MANAGING CONFLICT

Managing Conflict

Managing Conflict

Many times this situations and conflicts arises because our interest and different approaches in seeing a project. To be able to accomplish our goal as a company is very important to learn and practice some alternatives and methods to be more productive in our work team. It is also important to avoid to become personal when dealing with issues and differences with our team members. When getting to a final decision is important to have in mind that uniform thinking is not mandatory. The idea is to resolve the dispute and to maintained a healthy environment in our work place for everyone.

Dispute Resolution Paper: Managing Conflict

Nowadays is very usual for organizations to work in teams. No matter how they'll be manage, having a specific leader or self directed approach, the common outcome is that the productivity, creativity, and other results will be efficient in a team environment. Even though this is a proven approach, any time you bring together people from differing backgrounds and experiences, it is inevitable that conflict will occur.

Numerous people and organizations view conflict as a negative, and try to void it, but conflict, differences, or disagreements are the common result of people working together. Sometimes without conflict, teams can become satisfied and not perform at top levels. "Conflict arises form the clash of perceptions, goals, or values in an arena where people care about the outcome" (Alessandra, 1993, p.92). Conflict can also be started by the different values and attitudes of the team members, limited resources, personalities, and interdependency.

Conflicts can be divided on two forms, emotional or affective as well as cognitive. They are very similar, the few differences lies in the approach and not in the likelihood of the manifestation. Cognitive conflict is aimed at issues, ideas, principles, or process, while affective or emotional conflict is aimed at people, emotions, or values. Cognitive conflict in many occasions can be constructive, while affective or emotional conflict can be destructive. Constructive conflict exits when group members change and grow personally form the conflict, when it increases the involvement of everyone affected by the conflict, and when it builds cohesiveness among the members of the team. In the other hand destructive conflicts exists when no decision is reached and the problem still exists, when it destroys the morale of the team members, and when it polarizes or divides the team.

In today's engineers workplace, they have more opportunities than ever to work on teams which cut across various disciplines, dealing with other engineers, customers, vendors, finance, project managers, and marketing people. From the start to the completion of a project is very important that all departments work as a group to win and complete an excellent job.

In this situations each group have different expectations of a project, and that each team member brings different personalities, experiences and values to the table. Of course, varying levels of competence and expectation can affect the outcome of each project. In team situations, disagreements and conflict are ...