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 not only help you discover where the gaps are and understand the jobs that individuals do, but also their understanding of what others in the team do and their skills in communication and resolving conflict.

In turn, this can help you develop your and your team’s communication skills, so they know how to communicate and solve conflicts in an appropriate and professional manner.

How can knowing your organisation help to prevent conflict?

In a similar way, it’s important to know your company or organisation.

  • Where are you now as a business?
  • What are your current strengths and weaknesses?
  • What opportunities are available to you?
  • Do you have a mission statement that everybody can get behind- a clear vision?
  • What are you aiming for as a team? as an organisation? Can you and your team put this into words?
  • Do you have clear goals? Can you and your team explain these to others?

These may seem like obvious questions but members of your team being unaware of the answers can result in conflict due to a lack of clarity.

Having clear goals and a clear vision and objectives will help to avoid conflict in the first place.  A good manager will consider everything from external pressures to the workplace environment itself and seemingly simple issues such as parking to identify where conflict could arise and what the wider issues are that could potentially cause problems.

How can setting an example reduce conflict within a team?

Part of being a good leader is being seen to follow the rules and processes you are applying to others. Your team needs to see you working in the same way you’re asking them to and operating by the same company values.

This demonstrates that you value your team through the parity and equality that you show. If you are seen to be participating your team will be more inclined to work with you and each other, reducing conflict through building respect.

As a manager, your job is to facilitate the success of your team. Remaining consistent and clear in your communication, will ensure that the whole team is on the same page, mitigating potential for conflict.

A good question to ask is – how can we, as a team, get to the point where we need to be? By talking to your team and hearing what they have to say, you demonstrate that you’re listening and that it’s about the team as a whole, not just you.

Giving meaningful feedback can help remind people that they are working towards the team’s and organization’s goals and objectives, but also how what they are doing makes a difference to meeting those goals.

In simple terms, avoiding being dictatorial and controlling and instead seeking the input of your team can instantly help reduce potential for conflict.

How can creating an open culture help prevent conflict?

A good way to minmise the chances of conflict arising is to develop a workplace culture of openness where your team feel they can address and discuss issues as they arise, stamping out conflict at the source.

Part of this might involve agreeing in advance as a team, how you are going to address issues when they arise. This can be in the form of a team charter or similar, which sets out how you are going to deal with problems that come up, a kind of pact that you will all try to be aware of what’s going on and attempt to resolve issues in a desired way.

As managers, your job is to create a conflict resolution agreement everybody can get behind and ensure that you yourself can abide by any resolution that we come up with too. This will help build trust, ensuring the conflict remains resolved longer term.

Sometimes it’s about giving people the confidence to have difficult conversations. Letting people know they can come to you when they’re struggling with an issue can be the best way to prevent conflict in the first place.

Instead of allowing people’s frustrations to fester, make it clear you want to hear them. As long as it’s appropriate, allow people time to scream and shout and bang their desk if they need to get it out of their system!

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