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From time to time teams will experience conflict. When the team leader or team members are able to resolve the conflict in a positive manner, the team becomes stronger and performs better.

Quick reference

Conflict Resolution

From time to time teams will experience conflict.  When the team leader or team members are able to resolve the conflict in a positive manner, the team becomes stronger and performs better.  If the conflict is not resolved or resolved in a negative manner, the team performance suffers.

When to use

Whenever conflict arises on a team, one of the conflict resolution approaches should be applied to the situation.

Instructions

From time to time, conflict occurs in teams.  The team leader must recognize it and when needed help the team members resolve it.  Conflict is likely to be emotional at times, so a facilitator, like the team leader, is often needed.

Causes of Conflict

There are both technical causes and personal causes.  Technical causes are often easier to resolve.  These are conflicts due to a difference of opinion about some aspect of the work.  It could be the plan, the requirements, the technical approach, or the technical standard used for acceptance.  Clarify the issues associated with the conflict, and these can normally be resolved through explanations or negotiation.  Personal causes are more difficult to resolve.  Personal causes are based upon a team member’s background or personal values.  These are not easily changed.  While it is easy to say that we value diversity and respect differences, the diversity and differences will often create team conflict.  This conflict will almost always require a facilitator to resolve.

Conflict Resolution Spiral

Conflict can be resolved in a manner that creates an upward spiral of strengthening the team.  But if conflict is ignored or not resolved appropriately, it will cause a downward spiral in performance. 

Unresolved conflict leads to loss of efficiency as team members waste time and energy in the conflict, communication is curtailed between the team members, and people start developing defensive and paranoid behavior to protect themselves from the attacks of team members.  Often physical or psychological illness follows.

Conflict that is resolved through a win-win approach will improve overall team efficiency, foster open communication, and create trust and teamwork.  All those increase the team’s performance.

GRPI

The best simple technique I have found for team leaders to use is GRPI – Goals, Roles, Processes, and Inter-personal relationships.  These are essentially the steps in team building.  As a team, establish team goals, assign roles, develop processes and procedures, and the team relationships will develop.  When conflict arises, it is usually because one of those four aspects has broken.  The conflict shows up at the interpersonal relationship level, but it is often due to a problem at a different level.  Work your way back up GRPI, find the problem, resolve it, and then rebuild the team with the GRPI steps. 

