Chapter 1: Teamwork and Conflict Management:
Introduction:
- Most tasks are too complex/time-consuming for a single person to be able to handle on his own
- Teamwork is essential in order for teamwork tasks to be done optimally
- Team are also effective in other ways – Sport, running a business (management functions), Staging a production, making a movie –
Problems in teamwork:
Introduction:
- Teams do not always run smoothly
- Different personalities, different ideas, different goals, different ways of doing things all working towards a common goal – often a recipe for disaster
- Despite the formal goal of the team, people often have their own agendas
Daffy Definitions:
- Conference: Confusion of one man multiplied by the number present
- Conference room: Room where everybody talks, nobody listens, everybody disagrees later
- Compromise: Art of dividing a cake in such a way that everybody believes he got the biggest slice
- Committee: Individuals who can do nothing individually, sit and decide that nothing can be done together
- Experience: Name men give to their mistakes
- Boss: Someone who is early when you are late, late when you’re early
Problems experienced in teams:
Always important to put aside personal issues – prepared to compromise (not always easy)
Various factors which cause problems:
- Lack of a common aim – lack of focus
- Different ideas
- Working at different speeds – may hold up the entire group
- Group does not have the correct skills for all tasks
- No specific leader – multiple people may try to take charge
- Conflict between team members – distract the team
- Personal egos – conflict the team goal
Establishing effective teams:
Essential that potential team members are trained to work together effectively
- Learning how to analyse/ classify types of teams (understand how they work – team format is best for that situation)
- Learning about different team roles
- Understanding team processes (various stages a team goes through)
- Understanding team dynamics
- How to manage conflict in teams
Types of teams:
Informal teams:
- Groups of people who gravitate towards each other – common interests, shared goal
- Members are usually fiercely loyal to the team, will follow their own code of conduct
Advantages of belonging to an informal team:
- Sense of identity
- Friendship/support
- Opportunity to discuss/ participate in an interest/hobby with like-minded people
- Part of an informal communication network (grapevine)
Formal teams:
- Created by management towards achieving a goal
- Democratic management – choice of which team they belong to –
- Organisational goals are achieved by dividing them into sub-goals
Formal teams are created to achieve outcomes such as:
- Producing specific aspects of work
- Developing new ideas
- Managing a process
- Resolving conflict/problem solving
- Improving working conditions/ motivation of employees
Advantages of belonging to a formal team:
- Increased motivation
- Productivity
- Decreased costs/wastage
- Improve decision making
- Less duplication of effort
- Greater flexibility/ ability to adapt to change
Team roles:
Most teams are complex – many of the problems that arise in teams could be avoided if roles are more clearly defined/correctly allocated
Aspects that need to be considered when allocating roles:
The aim of the team:
- Intend to achieve?
- If it’s a complex goal – need to be broken down into sub-goals
The side of the team:
- Members in a small team – double up on roles
- Members in a large team – several members playing similar roles
The expected life span of the team:
- Some teams operated only for a limited period
The strengths/weaknesses of each member:
- Too many similar strengths could lead to conflict
- Too many weaknesses, not compensated for may lead to serious problems
The available resources:
- Resources, financing/equipment, compensate for some of the problems mentioned
Accountability:
- Accountability for each task in the group
- Even if the whole group is involved, one person needs to take responsibility to co-ordinate it
Team roles:
- Initiator: Person who gets everything going
- Often reads instructions out loud
- Organise the voting for a leader
- Contribute new ideas
- Investigator: Person who will volunteer to do the research
- Administrator: Person who will do the paperwork
- Motivator: Person is a caring ‘people’s person’
- Gets everyone excited about the project
- Makes sure everyone is happy
- They will notice when someone withdraws
- When feelings are hurt, they try rectify things
- Coordinator: Person who will ensure that resources are allocated/used properly
- Activator: Get involved/actively participate in the practical execution
- Leader: Far more than any individual role
- Primary focus is decision-making/crisis management
- Where the situation is volatile or problematic, essential to be able to step back/keep an eye on the bigger picture
Team process:
- Forming: Members allocated/come together to start forming a team
- Storming: Most volatile stage.
