITY will far outweigh the cost of any good team building program or coaching resource.

Differences may exist because of the different temperaments and personality types of the team members. Each team member's history regarding conflict can also affect how they may respond to differences; whether it's about their opinion or about goals or simply how they perceive and react to one another.

Team conflict in the workplace happens!

When conflict begins to really hurt a team it is usually because earlier differences have not been acknowledged or addressed by the team leader. Team members and even the team leader react to differences among the team, in ways that divide rather than unify.

Negative and divisive reactions to differences within a team may look like:

• One member becoming impatient and irritated with another whose personality type they do not understand.
• Ideas are attacked before they are completely expressed; one member being cut off by another.
• Members taking sides and refusing to compromise
• Member disagreeing on plans or suggestions
• Comments and opinions being shared aggressively or defensively.
• Members attacking each other on a personal level in subtle ways.
• Members disagreeing with the leader's suggestions and talking behind his back.
• A member or the team leader being fearful of conflict because they have never seen conflict handled well.
• A team leader giving way against their better judgment, because of having insufficient skills to deal with any of the above.

THE KEY FACTOR in producing positive conflict outcomes is how well conflicts are handled!

One very powerful tool for teams and team leaders is the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI).

The TKI is the leading measure of conflict-handling approaches in the world. It has been used by hundreds of teams at all organizational levels - from the shop floor to boards of directors. It is used across a wide variety of private and public sector organizations.

The TKI is designed to help a team understand the causes of conflict and immediately put in place measures to dramatically improve conflict resolution.

To learn more about the TKI go to our - Team Building Tools Page

If you'd like to learn more about conflict resolution go to our Conflict Resolution Page

We can help your team deal with conflict successfully. Complete the form below or call us in the USA at 512-986-6474.

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Conflict in the Workplace.