Team Building and Conflict Resolution in Organizations

Introduction: Teamwork as an Organizational Imperative

Teamwork and team building are touted in management, business, and organizational newspapers, magazines, and books, yet numerous companies either pay lip service to this tool or do not use it at all in their structure. Yet it is an essential tool for internal and external effectiveness. In order for an organization to have high-quality products and services and be globally competitive, it needs people who are supportive and work together toward its mission and goals. If conflict exists among employees, it becomes a barrier to reaching organizational strategy.

Conflict resolution can be addressed through team efforts and can lead to increased communication, consensus decisions, and positive results. Unfortunately, too many companies do not consider the importance of managing conflict until a specific problem arises. Farsighted leadership organizations understand the need to have team procedures in place that will support conflict management and be available if and when a problem arises.

History of Team Development

The interactions of small groups have been of interest to social psychologists for some time. However, it has only been in recent years that researchers began to look at teams and how they function within the organizational setting. The term "sociometry" first appeared in the Psychological Abstracts index in 1940 with references to the work of individuals such as psychiatrist Jacob Levi Moreno, and the term "group dynamics" was listed in 1945 with reference to the work of Kurt Lewin and his colleagues. The first use of "small groups" and "group interaction" appeared in 1950 in conjunction with researchers such as Robert Bales.

The actual use of the concept "team" did not appear in the Abstracts index until 1971, with a reference to educational institutions using the "team teaching method." The general heading of "teams" did not appear in the index until 1988, by which point it included 21 research studies about teams and their use in clinical practice, sports, business, and the military. An article that same year by Robert Lefton and Victor Buzzotta began to address the theme of "teamwork."

Buzzotta and Lefton had founded Psychological Associates in 1958 and were among the first to apply behavioral science methods to business solutions. So little information was available at the time that these two psychologists designed their first training seminar using psychological research literature on basic interpersonal behavior, communications, and motivation.

Their first article, "Teams and Teamwork," was a study of 26 American executive teams comprising 275 CEOs, company presidents, and vice presidents — many from Fortune 500 companies. The study found that "while these teams came much closer to the ideal than most, the members of the teams themselves acknowledged that less than 40% of their interaction could be called teamwork." Most of the time, according to these leading executives, their interaction consisted of internal conflict and competition in the worst cases, and non-listening and hypocritical agreement in the best situations.

Lefton suggested that teamwork would not be possible with ineffective leadership and defined two basic management styles that negatively impact teamwork. The first was "hierarchical" or "formalistic" teams, where individual members spend most of their time ratifying the leader's demands without the opportunity to critique them; meetings are formal, superficial, and perfunctory. The second was "circular" teams, where it is mistakenly believed that harmony and equality alone will produce results, rather than the more insightful give-and-take of discussion and collaboration. Instead, Lefton argued, effective teams "are recognizable by the easy frankness that marks team discussions." Team members are not afraid to disagree with one another but recognize that this commitment leads to a strong team effort. The team leader remains in charge while encouraging the entire team to set strategy, problem-solve, and make decisions.

In 1989, Ned Rosen wrote Teamwork and the Bottom Line: Groups Make a Difference, which examined the correlation between negative productivity and employee interaction on one hand, and the lack of teamwork on the other. He stated, "The nation's productivity and labor problems and achievements…are strongly influenced by group dynamics in work organizations. The enthusiasm displayed by space workers after a successful rocket launch reflects a common form of team spirit." On the other hand, "chronic absenteeism, sub-standard productivity, negative attitudes, poor service, and shoddy workmanship are at least partly a function of inadequate attention to social organization in general and group dynamics in particular."

Around this same time, certain corporations also began to notice the strength of team building. General Foods discovered the importance of teamwork when it launched a line of ready-to-eat desserts by setting up a team of nine people with the freedom to operate like entrepreneurs starting their own business. The team was also responsible for building a factory with the equipment needed to assemble and manufacture the product line. Normally, it took companies five to seven years to go from product idea to shipping, but teamwork put Jell-O Pudding Snacks desserts in grocery stores across the country within three years, establishing a dominant market position worth hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.