managing conflict in teams

Conflict is bound to occur when working on a team. But how effective is your team at managing conflict and regaining cohesiveness? The answer will determine whether your team will sink or rise above to become a high-performer.
 
In order to handle conflict constructively, you must first understand your individual team member styles of conflict as well as your own. Then, you should identify your overall team’s style for dealing with conflict.

Each team member has a predominant conflict style, and different conflict styles are adopted because people experience conflict in different ways and have different guiding principles and values regarding conflict. Each style can contribute to an essential aspect of the team’s process:

You can deal more effectively with styles other than your own by:

Your team’s style provides certain strengths and challenges. It is important that your team be able to switch to other conflict-handling modes when different issues arise. Below are recommendations for any team to increase its effectiveness.

To be an effective team, you must reach agreements on goals, make good decisions about how to achieve those goals, and help each other accomplish activities, despite differences.

Learn more about tools that can teach you to appreciate the value of your own conflict style and those of others by clicking here.

*Reprinted with permission from CPP, Inc.