Now let's look at the elements of conflict and the types of conflict. Remember that we said that diverse teams are more likely to have conflict, and they're also more likely to thrive. If you've been avoiding conflict on your team, now's the time to think about how you might address it. Let's first look at the elements of conflict and the scope of conflict. Conflict arises from a discrepancy between or among individuals regarding needs, beliefs and concerns. Differences happen across three critical team components. One, the teams goals. Two, the way the team will achieve goals. Three, the way team members behave. If not addressed, team conflicts can quickly generate into dysfunction and potentially dissolution of a team. Let me tell you a story about a team I observed. They ultimately broke up because of differences across all three of these critical team components. The situation was that the CEO of the team, let's call her Beth, had a disagreement with a member of the team, let's call him John. Beth and John were both vying for the CEO role. But the team appointed Beth, due to her high level of knowledge and preparation for the activity. When Beth, who happened to be from the UK, stepped into the CEO role, she was very organized and forthcoming about what she felt needed to be done to accomplish the group goals. By and large, the remaining five members agreed with her direction and interjected alternate scenarios, where needed. However, there was a problem with the balance of input in the group. Three of the group's six members could not speak English fluently, so the input was sparse and slower to be provided. In contrast, John, the other candidate for CEO who happened to be from Ghana, could speak English well, and questioned nearly every decision made by Beth. John also disrupted team conversations, despite his own admission that he had not adequately prepared for the simulation. The other member of the team who could speak English well, let's call him David, who was from Nigeria, was, de facto, babysitting John, while John continue to antagonize Beth. The team carried on for two rounds of simulation. As each round progressed, Beth took on more and more of the workload. She simply could not wait for the non-native speakers to keep up with her. And to be fair, the simulation was moving at a very rapid pace. David from Ghana gave input where he could, as did the other team members. But everyone really needed to take things more slowly, because English was a second language for most of the team. But Beth had trouble slowing down because of the negative interactions between John and Beth, and the difficulty that the team had communicating in general. Beth ended up trying to do everything herself. This was sales negotiations, financial projections, managing operations, etc. Other members served in their roles, but there was little conversation in the room to share information. At the end of the second round, John was removed from the team because of his behavior. But this wasn't without negative consequences for Beth and the other members. Even though John was removed, Beth also decided to leave the team. The situation was so upsetting to her, that she could not recover from the conflict in that short time frame. John was certainly a difficult teammate in everyone's eyes. But Beth's unwillingness to adjust her pace caused her to burn out by taking on too much of the team's responsibilities. While this is an extreme example of a toxic individual having a negative impact on the team, Beth's handling of the situation can not be ignored either. Have you ever avoided conflict and taken on too much yourself? I know I have. This kind of scenario, while an extreme case, can happen to you if your team does not address conflict in a timely manner. So what could this team have done? Because conflict can develop at the individual level, it's important to note that it can affect the team, group, and organizational levels, and turn into a vicious cycle of damage if the conflict is completely buried. The team learning, or taking time to reflect on a dynamics, could have prevented some of the damage if the team was able to establish compatible ways of thinking. Better use of people like David, who have relationships across the two individuals in conflict, could have assisted in bridging gaps between parties. On this team there were what we call representational gaps, or gaps in perception about team's problems, including the team's ultimate task, and what's important, in terms of roles, to execute on those goals. The next modules will discuss these gaps, and how to address them.
