What is team conflict and how do we prevent it happening?

Team or workplace conflict, is the breakdown of interpersonal relationships between members of a team. Team conflicts can happen between employees, a team leader/ manager and an employee or even between two or more teams within a company.

It’s important to understand that occasional conflict is inevitable when working as a group, wherever there are people collaborating, there’s bound to be some disagreements!

  • What are the potential consequences of Team Conflict?

  • What is the difference between positive and negative conflict?

  • How can understanding your team help to prevent conflict?

  • How can knowing your organisation help to prevent conflict?

  • How can setting an example reduce conflict within a team?

  • How can creating an open culture help prevent conflict?

What are the potential consequences of Team Conflict?

Conflicts can be caused by something as simple as a difference of opinion or artistic vision, most are harmless, resulting in nothing more than animated discussion.

However if the argument becomes more serious, conflict can start to result in some significant problems for your team, including:

  • Loss of productivity- When two conflicting members of a team are tasked with working together, the quality of the work and the product produced can suffer as the conflict takes the focus off of their tasks.
  • Loss of creativity- When people are involved in conflict, they are consumed by the conflict rather than the challenge of their work and lack the energy and brain space to be creative.
  • Loss of customers and reputation- Extreme conflict could result in the company becoming involved in litigation proceedings. Managers who fail to deal with serious conflict effectively could end up going to an employment tribunal to resolve the situation.
  • Recruitment becoming harder- If your work environment is characterized by conflict and therefore undesirable, recruiting fresh talent will be difficult.

What is the difference between positive and negative conflict?

Not all conflict is negative, some conflict can be positive or ‘constructive’. When one team member wants to do something one way, and another wants to do it another way, this can motivate both individuals to work harder on their ideas in order to ‘prove’ theirs is the best!

A good manager will learn to recognise whether conflict is positive or negative and utililise any positive conflict to their advantage.

Unfortunately, in the course of your management career, you will encounter negative conflict at some point; however, there are many steps you can take to help prevent conflict from occurring in the first place.

How can understanding your team help to prevent conflict?

Before you can begin to resolve or prevent conflict in your team, you need to understand where it could come from, and this means understanding your team:

  • Who are they all?
  • What does everyone do?
  • What are their personalities?
  • How do they prefer to operate? What’s their perspective on things both in and out of work?
  • Where do they come from in terms of age, background, culture, religion?
  •  What do they bring to the team?

By understanding who everyone is and what makes them tick, we can start to understand how and where conflict might arise between individuals or groups and how we can potentially mitigate against this.

Learning who your team is in terms of skills, will no