- Members are finding their roles
- Ideas, discussion, disagreement, are all rampant – part of the creative process
- Members past experiences should be noted as a potential future resource
- Norming: ‘Calm after the storm’
- Work towards a common goal
- Team roles are either assigned by a leader or assumed
- Agreement reached – all members are happy to proceed
- Team briefing will occur – leader will allocate roles
- Performing: Actual work is done
- Members complete their allocated tasks/ break into sub-teams
- Barriers/problems are addressed
- This stage is potentially the longest lasting process
- Adjourning: Disbanding of the group groups
- Task is completed – or realisation is reached that it will not be successful
- If unsuccessful mourning may occur – members formed close bonds
- If successful mourning will be followed by a period of celebration/ achievement-reflection
- Team will transform/start a new project (sometimes with different members, new goals)
Team dynamics:
- Refers to how well a team works together
- Constant push and pull effect – actions and reactions
- Each person must adjust to what is happening in the rest of the team
Problems arise mainly through:
- Lack of communication
- Lack of strong leadership/management
- Personality differences/underlying tensions
- Not having correct skills/ resources to complete tasks
- Lack of direction/clear goals
- Inadequate role allocation/organisation
- Lack of commitment from team members – do not work to their pull potential/at all
- Prejudice, beliefs, values, diversity affecting the interaction of team members
Team attitude/spirit:
- Attitude is a fundamental building block in creating successful team dynamics
- Often all the training and practicing in the world will not make as much of a difference as a change in attitude
Team briefing:
- Essential part of team dynamics
- Leaders role is to analyse the available information, time, budgets ad summaries them effectively for the team
Team briefings, adhere to some specific criteria:
- Led by the team leader – reinforce their role
- Give direction/focus to the team
- Be short/to the point
- Clear in communicating aims, roles responsibilities
- Specify time lines/expected outcomes
- Avoid general, non-specific discussions
- Allow for questions – asked and answered –
- Be motivational, inspire members
- Assist individuals/groups to cope with change/innovation
- Quantify the type/extend of support structures
All members should feel motivated/eager to do their part, with total buy in to the vision
Team synergy:
- Important in order for the rest of the team to work at achieving the same goals
- Team members should support each other – not jeopardise the work of others
- Synergy: The process of optimal cooperation where the team together achieves more than the individuals could on their own
- Synergy is achieved through consensus (compromise is almost always needed)
Team synergy is best summarised as: Synchronised Energy
Team dynamics in practice:
- Any one team member who is not working properly becomes ‘the weakest link’
- The weakest link poses a problem for the team as a whole
- Team often has to compensate for the weakest link – additional strain on them; this affects inter-relationships, attitudes, general performance
Problem of a weak link in the team can arise in two ways:
Team constituted without necessary skills:
- Always important to do a SWOT analysis/evaluate team in detail before starting
A team member does not pull their weight:
- Serious problem – often leads to crisis management – important to stick to deadlines
Group consensus:
- Is a decision making too
- Requires members of a team to reach mutual consent – not necessarily agree on an issue
- Vote in favour of the motion – agree to disagree
- Consensus refers to both the final decision/ the process of arriving at the decision
- Important to reach consensus – consequences of implementing the decision will affect the entire group, all members must take ownership of the decision
- Compromise is an important part of reaching consensus
- If consensus cannot be reached – dissenting team member may withdraw/force the team to change the proposal (process will start again)
Belbin Role Theory:
According to the Belbin theory – there are nine different roles that people may assume in a group
Action orientated roles:
- Shaper: Enjoys challenges/ thrives on overcoming obstacles (Sipho)
- Implementer: Conservative/reliable. Turning ideas into practical actions (Ivan)
- Completer: Conscientious/ looks of errors (Candy)
People orientated roles:
- Coordinator: Mature person – clarifies roles/delegates well (Carl)
- Team worker: Diplomatic/listens/reduce friction (Thabo)
- Resource investigator: Enthusiastic about exploring opportunities/ developing contacts (Ruan)
Cerebal Roles:
- Monitor: Evaluates (Mary)
- Specialist: Contributes specific skills – dwells on technicalities (Susan)
- Acting as a plant: Loves to solve difficult problems (Peter)
Jungian Theory:
- Jungian Theory of Carl Jung
- Forms the basis of MTR-I and Margerison-McCann profiles
- Jung founded the concept of analytical Psychology
MTR-I Approach:
- MTR-I: Management Team Roles Indicator
