...Introduction If a group is going to be productive and successful, the entire group must be able to identify and resolve conflict successfully. Conflict management is a skill that can be learned. The human relationship is a complex and dynamic inter-action. As living creatures, we need and crave the opportunity to interact with other humans by speaking, listening, and spending time with them. Most of this interaction tends to be mutual and cordial. Yet, at times, the interaction can be laced with tension and discord. If left alone, the tension can lead to conflict that may damage the relationship or even become volatile. Conflict between individuals and within groups often occurs because people have differences of opinion, have different values and goals, or receive inaccurate information. Conflict is not always a bad thing. In many cases, conflict can lead to a better understanding of and response to issues. Conflict also can lead to creative problem solving and the initiation of innovative ideas. However, if conflict is sup-pressed and not addressed, it can lead to distrust and greater discord within the group. For a group to be productive and successful, group members and leaders need to be able to identify, address, and resolve conflict successfully. Like any other leadership skill, conflict management can be learned. The overall goal for conflict management is to find common ground (mutual goals and interests that all parties share) within the issue and use that as...
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...What are the indications that conflict may be present in a work group? What are two methods for addressing/resolving such conflicts? Justify your rationale. I would like to say that people are able to easily pick up on workplace tension when it is constantly in their mists. Per the ETU website, signs of workplace or workgroup conflict can be: • cliques or factions meeting to discuss issues separately, when they affect the whole organisation • one group being left out of organising an event which should include everybody • groups using threatening slogans or symbols to show that their group is right and the others are wrong • colleagues not speaking to each other or ignoring each other • contradicting and bad-mouthing one another • deliberately undermining or not co-operating with each other, to the downfall of the team The big question though is how to address or resolve these conflicts. Noticing or being on the receiving end of work place conflict is only one side of the situation. Taking action about it can cause further division or at times in extreme cases, causing the group to dissolve. A few suggestions for handling such issues are taken from a blog posted by Pathak. Pathak places emphasis on presenting a “super ordinate goal” to bring pack into perspective the reason the group exists to begin with. “Focusing attention on the higher goals that the groups share or the long-range aims that they have in common tends to make the current problem...
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...Groups, Teams, and Conflict MGT/311 January 19, 2015 CardiCare Valves Project Riordan Manufacturing is a Fortune 1000 company specializing in the design and manufacturing of custom plastics. Current customers include companies from the health care and food and beverage industries. The purpose of the following project presentation and plan is to accommodate the production of the newly designed CardiCare Valve heart valves. The company is currently planning to gear up for production under their current model, borrowing resources from varied divisions while expecting to hire an undetermined number of new employees. As one of the newly hired superintendents hired to assemble and lead new teams to begin this new production for Cardicare Valves, the research into the issue has been undertaken and the potential strategies have been identified to implementing a successful ramp-up and shift in production. Strategies The available strategies to build successful teams include the following: clearly defining the goals of the team and the skills required, selection of team members, ensuring valuable communication, promoting a productive workgroup, resolving conflicts, and managing motivation (Robbins & Judge, 2013). There are, of course, several challenges that could be barriers or obstacles to success. For instance, there might be personal or professional differences between team members and/or managers, chosen communicators may fail to properly communicate the goals of...
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...Teams, Groups and Conflict Susan Pickett MGT/311 March 30th 2015 Charles Sprague Teams, Groups and Conflict As one of the team superintendents with Riordan Manufacturing I have been asked to come up with a Strategy Plan along with a Conflict Management Plan, for our new project underway. Our group was hired to lead new teams into the production of the newly designed Cardi Care Valve heart valves, most of us will have to relocate to Pontiac Michigan until the manufacturing of these custom plastic parts has been completed. A lot of the production teams are current employees from some of our other divisions, and we expect to hire a few more new employees to help us complete our goal with in a timely manner. Part I: Team Strategy Plan After carefully reviewing the employees that Riordan Manufacturing has elected to help us with our goal, I will collect all of the information one each employee and prepare a plan delegating who will be on what teams, but before this will happen I have to address a few strategies to help me produce this plan. There are five strategies to choose from when choosing a team strategy plan. The strategies include: clear expectations of goals, channels of communication, conflict resolution, consequences, and celebrating achievements as a team. Clear expectations of goals and targets: There should be a clear roles defined for each team member, every person in the team should know the role he or she is expected to play, without Clear expectations...
