While steps can be taken to resolve conflict in the workplace, every strategy will not work in every instance, according to a research paper titled "Promoting Team Collaboration: Understanding Personality, Conflict, Resolution, Workplace Teams, and Cultural Diversity." Team collaboration can pose a challenge because it is influenced by several factors.
Importance
Managing workplace conflict is important because organizational goals often depend on the collaborative effort of each employee. How well people work and make decisions together has an effect on how the team functions overall. At times, conflict can interrupt these functions and hinder work-related goals.
Sources
Workplace conflict can result from resource scarcity such as time and budgets or from values such as political affiliation, according to Carsten De Dreu in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Furthermore, employees have different personalities that can clash and cause conflict.
Strategies
To prevent and resolve workplace conflict, several strategies can be used. One involves the establishment of ground rules, according to Skull and colleagues. Such rules can be created so all employees know what behaviors and processes are acceptable and those that are not. Consensus should be reached beforehand on the procedures for handling conflict when it does occur. Work goals should be established and re-emphasized when necessary. To encourage effective participation, group members should get to know each other and build rapport among themselves. They should understand their co-workers' personalities and limitations, and keep criticism constructive.
Assessment
Personality assessment can be used to identify which strategies might be effective with a particular group, as mentioned by Skull and colleagues. Understanding co-workers personality types can give employees insight for effective interaction. Such insight can foster the recognition and valuing of individual contributions.
Considerations
Although conflict is regarded as a negative aspect of a work group, the positive aspects of workplace conflict have been an object of study in psychology and organizational behavior. Some of the positive attributes of conflict at work is that it can lead to better decision-making, higher levels of creativity and more innovation, as outlined by Carsten K.W. De Dreu, with the Department of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. The key is, as the author notes, to effectively manage the conflict, without trying to eliminate it.
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