Team Dynamics-Conflict Resolution Strategies

Team Dynamics-Conflict Resolution Strategies

Bringing a team together is as easy as assigning individuals to be part of a group. The team is a small group of people who commits to a common task (Katzenbach & Smith, 1993). Generally, the team should be five to nine team members (Vernon, 2005).

Successful teams are those that perform well with tasks and at the same time foster team relationships. With every group that forms, a need is to be filled for an individual. Being part of the group provides each member with identity but they also need independence and recognition to work well with the other members.

The team can only be as successful as its individual members. The diversity in the team contributes to the team skills, knowledge and attitude towards the tasks and productivity, while backgrounds and culture will affect the whole team relationship.

In an environment where working in teams is encouraged, groups must consider the diversity of their members, their cultural backgrounds and the fact that conflicts will arise because of member's diversity. The way members manage such conflicts and the techniques used to resolve conflicts would determine the success of the teams. The strategy of a leader or mediator is to learn the nature of the conflicts and be aware of the dynamics of conflict resolution.

Stages

A newly formed team will go through five stages (Harvison, 2003):

FormÐ'- Individuals agree to become part of the group. The members initiate their activities as an immature group trying to know each other and finding out if they have membership. The contributions to the team are already decided, once their membership is recognized. Tasks behaviors focus on understanding goals while relationship focus on establishing membership and understanding roles (Vernon, 2005).

NormÐ'- In this stage, the group will agree on goals, leader selection, expectations of team members as well as the manner to attain decisions. Task behaviors favor knowledge and skill sharing while relationships are characterized by efforts to work together (Vernon, 2005).

Storm- When a group of people gets together to perform in any arena, conflicts will arise. The leaders and members of groups need to act quickly when this stage on the development of teams materializes. When team members are involved in dissention, the team is impaired. The team should be aware that people have different behaviors during internal conflict. Some team members will avoid conflict and when a conflict arises, they will not get involved. Other members will try to force the other person to agree with them. The conflict is not what they care about, but winning the conflict gives them a sense of achievement. Losing the conflict makes the same members feel infirm. Another part of the team wants to be liked. The members will avoid conflict by renouncing their beliefs and things that are important to them just to keep from being disliked. The next part of the group sees conflict as problems that can be solved. They will not stop until the problem is solved and the people in conflict are satisfied with the solution. Task behaviors are described as organization while relationship behaviors focus on influence (Vernon, 2005).

Re-NormÐ'- The conflicts can be resolved by re-norming. Actions can include the restoration of trust, respect, goodwill and understanding among team members. Sometimes, a third party's help is needed when the team cannot resolve their internal conflict. Task behaviors concentrate in sharing their new knowledge of perceptions and emotions while relationships focus on collaborating and establishing a harmonious environment.

Perform- The group becomes an effective team capable of solving problems and identifying their weaknesses. The result is a high level of work accomplishments and productivity complimented with human synergy.

While all teams go through the same stages, culture influences the speed of progression.

Culture

Definition

Social anthropology, the academic field responsible for the study of culture, has yet to settle on a definition for culture. For our purposes, culture is the shared values, beliefs, norms, attitudes, behaviors and social structures that define reality and every day interactions. (Adapted from Moore and Woodrow) (Ford, 2001).

The definition implies that culture is, "an attribute of the group and there is as much diversity within the group as between different groups" (Ford, 2001, p.2). A national group is associated with culture; however, teams have beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that constitute unique cultures.

Grasping the effects of cultural background in a group is not easy. The challenge is to try to understand each individual's culture as well as the aspects of the culture that are not visible. In trying to resolve conflicts, the mediator has to be aware that the conflict may occur because of perception, feelings or action (human instincts). The culture of team members can influence the resulting behavior of the individuals when a conflict arises or perceived.

Conflicts have many roots and origins but at the center of all conflicts is human need. People engage in conflict because the conflict fulfills their need or because they believe their needs are inconsistent with those of others (Mayer, n.d.). If a leader or mediator sees conflict as the need to satisfy human instincts then they can start to create a framework in which to work conflicts effectively. Once