Team Conflict Situation
Psychology
For the purpose of this paper, I am a leader of a team that is working together to complete a project of significance. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, there is a conflict between members of my group. The conflict is escalating, which is problematic, as the deadline for the project is approaching and again, the project holds significance for us and the company for which we work. The nature of the conflict among the group members has to do with the high degree of task interdependence for this particular project. Something that is an unfortunate, regular occurrence in group projects is that some of the group members feel overworked and that they have become responsible for the majority of the work on the project. This is another aspect of the team conflict I must address as leader of this group. Besides myself, the team members are women based in American and a male based in Brazil. I am in a challenging position, as team leader, I have been a person that the team members have vented to, expressing anger and negativity towards the others. These conflicts have delayed the project's completion. Over the course of the paper, I will address this team conflict situation in attempts to resolve these issues and ensure productivity.
There are a number of factors that I should consider when strategizing to solve the problems in my team. There distinct cultures and cultural differences that should be taken into account. America is in North America and Brazil is in South America. Those these countries are on the same hemisphere, they are unique countries with distinctive traits and histories. The way business is conducted has variations between these two countries. If I am going to be an effective leader,...
I also need to take into consideration the nature of the conflict because what kind of conflict is happening will, in part, determine what kind of conflict resolution strategy I consider or employ in order to rid the team of problems that are slowing us down. Current psychological research, as it relates to leadership and conflict reflects the same perspective or position as the paper in this area:
We ask questions such as how do some teams manage relationship conflict and avoid its usual negative impact, while others do not? More specifically, are there particular conflict resolution tactics that allow for the effective resolution of relationship conflict? Why does task conflict manifest itself as constructive debate in some teams but as open fighting in other teams? In other words, are there specific conflict resolution tactics that a team can chose that will allow for effective management of task conflict? Do certain conflict resolution tactics work across all types of conflict? Or does each type of conflict require different conflict resolution strategies? (Behfar, et al., 2008,171)
The nature of conflict is individual. There is some uniformity; there are some categories of conflict, but each unique conflict is different, especially when there is moderate to exceptional variation among the team members, as is the case with my hypothetical team and conflict situation. As leader, I need to clarify what the goals are for everyone. I need to have a meeting with all members, whether it…