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  • 00:04 Hello, I'm Ray Sheen.
  • 00:05 During the life of a team, conflict often arises.
  • 00:08 The team leader should be prepared to resolve this conflict in a positive way to
  • 00:13 strengthen the team.
  • 00:15 You may feel that you're on a perfect team and everyone gets along great, but
  • 00:20 conflict can still arise.
  • 00:21 Sometimes the conflict is due to what I call project causes.
  • 00:25 That means that this is conflict that is due to the nature of the work of the team.
  • 00:29 Different team members have a different opinion about the work and how to do it.
  • 00:33 A typical cause of project conflict is misunderstanding of the plan and
  • 00:37 procedures for the work that the team is doing.
  • 00:40 This could be due to miscommunication or just differing definitions of terms and
  • 00:44 experiences.
  • 00:46 Another type of conflict is a difference of opinion about the technical
  • 00:49 requirements for the work that is being done.
  • 00:52 Many team members will read into the requirements and
  • 00:55 expected performance level.
  • 00:57 Even when requirements are clear, different team members may prefer
  • 01:00 different approaches fulfilling those requirements.
  • 01:03 They could be based upon their previous training or experience.
  • 01:07 Another project cause is differing standards or quality acceptance.
  • 01:11 What is considered perfectly acceptable by one person is considered sloppy or
  • 01:16 unprofessional by another.
  • 01:18 Well, all of these reasons are related to the project work and
  • 01:21 the team member's understanding of that work.
  • 01:24 There are also personal causes of conflict that are related more
  • 01:28 to the personality or personal values of each individual.
  • 01:31 One of these is unmet needs of team members.
  • 01:35 Some team members expect a friendly greeting or help on certain activities.
  • 01:39 A team member failing to respond in that manner starts to create a conflict.
  • 01:44 Different value systems, be they religious based or
  • 01:47 cultural based can create a conflict.
  • 01:49 When one team member feels another team member is disrespecting
  • 01:53 something that is important to them.
  • 01:55 Perception of team or work can also cause conflicts.
  • 01:59 Teams can form cliques or subgroups that begin to isolate others.
  • 02:04 Sometimes this is based upon the type of work that is done essentially creating
  • 02:08 a caste system.
  • 02:09 I also want to mention assumptions and expectations.
  • 02:12 This is essentially what is behind all the project causes, but
  • 02:16 I include it here with personal causes, because people also make assumptions about
  • 02:21 others based upon things like how they dress,
  • 02:23 how they speak, the education they've received, or ethnicity and race identity.
  • 02:29 These can be either positive or negative assumptions that then lead to expectations
  • 02:34 that may or may not be fulfilled.
  • 02:35 The final personal cause I want to mention is the willingness to deal with conflict.
  • 02:41 Conflict avoiders can escalate a conflict by not resolving it early.
  • 02:46 Conflict seekers will find conflict where none exists until they've caused it.
  • 02:51 When conflict occurs, the way it's handled can either strengthen the team or
  • 02:55 weaken it.
  • 02:56 So let's start with the conflict as mentioned on the previous slide and
  • 02:59 see what happens if it's approached in a negative manner.
  • 03:02 The conflict causes a loss of productivity.
  • 03:05 The people in the conflict are generally less efficient because they are fighting
  • 03:09 the conflict instead of working, and
  • 03:11 it often takes a crisis to get them back on track.
  • 03:15 With the loss of productivity, we see an escalation in communication problems.
  • 03:20 People refuse to talk with each other unless they absolutely must.
  • 03:23 And even then, the communication is laced with hidden agendas or
  • 03:26 snide innuendos to further the interests in each side of the conflict.
  • 03:31 And of course from there the relationships start to shatter.
  • 03:35 Team members feel their need to defend themselves from the real or perceived
  • 03:39 attacks from the other team members, and paranoid behavior begins to set in.
  • 03:43 All this leads to even more conflict.
  • 03:46 Everyone starts watching out for themselves instead of the team.
  • 03:49 And many times we see the onset of physical or psychological illness.
  • 03:53 The negative spiral just keeps going down and down.
  • 03:57 But a different approach is to recognize and
  • 03:59 resolve the conflict in a positive manner.
  • 04:01 Bring the issue to light and find a win-win decision.
  • 04:05 This will energize the team to be more efficient and
  • 04:08 often leads to better creative solutions to a problem, productivity increases.
  • 04:13 As team members gain confidence that they can work together to resolve a conflict,
  • 04:17 communication barriers come down and you get open two way communication.
  • 04:22 Relationships are strengthened as trust and teamwork grow.
  • 04:26 Instead of a downward spiral,
  • 04:28 positive conflict resolution improves the team in many ways.
  • 04:33 So, how do you go about dealing with conflict?
  • 04:36 Well, let's go back to one of my favorite tools, the GRPI.
  • 04:39 Recall the GRPI stands for Goals, Roles, Processes, and
  • 04:42 Interpersonal relationships.
  • 04:45 We discussed using these for team building by working our way down the pyramid.
  • 04:50 When conflict arises the relationship problem is what we see, but
  • 04:53 often that's not the true problem.
  • 04:56 Granted sometimes people just don't like each other.
  • 04:59 I had a team where two of the key members were divorced from each other and
  • 05:02 it was not a friendly divorce.
  • 05:04 In that case I reassigned one to another team.
  • 05:07 There was just too much relationship baggage for them to overcome that.
  • 05:11 But that's not usually the case.
  • 05:13 When I see conflict, I work my way back up the GRPI to find the problem.
  • 05:18 Is there confusion or difference of opinion about the processes being used on
  • 05:22 the project that is causing the conflict?
  • 05:24 In that case let's clarify what should be done and determine the best way forward,
  • 05:29 or is the conflict on the roles?
  • 05:30 Again, we need to clarify roles and expectations of each individual,
  • 05:35 then rebuild the processes and procedures if necessary.
  • 05:39 What if there's conflict about the goals?
  • 05:41 Gather the team back together and if necessary, get the stakeholders
  • 05:45 involved to clarify the team goals, expectations, and get alignment.
  • 05:50 I've used this technique countless times.
  • 05:52 Find the problem, fix the right problem, and then rebuild the rest of the GRPI.
  • 05:57 Conflict happens, resolve it positively and
  • 06:02 your team is stronger for it.

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