- Is an approach looks at hat is needed to close the gap between desire/ actual team performance
- Used for decision making/ team collaboration
- Looks at the way the team as a whole functions/ roles individuals in that team play
- Acknowledges that people will play different roles in different scenarios
- Roles can change over a period of time
Margerison-McCann Profiles:
- Acknowledges that a team works at different levels at different times – takes into consideration the work preference of individuals
- Advantages of the system is the ability to work with diversity/balance team roles
- Provides guidelines for managing conflict
Project management:
- Projects differ from normal work in that they are definable tasks
- Resourced with specific team members
- Smaller projects can be short term, larger projects an take years
Project manager:
They are responsible to all the stakeholders in the process
- Sponsor: Person who commissioned the project – often CEO in the business
- Suppliers: Providing resources –form of products/services
- Clients: Beneficiaries of the project – In an economically driven project the client would ultimately pay, in a CSI initiative funding would come from suppliers
- Team leaders: People who are in charge of sub-sections of the project. Teams under them to accomplish specific tasks
- Other stakeholders: Depends on the type of project. Society as a whole may benefit/ government through increased taxes due to better sales
Roles of the project manager:
- In charge of planning, organising, leading, controlling the project process
Project life cycle:
- May be necessary to back track to the previous step to resolve a problem
- A project goes through the same steps as the forming of the team process
- Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Adjourning
Project Charter:
A formal document that describes your project in its entirety
- All participants work towards a common goal
- Often the document that will be used when applying for funding from banks/donors
During the initiation stage a Project Charter is drawn up which includes:
Purpose statement:
- Why are we doing this?
- Triple bottom line reporting (Profit, people plant)
The scope statement:
- What is included in this project?
- Pre-signed contracts/agreements will form the basis of this
- Project creep: Uncontrolled changes and growth after the project has begun
Project outcomes:
- Ultimate goal needs to be quantified/ precisely defined
- Supported by the SMARTER goals
Environmental scanning:
- Micro and market environments
- Use of SWOT analysis
- Macro-environment will have the use of a PESTLE analysis/the extended P2E2STLE
Budgets:
- All resources cost money
- Donors will want accountability for the efficient use of their funds
Chain of command:
- Form of an organogram
- Will include vital guidelines to what information needs to be communicated to whom/by when/ in what format
Precautions, Assumptions and Risks:
- Important to document/ address each of these aspects
- Along with ‘Plan B’/ any risk management strategies
Conflict management:
- Defined as a strategy of disharmony/ clash between different people, situations, ideas, elements
- Functional: Positive, non-aggressive, stimulating creativity, better performance
- Dysfunctional: Aggressive, negative, hampering productivity
- Inner conflict is where someone has trouble making decisions
Causes of conflict in business:
Working together, under stress there is potential for conflict
Potential causes of conflict:
- Limited resources – time, equipment, money
- Unrealistic expectations (management)
- Emotional reactions
- Personality differences
- Lack of proper communications/ instructions
Not limited to the micro environment
Problems with suppliers, customers, competitors, government officials, any other person/ business
The management of Conflict:
- Most important aspect of managing conflict is addressing issues before they get blown out of proportion
- Solving small problems is a lot easier to handle – unlike waiting until it has started affecting other aspects of their jobs
- Most basic step is educating employees around negotiation, conciliation, mediation, arbitration
Conflict Resolution Steps:
Negotiation:
- Two parties sit down – try come to a compromise by themselves
Conciliation:
- If negotiation is not successful; a third person gets involved
- Only to facilitate the discussion
Mediation:
- If negotiation/conciliation are not successful; the third person gets more involved
- Third person gives advice – ultimate decision is still up to the original parties involved
Arbitration:
- If negotiation/conciliation/mediation are not successful; the decision is taken out of the hands of the original parties
- Third person has to make a judgement call
CCMA: The council for conciliation, mediation and arbitration
Conflict management and Team Dynamics:
- Direct link between the quality of team management – the need for conflict management: Good team dynamics will result in open communication/ fewer misunderstandings
- Prevent conflict from building into crisis situations
- Poor team dynamics increase the chances of conflict – leads to the need for crisis management