In this blog post, I will be writing about a challenge my team is facing, “there is no conflict”. In normal situations, teams usually have arguments when there are disagreements. However, in my team, team members tend to keep quiet or agree to it when in actual fact, they disagree to it. For instance, everyone will keep quiet when Sathish allocates tasks to us. Also, Yu Kai is quite quiet during group discussions and he seems to be in deep thoughts. As for ZhenYang, he tends to ask more questions than provide ideas. As for myself, I have a tendency to give up my ideas rather than trying to convince my team when someone disagrees to it.
These methods are frequently used to avoid conflicts (Academic Leadership Support, n.d). However, according to Academic Leadership Support (n.d), conflicts should be allowed and it should be resolved early. This is because avoiding it would let the problem accumulate which leads to severe consequences (Anderson, 2010). When the problem blows up, relationships may be damaged. On top of that, the team may be missing out an important piece of information. This is because the opinion may contain a better solution, a major problem or suggestion that may help the team to think further. Additionally, team members who are quiet will become more recessive thus contributing less to team discussions. Likewise, this makes other members more dominant.
This may be caused by our bad experiences with conflicts. Besides that, we may not want to open up ourselves to others as we are not familiar with each other. It may also be because everyone wants to respect each other hence we try not to oppose or offend others. Furthermore, our inexperience and lack of confidence may also cause us to have the thought that our ideas or opinions are not useful.
One possible solution is to encourage teammates to express their views on the topics discussed. This can be done by prompting them questions such as “What are your views on this?”. Another way is to let recessive teammates speak first. This is to show them that their opinions are valuable. An alternative solution is to get everyone’s consensus on the ideas discussed for each sub topic before moving to the next. Therefore we need to allocate more time for discussions in order to utilize these solutions.
Nevertheless, implementing these solutions will lead to disagreements. Hence the team needs to resolve the disagreements as soon as possible. One possible solution is to have a team member recording all the ideas and reason for backing up the ideas. Then the team will review the list of ideas and pick the best idea which suits the situation. If there are still disputes over the best idea, team members may need to compromise or try to combine their ideas.
From my observation, my team members seem to be getting closer to each other after these few months. As the team faces varies challenges, the team matures as one. One good example would be the Oral Presentation 2 (OP2). The team was put to a test during the question and answer session. Due to different perspectives for the features of our software, the team did not pass the test. Fortunately, the team had a discussion to review OP2 immediately after it. The team also sorted out the differences during the following meet up. I also noticed that more opinions are shared and we are slowly revealing our true selves. Therefore, the team has started to progress in terms of overcoming this challenge.
In conclusion, it is important that team members express their oppose views. Though this may cause disputes, it is a process the team has to go through in order to mature. The team should iron out the disputes well and early to prevent accumulation of problems.
References
Academic Leadership Support. (n.d). Retreived from http://www.ohrd.wisc.edu/onlinetraining/resolution/aboutwhatisit.htm
Paul Anderson. (2010, May 20). Don’t Avoid Conflicts; Manage Conflicts using Conflict Resolution to Make Better Teams. Articles Factory. Retrieved from http://www.articlesfactory.com/articles/management/dont-avoid-conflicts-manage-conflicts-using-conflict-resolution-to-make-better-teams.html
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ReplyDeleteYeah, sometimes we have no conflicts in the discussion. However, this situation can be that everyone agrees on this topic. If it is in this situation, we should continue to the next topic. Conversely, if someone really has his or her opinions, we should stop here and ask his or her opinions. Judging this kind of situation is very hard, we should see each team member's facial expressions as well as the gestures. Maybe, we can apply what we have learned in nonverbal communication. We should not ask them directly, but we can inspire them to speak out.
ReplyDeleteIn general, this is a contradictory challenge. If our team has so many conflicts in the discussions, we will spend lots of time to solve them. So, maybe I think of a conflict and then realize it is not useful. I will not raise it in the discussion. On the other hand, if our team have no conflicts, we will have no ideas to choose from. In other words, we should have sufficient conflicts but not excessive conflicts.
Hi ZhenYang, I agree with you that no conflicts in discussion may be because everyone agrees on the topic. However, since everyone comes from different background, with different experiences, character, there will definitely be disagreement due to different perspective. Instead, non-verbal communication is one way we can roughly gauge what others are thinking. However, we need to slowly learn this skill as we get to know each other better. In the meantime, I still think that asking questions is a better way to get opinions or we can wait for a conflict to occur.
ReplyDeleteYes, this challenge is quite contradictory. Hence we need to learn to balance between no conflict and excessive conflicts.
I agree that our team has too little conflict, and this is a problem many teams would like to have. Of course, I am assuming that none of our members has stashed all his/her disgruntlement to one side, ready to release them on an unsuspecting member when he/she reaches a breaking point.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I hope that this trend of “too little conflict” continues, especially with the kind of team structure we have – egoless. This kind of team structure is especially susceptible to conflict since each member is free to contribute his/her ideas and decisions are made by consensus. Moreover, with the limited amount of time we have, conflicts are definitely not ideal.
As for the worry that members in our team may be holding back to avoid conflicts, I am not too concerned about that. The ideas each of us contribute are not simply ideas. Those that have been agreed upon have to be executed eventually. With much more at stake, it would be against human nature to hold back. Moreover, I believe that any decision made to hold back his/her idea is only made after weighing the benefits and costs to the team.
Hi Kim, I do agree that we are quiet in a group at certain times. However, I do find that as individuals we do lack initiative at the start. Perhaps this is due to us still being new to the group.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as the group matured on, I was very impressed by all 4 of us. One good example is Yu Kai posting a document in our team repository about 'possible questions being asked during proposal' on his own accord to assist us all as a group. This is an extremely positive progress of our group as it shows that we are starting to open up and help out in the group!
Anyways, not having conflict could also be a good thing. It shows that everyone is sensitive to each other. We settle disagreements in discussions in a very matured way by listing out options and getting opinions rather then being stuck up and demanding our option to be right. We have been doing 'agree to agree' rather than 'agree to disagree'
So far based I have not seen anyone holding a grudge on anyone [silent conflict]. Hopefully I am right.
Lets keep on going with this positive mindset!
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ReplyDeletePersonally, I am not very good at understanding body language and I am usually not very sensitive towards it. Hence, I do hope that our team is not holding back their emotions and ideas.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, I think our team is processing quite well! As time passes, I can see that we are taking initiative such as Yu Kai coming up with the possible questions for OP 2, Sathish trying to get our consensus before moving on the discussion. As well as ZhenYang volunteering to draft out the class diagram.