Team Building And Dealing With Contact

Team Building and Dealing with Conflict

Effective teamwork begins with the collaboration of a variety of people from different cultures. Each member has to be courteous to his or her teammates and respect the views of one another. All participants must be willing to share their ideas, but remain open-minded, while listening to others express their ideas and opinions even though they may be different from our own. An open-minded teammate can effectively criticize, critique, or expand through discussion of ideas or views that are presented.

The potential of a team depends on the skill, knowledge, and ability of the people in the team, but also on their ability and motivation to make the best use of their resources toward achieving the team purpose (Stevens & Campion, 1994). In order to achieve a given teams productive outcome, there has to be teammates that will raise questions regarding the teams direction. They must be willing to challenge and disagree with others, including the team leader, in a constructive manor avoiding major conflicts.

An important factor to building a team is selecting a team leader because the leader will help the team to success. A team leader must be someone who is open-minded, reliable, and mature enough to handle any situation that may come up in a group. A team leader is a motivator and is very important to the whole team. An effective leader will utilize teammanship to identify their position on various teams and seek out the sources of power to influence each team (Yukl 1989).

There are two distinct phases to teammanship. The first phase involves the creation of the group and the second phase involves the transformation of this group into an effective and productive team (Holmes, 1997). In the first phase a team must clearly state their objectives and roles and have rules that everyone is going to follow, without full cooperation from every team member you will not be able to establish phase two. Without a doubt, a team must have a common objective, clear roles and goals, and resources (Arnold 1996). A team member is usually chosen based on his or her expertise, qualities, and what he or she can provide the team. Selecting the right team member is important because you always want someone who is reliable and someone who has good ideas and suggestions that can be brought to the group. A team member that can work well within a group and that does not get offended easily, for instance if their idea is not used, even if it was a very good one, is an effective team member.

Supporting the team is very important and is usually what helps keep a team together. Always be open-minded and ready to listen to someone else's ideas not just your own. All team members should not only support each other, but also each other’s ideas. This also leads to opportunities for the whole team. Providing opportunities for development is an important aspect in a successful team. Always talk among the group about any issues. If the problems are out in the open they can be taken care of. This will also help in future issues.

Conflict is a "state of disharmony brought about by differences of impulses, desires, or tendencies" (Rayeski & Bryant, 1994). Although many people and organizations view conflict as an activity that is usually negative and should be avoided, conflict is a natural result of people working together. Without conflict, complacency in teams can occur and the development of the team and/or the team member can be seriously impeded. Appropriate skills in dealing with conflict can help teams and anyone else in the organization to deal with and effectively resolve disagreements, which ultimately will lead to an overall more productive organization as a whole (Capozzoli, 1999).

Many companies have studied how a person deals with conflict and take this into account when developing current conflict resolution programs. Studies have shown that the way a person deals with conflict can be characterized in three ways; avoidance, confrontation, and problem solving.

The first way a team may deal with conflict is avoidance. Usually people do not like to make waves in the workplace so they feel that if they ignore the problem it will either take care