Exploring the effects of intragroup conflict

Disputes and Conflict Management

Disputes, while often avoided, are not always undesirable when managing project teams. When people hear the word conflict, they instinctively associate it with something unpleasant; this misconception must be dispelled. As a result, the primary goal of understanding conflict is to learn how to handle it successfully, as it can act as a catalyst rather than a burden inside an organization.

Types of Team Conflicts

Within an organization, there are two forms of team conflicts: good and harmful types of group conflict. The good team dispute, also known as the catabolic conflict, is typically characterized by persistent and unresolved challenges in role identification, confusion, imbalances of duties and authorities, and so on. perceived injustices and a past of inadequately handled disputes (Gil, 2005). The good conflict which is professionally known as the anabolic conflict consists of open discourse, acceptance of diverse ideas and investigation and self-analysis of the key players and processes within an organization. The issue of conflict is that the two types run counter-instinctive to our natural emotional state as human beings. Therefore, anabolic conflict tends to be open and right in front of your face whereas catabolic conflict is very subtle and therefore may take long to develop and display itself. Hence, the nature of humans is to squash the dispute which is most apparent and adapt to the subtle conflict that no one can address.

Positive Impact of Conflicts

Positive conflicts affect the team synergy and antagonism in different ways. Conflicts help in building relationships. Being agreeable is good. However, encouraging conflict can strengthen the relationships between members of a team in a project (Gil, 2005). The organizational conflicts contribute to building strong relationships through mutual understanding and respect of diverse ideas and opinions of members of a group. Therefore conflict can help to learn to listen which in turn leads to insights valued by both sides during any different situation within a group setting. Additionally, positive conflicts encourage creative thinking since it opens the minds to new and innovative ideas. Clashes in a group enable people to contribute their different perspective on an issue, therefore, resulting in previously unexplored possibilities. Therefore positive conflict can help in consideration of creative ways of approaching challenges and achieving the demands of a competitive world as a lead to improvements that benefit the organization and as well as the group members. Also, positive conflict beats stagnation within a team project, therefore, for change to happen conflict must occur. Avoidance of conflict can lead to the demise of a group project.

Personality Traits and Positive Conflicts

The four personality traits include agreeableness, extraversion, openness to experience, and conscientiousness. Therefore, positive conflicts employ personality traits include agreeableness that encourages members of a group to agree or challenge an idea which is positive for the growth of the team. Conscientiousness ensures that colleagues in a group project are considerate of others put in the hard work in the contribution of the group project. Additionally, extraversion determines how social a person is, therefore, it is important in communication process among the members of a group project. Finally, openness to new experience within a context of conflicts within a project ensures creativity by doing something unconventional to solve the problem.

Team Charter

A team charter is a group of concepts and skills that focus a team on enabling them to engage effectively and dividing the projects into smaller achievable tasks. It's a road map that keeps the team focus on their goals (Govindarajan, 2001). Therefore a charter should include team purpose, measurable goals, and operating guidelines.

Team Purpose

Identifying negative and positive conflicts and manage them effectively by maximizing the positive ones and reducing the negative conflicts through the cost-benefit analysis.

Measurable Goals

The negative and positive conflicts are measurement per group's productivity through percentages estimation. Ensuring goals are achieved at a stipulated time limit.

Operation Guidelines

Reviewing and monitoring the positive and negative conflicts should be done within the stipulations of the law.

References

Gil, F. a. (2005). Exploring the effects of intragroup conflict and past performance feedback on team effectiveness. Journal of managerial psychology, 231-244.

Govindarajan, V. a. (2001). Building an effective global business team. MIT Sloan Management Review, 63.