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...Groups, Teams, and Conflict Andrew Carnegie said “teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision; the ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results” (Smart Entrepreneur). As one of the Superintendents at Riordan Manufacturing it is my belief that teams are an essential way to distribute job duties and complete a task on time. The teams which have been chosen will begin to form from current employees and some newly hired individuals. The objective of the teams is to start production of the newly designed CardiCare Valve at the Pontiac Michigan facility. The purpose of this paper is to identify the various strategies that make up the teams, the challenges which may occur, and the measures which will be taken to ensure the team is operating successfully. Various Strategies There are various strategies when forming a successful team. As role of Superintendent, I will use the five strategies of effective team building to assist in building the team of individuals to design the CardiCare Valve heart valves for Riordan Manufacturing. Clear expectations “begin by analyzing the team’s mission, developing goals to achieve that mission and creating strategies for achieving the goals” (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 327). The first strategy is to choose leaders within each team who will ensure the team know what their role is and then distribute the work evenly among the team...
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...Groups, Teams, and Conflict MTG/311 March 4, 2015 Groups, Teams, and Conflict Team Strategy Plan 1. Complete the following table to address the creation of teams at Riordan Manufacturing. Strategy | Strengths | Weaknesses | Forming: Cross-Functional with Common Plan and PurposeIdentify team members, analyze work, develop goals to achieve mission success, and generate strategies to achieve goals (Robbins & Judge, 2013). | High level of communication promotes clearly defined purpose. Proper planning enhances climate of trust and allows common purpose to provide guidance for overcoming barriers (Robbins & Judge, 2013). Enhanced tendency to attain synergy and achieve goals (Wienclaw, 2015). | Personal agendas weaken the common purpose and reduce cohesiveness. Infrequent strategy reviews encourages team confusion (Robbins & Judge, 2013). | Storming: Team Member Commitment | Create structure and processes. Reduced dysfunctional conflict and build trust and cohesiveness (Robbins & Judge, 2013). | Challenges to authority. Some participants may struggle with the limits the team levies on individualism. | Norming: Determine Leadership Hierarchy and Performance Metrics | Clearly defined chain of command promotes normalcy and respect. Clearly communicated performance metrics enhances normalcy (Robbins & Judge, 2013). | New task assignments may cause some members to revert to Storming phase. | Performing: Coach to Goals | Team Manager is able to...
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...SOC 110 TEAMWORK, COLLABORATION, AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION GROUP: WCICS178 DATES: October 28, 2008 November 4, 2008 November 11, 2008 November 18, 2008 November 25, 2008 INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Brian N. Hewlett Program Council The Academic Program Councils for each college oversee the design and development of all University of Phoenix curricula. Council members include full-time and practitioner faculty members who have extensive experience in this discipline. Teams of full-time and practitioner faculty content experts are assembled under the direction of these Councils to create specific courses within the academic program. Copyright Copyright ( 2003 by the University of Phoenix. All rights reserved. University of Phoenix® is a registered trademark of Apollo Group, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft®, Windows®, and Windows NT® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks or their respective companies. Use of these marks is not intended to imply endorsement, sponsorship, or affiliation. Edited in accordance with University of Phoenix® editorial standards and practices. Course Syllabus |Course Title: |Teamwork, Collaboration, and Conflict Resolution | |Course Schedule: |Tuesdays, October 28 – November...
