[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Team members working together"]
[/caption]
Have you ever noticed how certain team leaders have effective teams even though there are sometimes conflicts? Sometimes is probably minimizing the problem. Any time you get a group of people together there are going to be conflicts of interest, in ideas of how a project should be done or personality issues, just to name a few.
What does That Leader do to keep the team focused on the project and not on the conflicts?
One of the best ways That Leader deals with a conflict is to meet it head on. He sees the negative body language clues that a team member is sending. He hears communications that show the team member is seeking power or just doesnt understand. There might have been incidents in a meeting of open disagreement.
So That Leader uses the meeting to turn the negative conflict into a constructive one immediately. She might stop the meeting and ask the team member to clarify the problem. If she thinks that this would have a bad outcome, she will meet with the team member privately at first to see if she can understand what the team member is trying to tell her. That Leader will decide if this is a personality issue that needs to be handled one-to-one or if it is something that needs to be addressed in a meeting.
Either way That Leader will set goals with the individual or group that include plans for more frequent communications. He realizes that the team member is probably having issues that are due to emotions, anxiety or stress, the three things most likely at the bottom of most conflicts. That Leader will honestly express his concerns privately or publicly depending on the situation.
In some cases the only thing That Leader can do is to agree to disagree with the team member. The leader will understand that healthy disagreement could build better decisions. This kind of thinking outside the box helps the leader build a better project than the one first envisioned. She will be able to take the better mouse trap to her up-line leaders with a concrete understanding of the improvements.
On occasion That Leader is going to have to do some self-reflection. Perhaps he is the problem because of his ego. When he began a company, he was the only worker and he thinks he has done well alone. Because of the growth of his business because he has done well, he now has a team. Still working out of his individualism, he has to realize that he now must develop a new management style, leaving his ego behind.
One thing That Leader learns to do is to let the team be creative. People support something that they have helped to create much more than something that they dont have a personal stake in. When team members feel like the project is our project, they wont be as likely to feel left out and let their emotions, anxiety or stress create conflict.
Not everyone is going to have the same values. What is very important to one member concerning one step in the project might seem relatively unimportant to another team member with a different expertise. That Leader needs to be aware of the strengths of the team and will probably want to address these differences in values openly so that the team can see how each part is important just as their work on the project is.
Whatever the company policy is, That Team Leader will always stress the importance of following it. If the policy states that new ideas must be evaluated by the up-line team before implementation, That Leader will not just implement the change nor will he allow team members to do so. This should be so clear to the members that there will be no game-playing inside the team. No one, especially a team leader, should ever say to another member, Gotcha, you were doing something against company policy. All policies and all communications need to be totally honest to avoid this.
One way to make sure that no one feels like he or she is not an adequate member of the team is for That Leader to provide more information than is needed. More is definitely better than less because the team will feel like they are being kept abreast of the project, not left in the dark. When people think that there is more going on than they know about, those concerns can create a team that is stressed and anxious, wondering what is wrong.
So we have seen That Leader at work avoiding a conflict or working to resolve it. Unfortunately not all conflicts can be solved this way. Have you seen some other ways conflicts are solved? If you have, please leave a comment in the box provided below.
This information is from Washington State School Directors Association and found on http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/
[/caption]Have you ever noticed how certain team leaders have effective teams even though there are sometimes conflicts? Sometimes is probably minimizing the problem. Any time you get a group of people together there are going to be conflicts of interest, in ideas of how a project should be done or personality issues, just to name a few.
What does That Leader do to keep the team focused on the project and not on the conflicts?
One of the best ways That Leader deals with a conflict is to meet it head on. He sees the negative body language clues that a team member is sending. He hears communications that show the team member is seeking power or just doesnt understand. There might have been incidents in a meeting of open disagreement.
So That Leader uses the meeting to turn the negative conflict into a constructive one immediately. She might stop the meeting and ask the team member to clarify the problem. If she thinks that this would have a bad outcome, she will meet with the team member privately at first to see if she can understand what the team member is trying to tell her. That Leader will decide if this is a personality issue that needs to be handled one-to-one or if it is something that needs to be addressed in a meeting.
Either way That Leader will set goals with the individual or group that include plans for more frequent communications. He realizes that the team member is probably having issues that are due to emotions, anxiety or stress, the three things most likely at the bottom of most conflicts. That Leader will honestly express his concerns privately or publicly depending on the situation.
In some cases the only thing That Leader can do is to agree to disagree with the team member. The leader will understand that healthy disagreement could build better decisions. This kind of thinking outside the box helps the leader build a better project than the one first envisioned. She will be able to take the better mouse trap to her up-line leaders with a concrete understanding of the improvements.
On occasion That Leader is going to have to do some self-reflection. Perhaps he is the problem because of his ego. When he began a company, he was the only worker and he thinks he has done well alone. Because of the growth of his business because he has done well, he now has a team. Still working out of his individualism, he has to realize that he now must develop a new management style, leaving his ego behind.
One thing That Leader learns to do is to let the team be creative. People support something that they have helped to create much more than something that they dont have a personal stake in. When team members feel like the project is our project, they wont be as likely to feel left out and let their emotions, anxiety or stress create conflict.
Not everyone is going to have the same values. What is very important to one member concerning one step in the project might seem relatively unimportant to another team member with a different expertise. That Leader needs to be aware of the strengths of the team and will probably want to address these differences in values openly so that the team can see how each part is important just as their work on the project is.
Whatever the company policy is, That Team Leader will always stress the importance of following it. If the policy states that new ideas must be evaluated by the up-line team before implementation, That Leader will not just implement the change nor will he allow team members to do so. This should be so clear to the members that there will be no game-playing inside the team. No one, especially a team leader, should ever say to another member, Gotcha, you were doing something against company policy. All policies and all communications need to be totally honest to avoid this.
One way to make sure that no one feels like he or she is not an adequate member of the team is for That Leader to provide more information than is needed. More is definitely better than less because the team will feel like they are being kept abreast of the project, not left in the dark. When people think that there is more going on than they know about, those concerns can create a team that is stressed and anxious, wondering what is wrong.
So we have seen That Leader at work avoiding a conflict or working to resolve it. Unfortunately not all conflicts can be solved this way. Have you seen some other ways conflicts are solved? If you have, please leave a comment in the box provided below.
This information is from Washington State School Directors Association and found on http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/
Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing, helps business owners and business professionals put marketing strategies in place that consistently secure new clients. He can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.799.1238. You can Like him at www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing or connect with him on www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.
Related articles
- Team Conflict - Adversarial Employee - Part IV (bizaboutbiz.com)
- Leadership (leotapioca27.wordpress.com)
