Conflict management has always been an interesting subject in an organization. I was Senior Security analyst for a company named L&T in India. As a senior member, conflict management has been one of the most challenging aspects for me. At work, we were always firefighting and had the responsibility to resolve the continuous technical problems of our internal (software developer) and external (customers and partners) clients. Our team had to not only firefight with the existing issues but also had to focus on developing and improving current security projects. This stressful atmosphere led to undesirable amount of conflicts within our team which had positive as well as negative impacts on our unit. Through this paper, I would like to discuss how conflict management has been a challenge for me as a senior security analyst, steps that I had taken to resolve it and what I could have done to ameliorate it by learning from class presentations and slides.
While being there for 2 years, it was quite apparent that there were many conflicts within the team. There were evident sources of conflict. My team of 25 members was divided into sub-teams comprising of 5 members per sub-team. Teams were formed on basis of seniority rather than expertise. This led to difference in opinions, ideas and methodologies. Senior members had their set of opinions and ideas which were completely different from fresher and younger employees. These sub-teams had people who were completely different from each other which led to differentiation within the teams. Each sub-teams had their set of goals and commitments towards the company. Hence, their goals were incompatible with each other. The only task that was common amongst the sub-teams was to resolve complex t...
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...flicts (Class 12 Slides, Conflicts and Negotiation, slide 24). These are some of the methods and approaches that I would have implemented at my workplace.
As I stated at the beginning of this paper, conflict management is an interesting subject to deal with. Initially, I discussed about the sources of conflicts in my organization and what my manager and I did to resolve it. We were successful to a great extent. By after going through the class readings and slides, I realize that although the solution offered was good, there are still better approaches to manage conflicts. After understanding the concepts of conflict management through this course, I am pretty sure that I will implement a better solution if landed in a similar situation.
Works Cited
Rothenberg, S. (2009). Class 12 Slides (Conflict and Negotiation). Organizational Behavior and Leadership, 1-25.
College life can be quite the adjustment for most new students. When entering the collegiate atmosphere, there are new, sometimes unspoken, social rules and norms. With so many new social elements for students to acclimate to, already difficult situations, such as any form of conflict, are often particularly difficult to address. Fortunately, with a clear understanding of the various forms of conflict management, new students can learn to effectively communicate regarding any subject matter they may encounter.
In several occasions, conflict occurs in the communication of one or two people. Several people have thought of conflict as cases involving pouring of furious anger in a communication process. Nonetheless, conflict is the misinterpretation of an individual’s words or values (Huan & YAzdanifard, 2012). Conflict can also be due to limited resources in an organization (Riaz & Junaid, 2010). Conflict may as well arise due to poor communication or the use of inappropriate communication channel of transmission of information between the involved parties. Management of conflict has various conflict management styles that include avoidance style, forcing style, passive-aggressive style, accommodating style, collaborating style and compromising style. Workplace conflict comes in two different kinds: task involving conflict, which focuses on the approaches used in resolving the problem and blaming conflict that has the aspects of blame and never brings element of resolving problems between the conflicting parties. In the perception of several individuals, relationship conflict is negative.
This experience for me is challenging yet very fulfilling. Though it is not in a business set up, I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons that I may be able to use as well someday in my career. I believe that a group with a lot of members means diversity even though we have the same culture. There will be members who have different styles in working with other people as well as personalities that may clash with each other. In this experienced, I’ve seen some of my members fight with each other due to unwillingness to compromise with each other’s ideas, members who are not committed in doing their task well and not submitting their part on time as well as uncooperative members. During this time, I perceive that this situation is my responsibility, if my members are not motivated enough, it means I’m not inspiring them to meet our goals, if they don’t know how to compromise with each other, it means I don’t have enough authority and my influence is not sufficient for them to be willing to listen and follow me as well as compromise with the other members. During the time when the conflict arises towards my members, I have decided to take some actions because besides from it’s my responsibility to meet our team’s deadlines and goals, I believe that as a leader, I have an opportunity to form a group that is harmonious, motivated in
Along with the preparation for conflict resolutions, understanding the situation in the team during the conflict is important. Clarifying positions along with listing the facts and all the necessary analyzation of the particular situation helps in resolving the conflict in a team. Applying this process can effectively address and resolve the conflict in a
As the processes and systems used in business have become more complex, teams, not individuals, have become popular in many organizations. Teams are made up of individuals from an organization brought together to solve a problem, improve a process or implement a new process. “A major advantage that a team has over an individual is its diversity of resources and ideas” (Burns, 1995, p. 52). However, this diversity can cause conflict within the team. The success of the team is strongly influenced by the team’s ability to recognize the causes of, manage and resolve conflict.