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...Role of Conflict in Effective Group Communication Group communication involves multiple members discussing one or more topics or participating on one or more activities. Having multiple members in one setting brings together different personalities, information, cultures, perceptions, and power or influence. Combining these differences forms reasons for conflict to occur. In order to address conflict effectively in a group setting, it is important to understand exactly what conflict in a group means, and how to address the different types of conflict. Conflict in a group occurs when members disagree over two or more options that a group can take when trying to make a decision, resolve a problem, or achieve a goal. Not all levels of conflict are bad; in fact, most levels of conflict can be effective as long as the group knows how to effectively and proactively address the conflict. For example, say two of your team members have a disagreement on a task you have assigned them. This is known as pseudo-conflict if it is just a misunderstanding, or a simple conflict is they do not agree on the issue. To address this conflict you should direct them to both discuss their opinions on pros and cons, combine their ideas, and work together to form a mutual combined finished product. This allows them to work through conflict and learn from each others ideas. Conflict may not always be easy to solve. Once you have gone through all manners of professionally addressing any level...
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...Conflict in the Coordinators Group Conflict occurs when two people cannot agree on a particular issue. Anyone can come into conflict with someone else, because no two people are exactly alike. Such as, the substantive conflict that the Coordinators Group recently encountered. Moreover, one group member thought that purchasing an already made game would be better than making the game from scratch. However, another group member thought the pre-built game was over-priced and flimsy. Since the disagreement was over a specific issue, the Coordinators Group had a substantive conflict. Thus, to overcome this issue, the group used the A-E-I-O-U Model to resolve the conflict. The A-E-I-O-U Model is, “A conflict resolution model with five steps: Assume...
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...Conflict arises when there is some indifference among two parties. In any working group conflict is almost unavoidable. When most people hear the word conflict, they often tend to take the term in negative manner. Almost everyone perceives conflict to be a malefactor and that it often hinders the development process of any group. Although usually people think of it as a bad thing, conflict on the contrary can be a positive occurrence within a group to bring about change. Comprehensively conflict refers to a situation in which there are opposing demands or ideas and a choice has to be made between them. So, it means without conflict there wouldn't be any opposing demands or ideas in which case the choices are obvious and easy. This can often mean there would be no innovation or no opposition to the idea presented hence no alternatives just a straight path ahead. A group must think of all possible ways for an idea to thrive most effectively and efficiently. Hence, conflict not only is salient but also encouraged in a work group. Generally conflict is caused by a number of reasons. For example, conflict can arise because of poor communication among the group members, other reasons can be lack of openness and/or failure to respond to everyone’s need by the head of the group. The belief that all conflict is harmful must be avoided. Conflicts must be believed to be natural and inevitable. It must be dealt accordingly, a conflict can not only be a positive force in a group but it is...
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...Ethnic Group Conflict Paper In a society with numerous ethnicities and cultures living side by side being aware of one another’s morals and beliefs proves to help in providing a cohesive environment conducive for healthy living. Conflicts between ethnic groups can develop for many different reasons. Different belief and moral systems, different ways of doing things, or even different appearances can cause conflicts especially when particular ethnic groups have under gone socialization and are not open to other ideas or point of views. By examining how social perception, social cognition, and conformity influence the conflict between Germans and Jewish cultures during the Holocaust, one can better understand ways to find solutions to this conflict. The conflict between German and Jewish cultures dates back to the nineteenth century at the start of World War II. There was a lack of understanding from the Germans culture of the Jewish people and has become the foundation on which the conflict developed. During the Holocaust six million Jews were murder by the Nazi regime because they were considered inferior and posed a threat to the racially superior German culture (“Introduction to the Holocaust, 2013). Jewish people were kept in concentration camps and deported as well as tortured and starved out (Introduction to the Holocaust, 2013). Conformity refers to something that person does to try and fit in to what society expects and what social norms are. These two ethic groups have...
