Question

Briggs went over the ground rules and emphasized that from now on meetings would start on time and that she expected to be notified in advance if someone was going to be absent.” Setting ground rules is one method of reducing or avoiding conflict in teams. Conflict is an inherent and persistent organisational phenomenon. It cannot be eradicated but it can be managed. Discuss how you would manage conflict in a project environment

Answer 1

While managing different stakeholders in the project there can often be certain conflicts. Conflict arises when there is a difference of opinion or thought between two or more individuals, groups, firms or any stakeholder in a process. The conflicts can vary from being very easy to handle to very severe leading to extreme challenges. If we observe closely at the major sources of conflict, we can see the following:

• Poor communication
• Misunderstanding
• Lack of proper planning
• Poor decision making
• Stress and anxiety and personal issues etc.

If the conflicts are not managed properly it would lead to situations that can hamper the long term relationship between the involved partners. The areas which are mentioned above covers the root cause of all major conflicts. Sometimes there can be situations where one party does such actions intentionally so as to cause an imbalance in a relationship. But apart from that, there are very fewer chances of any issues which arise from causes which are not related to the ones mentioned above. Poor communication often leads to poor translation of thoughts into words and subsequently into action. This can cause major conflicts in the business world where a lot of the business decisions are taken during discussions. Another major source of conflict is misunderstanding the intended message by the receiver. All these small incidents lead to bigger conflicts.

Setting ground rules and exercising power is a definite approach that will bring disciple to project teams. But that does not always resolve the conflicts. To resolve conflicts, underlying issues need to be deliberated and resolved. While conflicts are easy to start it is very difficult to settle it down. To reduce the conflicts which arise individuals can use the following strategies:

• Avoiding
• Competing
• Accommodating
• Compromising
• Collaborating

Each strategy uses different parameters and based on the comparative analysis the strategy can be chosen. To resolve a conflict the most important factors are cooperation and assertiveness. If we consider the above strategies we can see that if the two parties involved in a conflict are highly noncooperative and both are not assertive of their own opinions. The best possible solution in such case is to avoid the conflict and problem altogether and move separately. If the cooperation is high among one party and assertiveness is high on another, the party who is willing to cooperate often ends up accommodating the other one. This would mean even though the conflict is resolved, one party has higher power over another. The third case is when both the parties are not high on cooperation but are high on asserting their points. This would mean both of them to compete against each other and cause bigger problems for the business. In such cases, there can be very low chances of a resolution that would benefit both the involved parties. If we were to look at the other two strategies, it shows more openness to the cooperation and mutual interest to resolve a conflict. Comprising and collaboration can be done only when both the involved parties are cooperative and willing to resolve issues. in these two cases, both parties can get a win, in all other cases, there would be a clear loser in the other end.

Deploying different strategies of conflict management is dependent on the type of team members. Project managers need to exercise caution while using different tactics and ensure they do not force others into submission. Each party in the conflict should be treated equally and both their views should be considered. The best approach to deploy in project management is to use a collaborative approach to reach a common ground and consensus.