“Consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually," the former Israeli foreign minister, Abba Eban, once said. It is ironically true. Conflict is a natural part of close relationships. Any team, organization, political party or business could experience conflicts and disagreements.
Before a conflict occurs, all members of any organization should not forget and apply and follow the golden rule: avoid it or keep any conflict to a minimum. Understanding conflicts and knowing how to deal with them positively and resolve them can bring many benefits for an organization. Conflict could completely undermine team’s performance or can be used as a team building opportunity that, if done successfully, can bring together disparate team members.
Conflict resolution strategy
In order to demonstrate consensus building, respect for the ideas and feelings of team members and effective communication and listening skills in a team setting, here are some steps to resolve the situation:
- Collaborate and establish common project expectations which help achieve a shared interest and create a collective buy into the final goal of timely project completion;
- Have respect and dignity for each team member and their ideas and personalities in all communication and interactions;
- Ownership and accountability of team progress and success by every team member are important keys;
- Encouragement of new ideas and innovative ways to reach out goal (even if they are unconventional).
- Ask and answer any questions and concerns raised by the team will incorporate any additional feedback that comes up in team discussion into collective teamwork framework model;
- Clearly outline projects milestones, time lines and distribution of primary responsibilities, while emphasizing that the whole team has to support and help each other as all succeed or fail together;
- Among other important steps - to motivate all team members and give rewards. Using the concept of offering rewards, bonuses and positive feedback for each team member, would help to motivate them for greater individual and overall team performance.
These few top concepts applied were to understand individuals and their communication styles first; to get a buy in into team’s goal and its philosophy, while offering clear instructions and detailed direction for the overall project goals and mile stones; to establish ownership and accountability and common team spirit.
Meanwhile, conflict is not a completely negative phenomenon, because conflict can actually lead to new ideas and approaches to organizational processes and bring teams even closer together if they can overcome their initial differences through productive work together.
References
Brainy Quote. Abb Eban quotes, October 6, 2011, www.brainyquote.com
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