For a team to be successful there are several factors that have to be addressed in order for a fluent, functioning group of individuals combined to achieve a certain goal. This goal can be a variety of different endings from producing minor results to making decisions that create a major impact on a large scale. Within a team environment conflict is always presence. Conflict is essential to the advancement of teams and must be managed in a proper way to avoid destruction and division amongst the group of individuals. From sports, to education, and the workplace teamwork is present in everyday life. As a human race we all work in different team oriented situations in order to accomplish a variety of tasks.
People work in groups or teams everyday whether in their career, education, political organization, church, or any other social setting. Conflict while working in teams or groups is inevitable. When taking people of different backgrounds, personalities, moral, and ethical beliefs and putting them together in a group, conflict will arise. The key to achieving your team goals is to construct and conquer your goals with keeping the greater good of the team in mind. Conflict as it arises should be combated and abated through swift and thorough resolution techniques. When dealt with properly conflict resolution can give rise to a cohesive and productive team.
Conflict is area of concern that occurs in every organization in one form or fashion. Zhang, Cao, and Tjosvold (2011) stated in theory,
A group can only be called a team if the members are actively working together toward a common goal. A team must have the capability to set goals, make decisions, solve problems, and share responsibilities. For a team to be successful, trust must be earned between its members by being consistent and reliable (Temme & Katzel, 2005). When more than one person is working on a particular task, inconsistent views or opinions commonly arise. People come from different backgrounds and live through different life experiences therefore, even when working towards a common goal, they will not always see eye to eye. Major conflict that is not dealt with can devastate a team or organization (Make Conflict Work, 2008). In some situations, conflict can be more constructive than destructive. Recognizing the difference between conflict that is constructive to the team and conflict that is destructive to the team is important. Trying to prevent the conflict is not always the best way to manage conflict when working within a team setting. Understanding conflict, what causes it, and how to resolve conflict effectively, should consume full concentration.
Thomas, K. W. (1992). Conflict and conflict management: Reflections and update. . Journal Of Organizational Behavior, 13(3), 265-274.
In order of being able to analyze the sources of conflicts regarding the clothing manufacturer, I will present the Conflict Process Model according to McShane and Von Glinow. Therefore, I will first define what conflicts are, and second present the different sources of conflicts and carve out which conflicts are involved regarding to the given case. The third step is to explain two different strategies to minimize these conflicts in future. Finally, I will provide a recommendation and conclusion.
Conflict is a basic aspect of teamwork (Levi, 2001), since the number of decisions that a team needs to make often evokes feelings of discomfort and stress. Conflict very often arises from a clash of different working style, ideas, interests, needs, and wants. Team conflicts can be due to high stress level. It has been experienced that in teamwork there can be conflicts and conflicts creates dissatisfaction among the employees. It is important that conflicts be addressed in such a way that it has adverse effect and it is very important to address the conflicts on the spot otherwise it would be difficult to handle the conflicts. (Jehn, 1995).When team member s disagree about the task themselves that how these tasks should be performed then task related conflicts occurs. It is also called task led-conflicts, it occurs when persons disagree over the understanding of tasks and their goals it is a disagreement between two team members in a group over the decisions. They have differences of opinions about a certain issue. (Stewart, Sims & Manz, 1999). Disagreement can be caused by differences in viewpoint and values, differences of opinion about tasks and differences in expectation about the impact of decisions (Levi, 2001).
that may result in a struggle for power or position. Conflict management, therefore, can be
In order to address it well, one supervisor was assigned the role of addressing the conflict. She was send to a one-week seminar on conflict management. After she came back, she introduced weekly staff meetings (Jauro, Bambale & Barwa, 2017). There were also individual meetings where the supervisor ensured that she had a one on one talk with all the employees at least once per week. The individual meetings were crucial, as the supervisor understood the goals and concerns of every employee. It is through this that the right solution to the conflict would be got. This was an effective approach to diagnosing the conflict (Safi & Kolahi, 2016). It was also crucial talking to the employees individually because in many cases they usually have the
In the workplace, disagreement or arguments may arise due to several reasons. This can further result into a state of antagonism or opposition, resentment, avoidance, verbal assaults, and inability to work together. Such may arise due to personality clashes, differences in style, differences in leadership, interdependence conflicts and differences in the background or gender. With reference to the conflict between Norm and Norma, disagreement arose due to differences in styles. This is because Norma was after quick result from the initiated project while Norm believed he could work from home and still meet the expected standard. However, Norma expected full commitment from all the staff under her. For good working relations, conflicts should always be resolved and hence improve good working relationship among the employees both the juniors and seniors. Professionally, conflicts can be solved via two models; circle of conflict and triangle of satisfaction (Susan Holton, 1998).