Within a team, comprising of different individuals with different mindsets, behaviour and personalities can lead to the breakout of organizational conflict. It is perfectly normal and human. However, if not maintained, relationships can be affected, resulting in poor performance of your colleagues. Therefore, in this article, we will share some common scenarios on why organizational conflicts occur within a workplace and how we can overcome these conflicts.
First and foremost, it is important to understand the underlying reason on why organizational conflict occurs in the first place. This would then allow us to get to the root of the problem and counter it immediately.
Sources of Organizational Conflict
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| 2. Role Ambiguity: complete lack of rules; breeds conflict as it creates uncertainty and increases the risk that one party would tend to interfere with other party’s roles. |
| 3. Differences Between members: background, experience, different values & beliefs |
| 4. Resource Scarcity/ Constraints: not enough financial, human capital etc and people undermine each other to complete their task |
| 5. Communication Problems: Lack of opportunity to communicate; insufficient skills; perception of conflicts. |
| 6. Interdependencies between members: Pooled-Individuals work independently but with common resources/authority, Reciprocal-Highly dependent on team members and interferes in work issues, Sequential-One group is dependent on the other for input, while reverse is not true. |
Methods to Reduce Organizational Conflict
- Forcing
Firstly: if relationships are not at stake, perhaps taking a force stance would be great. However take note: Try to use this rarely.
2) Problem-solving
Secondly: Problem-Solving. This is an area that is commonly used no matter the conflict. Identify the underlying problem behind the conflict, and try to find solutions to solve the problem. Self-explanatory!
3) Yielding
Thirdly: Give and take. Sometimes it’s better to be the better person, and to avoid any conflicts in the near future. In that case, giving in would then be the best option.
4) Avoiding
Next, you should never ever confront someone who’s angry or in a bad mood. Usually, people tend to react negatively out of anger, thus its sometimes best to avoid and allow the other party to cool down before confronting and talking things out.
5) Compromising
Lastly, should the conflict be about a common goal, perhaps an area that we can explore would be the act of compromising. This would thus allow for a win-win situation at the end of the day.