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...Ethnic Group Conflict PSY 450 March 26, 2012 Ethnic Group Conflict Knowledge is power and the more knowledge a person has the more power he or she have at their disposal. Power can be defined as a overbearing control over a population or individual. People who are affected by power can be individual or a whole family can be manipulated. Power can cause a person to follow out of fear or out of trust, but the ultimate goal of welding power is the outcome can be the betterment of everyone involved or just the advancement of those in power. One form of power that can be welded over people is conformity. Conformity is the action of doing what the majority states is appropriate in order to be accepted. That means the majority of the group makes the rules and everyone follows the rules or get discarded. There is acceptable and unacceptable practice that leads to good and bad penalty. For example society which is the majority of the people agree that stealing is wrong, therefore a law was made to inform people stealing is wrong. If a person is caught stealing there are consequences that are set in place such as jail time which is enforced by the police. Conformity is not the only tool used by society to persuade its people to follow the demands and standards. Social perception and social cognition also play a significant role in getting people to follow the rules. Social perception works in three steps. The first step is the observer will watch the behavior or the observed...
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...Team Plan – Riordan Manufacturing Holly Lopez MGT 311 University of Phoenix September 20, 2012 Rocco Natale At Riordan Manufacturing, we are preparing for an exciting new segment of production to meet the needs of the expanding medical technology industry. The news that CardiCare Valve heart valves will be produced in our customs plastic-injection facility in Pontiac, Michigan was released last week. We look forward to developing a long-term relationship with the CardiCare brand. New teams will be formed to begin work on CardiCare production beginning next period. Many of our seasoned employees will be joining CardiCare production teams, and this production segment also marks a new phase of job creating and hiring. “We will maintain an innovative and team oriented working environment. By assuring that our employees are well informed and properly supported, we will provide a climate focused on the long term viability of our company,” (University of Phoenix Material, Virtual Organizations). Team building and training will begin immediately. To construct the teams effectively, we reviewed many team creation strategies. Bringing a fresh perspective to these teams is important because this marks our first involvement in the medical industry. We want this to be a reflection of our team creation strategy. Precision, quality, and durability are key factors in the success of our relationship with CardiCare. With that in mind, our team creation strategy will be different...
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...Ethnic Group Conflict Brooke Stevens PSY/450 Michele Wagner In current events, the United States and Iraq have not always been on the best of terms. However, each country seems to have its own similarities and differences when compared to one another. The following will address those similarities and differences, along with the concept of conformity, social perception and social cognition, and to wrap it up with social perceptions that will need to be addressed in hopes to resolve the current conflict. Similarities and differences Although the United States is a more powerful country than Iraq, and also larger than Iraq, the two have issues that are similar and some which are different to each other. For example, the population is smaller than that of the United States. The school systems are slightly different; class sizes are around the same as the classes in the United States, however girls attend girls only schools and do not advance after the fifth grade. Girls are not allowed to go out much without an older male figure alongside with them. In the United States, it depends on the parental units as to when a child is allowed to leave the house for leisurely purposes and whether or not another individual is to go with him or her. The types of fun children have in Iraq compared to that of the children's fun in America are slightly similar. Iraqi boys play soccer, boxing, and video games as long as the electricity is operable. Iraqi girls however can...
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...A major advantage a team has over an individual is its diversity of resources, knowledge, and ideas. However, diversity also produces conflict. As more and more organizations restructure to work teams the need for training in conflict resolution will continue to grow. Varney (1989) reports that conflict remained the number-one problem for most of the teams operating within a large energy company, even after repeated training sessions on how to resolve conflict and how to minimize the negative impact on team members. One reason for this may be that mangers and other leaders within organizations are not giving the issue of resolving conflict enough attention. Varney's research showed that although most managers are aware of disagreements and have received training in conflict resolution, they seldom assign a high priority to solving conflict problems. With this in mind, it is critical that team members possess skills to resolve conflict among themselves. Conflict arises from differences. When individuals come together in work teams their differences in terms of power, values and attitudes, and social factors all contribute to the creation of conflict. It is often difficult to expose the sources of conflict. Conflict can arise from numerous sources within a team setting and generally falls into three categories: communication factors, structural factors and personal factors (Varney, 1989). Barriers to communication are among the most important factors and can be a major source of...
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