Artifact 4

1. Causes of Conflict

Personality Differences

• Everyone has a unique work ethic and a different background which can create conflict. What may be a weird or new method to someone, could actually be a very effective method for a group.
• You could have two people in a group with strong personalities that conflict. When this happens, the individuals need to come together and healthy work through their conflict.
• APPLICATION: One of our team members works at a company where a lot of the workers speak Spanish and the language barrier will often create conflict.

Communication Problems

• Communication goes hand-in-hand with expectations. People have un-communicated expectations that cause problems within a team environment.
• A lot people communicate through body language. You may be saying one thing, but your body is saying something else.

Limited Resources

• Time, money, and people are scarce and can cause an extra workload, causing people to act more irrationally.
• People start to feel overwhelmed and frustrated when there are limited resources.
• APPLICATION: One of our team members works at a smaller company and there are times when the workload is a lot and she gets burned out quickly. It's hard to stay motivated when you have a heavy load to lift.

2. Types of Conflict

Interpersonal

• Interpersonal is conflict between two people.
• The comic above is an example of interpersonal conflict.
• This can be conflict when an employee doesn't respect a manager, and doesn't understand why they are the way they are. However, the employee doesn't realize that the manager probably has information that they don't, and that's the reason they are acting the way they are.
• APPLICATION: When one of our team members worked as a supervisor at Sprouts, a lot of the employees wanted more hours. However, he would get frustrated because they were the ones that always called in sick and didn't feel like they deserved the extra hours.

Intergroup

• Intergroup is conflict between two groups.
• APPLICATION: One of our team members worked at a print shop and worked in the bindery department. She said that they would get in fights with the shipping company or the cutters all the time because things would get messed up with the orders. In the end, it was a lack of communication.

3. Conflict Handling Styles

Avoidance

Accommodation

Compromise

Competition

Collaboration

• Everyone has different ways to handle situations, and unique work ethics, so there is bound to be conflict. The worst solution to conflict is avoidance, because nothing gets addressed and tensions continue to build. With compromise, both parties come to an agreement, sometimes having to sacrifice something. Collaboration is the preferred option because both parties are able to come to an agreement benefiting in a win-win result.
• In the comic, they are using a competition handling style. One of them is wanting to be the winner while the other is the loser. You don't cooperate in competition handling style, it's more emotional. There would be a better outcome if they would collaborate and compromise.

4. Ways to manage Conflict

Change composition of team

• We recently did some changes within our own team. We have changed around a few of our roles to better help the dynamic of our team, and it has worked out really well because people are focusing more on their strengths.

Consider Majority rule

• This one isn't the best option because it's easily abused. If everyone votes with their friends then it can backfire because you are party voting.

Problem Solving

• Problem solving is the best because you can get to the root of the issue. This is not the easiest thing to do for people, but instead of putting a bandaid on something, you are actually getting rid of the problem.