Team Norms

• norms: general guidelines or rules of behavior that most group or team members follow; typically are unwritten

• why are norms followed?

  • to help the group survive

  • to clarify role expectations

  • to help individuals avoid embarrassing situations

  • to emphasize group importance and identity

Managing Conflict

• conflict: process in which one party perceives that its interests are being opposed or negatively affected by another party

  • simply disagreement, a perfectly normal thing

• functional conflict: benefits the main purposes of the organization and serves its interests

• dysfunctional conflict: hinders the organizations performance or threatens its interests

4 Kinds of Conflict

• personality conflicts: interpersonal opposition based on personal dislike, disagreement, or differing styles

  • personality clashes, competition for scarce resources, time pressure, communication failures

• envy-based conflict: based on resentment of others because they possess something desirable (money, power, position, title, authority, influence)

• intergroup conflicts: “us vs them”

  • can occur due to:

    • inconsistent goals or reward systems

    • ambiguous jurisdictions/unclear boundaries

    • status differences

• cross-cultural conflicts: frequent opportunities for clashes between cultures in the global economy

  • ex: couples might start arguing that their way of childrearing is the right way

  • ex: corporate teams may stop communicating with their colleagues from other cultures, viewing them as untrustworthy or obstructive

How To Stimulate Constructive Conflict

1. spur competition among employees

2. change the organizations culture and procedures

3. bring in outsiders for new perspectives

4. use programmed conflict

Programmed Conflict

• programmed conflict: designed to elicit different opinions without inciting people’s personal feelings

• devil’s advocacy: assigning someone to play the role of critic to voice possible objections to a proposal and thereby generate critical thinking and reality testing

• dialect method: two people or groups play opposing roles in a debate in order to better understand a proposal