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Being a Project Leader / Manager how should we deal the conflicts among team member to get the desired results?

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Question added by Deleted user
Date Posted: 2016/02/23

Dear Rashid, 

 

Conflicts are matter of social relationships, there is no exact science to solve them (or all the world will be living in peace currently). Therefore there is no standard recipe that applies depending on the people, culture and type of conflicts, I am not a psychologists, but I dealt several times with such conflicts more or less efficiently.

First and above all you need to know the origin of the conflict, conflicts in professional contexts have3 main origins. Let me illustrate by sharing my own experience :

I am sorry to say that it always took me precious time to motivate the team again, but it is a necessary step, as conflicts jeopardize the business objectives.

You need to identify the origin of the conflict and sort it out.

  • Interviewing each team member (even those not involved in the conflict) is a good step to start with.
  • Then, organize a meeting with the people involved (only) and made them talk together, all you have to do is listen (and prevent them from fighting, verbally or physically)

7 times over it is was misunderstanding between the team members, letting them talk and listen was enough to sort the conflict out. (of course you must be watchful to prevent new conflict)

2 times over, it was a competence/ attendance / seriousness issue of one or more protagonists. Clearly, the others where doing the job twice, or having big trouble doing their job efficiently:  To be efficient, the weak link should be removed from the team. probably the person is facing personal problems or not interested in the job, but in all cases, getting rid of the weak link is the best solution. Your team will be more efficient with4 members rather with4 members redoing the work of the fifth. 

Beware : YOU must identify the weak link with clear and unquestionable facts, others judgement must not be considered. 

1 times over it was a personal conflict, either completely independent from the work objectives, or related to one (or more) toxic person in the group. Generally speaking it is really a matter of (social) behavior with other members of the team; This was the most difficult cases I had to deal with. The simple solution is identifying the toxic person and remove it from the team, but when this person comes to be very efficient, or a key-member, you'll be facing a tough choice.

Once I put the "toxic" person in charge, and it had a very positive effect on the team, because he was very efficient, and wanted the team to be efficient too : he instilled motivation in the team. It worked because the intentions of this person were good, but I took the risk of causing a lot of damage.

 

Letting people talk about what bothering them and getting to know the origin of the conflict is the best thing to start with.

Ahmed Mohamed Ayesh Sarkhi
by Ahmed Mohamed Ayesh Sarkhi , Shared Services Supervisor , Saudi Musheera Co. Ltd.

give all task in schedule time table to do it

 

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