Building Conflict Competent Teams Craig Runde

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Building Conflict Competent TeamsCraig Runde

• Leadership Development Institute

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Conflict Competent Teams

• Understand the origin and challenges of team
  conflict
• Create the right climate for open discussion of
  issues
• Engage conflict constructively
• Recover if things get off track

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The Origins of Team Conflict

• Conflict is at the root of many teams best ideas
  as well as their worst failures
• Normal stage of team development - forming,
  storming, norming, performing
• Five Dysfunctions of a Team the second
  dysfunction is fear of conflict
• Differences in values, experience, strategy,
  tactics, styles

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• A TEST

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• 1000
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• 1000
• 30
• 1000
• 20
• 1000
• 10
• 4100

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Types of Team Conflict

• Research has demonstrated that teams experience
  two major types of conflicts.
• Task conflict occurs when people have differences
  about issues and the focus remains on solving the
  problem
• Relationship conflict happens when people focus
  more on personalities and the emphasis is on who
  is to blame

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Types of Team Conflict

• Task conflict typically results in enhanced
  creativity, improved decision making, and better
  outcomes
• Relationship conflict results in poorer outcomes,
  frayed relationships, and less commitment
• Task conflict can and often does morph into
  relationship conflict

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Exploring Team Conflict

• So the key question becomes
• How can we ensure that our team obtains the
  benefits of task conflict without experiencing
  the harmful effects of relationship conflict?

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Exploring Team Conflict

• First, teams need to create the right climate to
  address conflict openly and honestly.
• Second, team members need to engage each other
  constructively when addressing conflict.

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Creating the Right Climate

• The key for teams to deal with conflict
  effectively is being able to talk openly about
  the issues
• This requires improving attitudes about conflict,
  ensuring trust and safety, developing a sense of
  collaboration, and enhancing team emotional
  intelligence
• Teams need to develop and nurture norms around
  these areas

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Improving Attitudes

• Reflecting on how team members view conflict
• How do team members currently deal with conflict
• Why is it so difficult

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Trust and Safety

• Feelings of trust and psychological safety enable
  people to discuss and debate issues openly
• Teams leaders need to build trust by their
  example risk being vulnerable with others
• Important to address any breaches of trust right
  away

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Collaboration

• Formal term used for this concept is behavioral
  integration
• Sharing information openly
• Working on tasks together
• Making decisions together
• Collaborative reward structures

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Emotional Intelligence

• Importance of emotional intelligence in teams
  concept of emotional contagion
• Addressing emotions raised by conflict
• Controlling emotions
• Role of leader in dealing with team emotional
  climate

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Managing Emotions

• Cooling down
• Slowing down

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Engaging Constructively

• When the right climate is established people can
  discuss difficult issues.
• If they use constructive communication
  techniques, they can keep the focus on issues and
  off personalities
• When this happens, the benefits of task conflict
  can emerge.

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Key Behaviors

• Perspective Taking
• Listening for Understanding
• Expressing Thoughts and Emotions
• Reaching Out

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Special Situations

• Virtual Teams
• Global Teams
• Communication issues
• Cultural issues
• Role of leaders

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First Steps

• Assess teams current conflict competence
• Begin talking about what norms the team will use
  to address the inevitable conflicts it will face