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 it could lead to miscommunications and unorganized work.
Channels of communications: This is one of the most important team building strategy, there should be an open channel of communication with employees to help everyone work together.
Conflict Resolution: This is very important to help employees resolve issues, everyone has different points of view so it is essential to get everyone on the same page, so having a few employees that specialize in effective resolution skills and with some strategies in place this will help more employees deal with situations that make working with other people easier.
Consequences: Is the accountability of every employee, making each employee feel responsible for both their actions and achievements, enabling each employee to understand how their contribution is a vital piece of the larger picture.
Celebrating achievements: In additions to communications this strategy is very important too, it is a significant strategy that values the successes and achievements of an employee or group. Celebrating achievements add to the morale and improves production, this strategy implements team building and empowers while improving the sense of belonging which in turn strengthens employee bonds and improves the ability to work in teams.
Challenges or barriers that may happen could be: Poor communication, one of the barriers to effective team building is unorganized thoughts and abstract ideas creating misunderstandings and confusion among the team members and in turn decrease the productivity of the team, every employee should be very careful about what they say. Lack of discipline and punctuality, can create problems in a business. Employees should never be late for work, it is unprofessional to keep others waiting, always arrive before time for team meetings and discussions. One should always remain professional at the workplace, do not distract yourselves with unproductive things keep your mind on the goal. The roles and responsibilities, individuals should not accept responsibilities unless and until they are very sure about it. Taking on roles that you really do not want to or that you were pressured into could have a very bad outcome with in time. The best strategies will be determined by an employee’s ability’s, their personality’s, and flexibility, also I think periodic assessment will help to determine if we need to change any strategies or add a different strategy.
The measures used to determining if the teams are operating successfully will include: * Leadership and Structure * Performance evaluation and a reward system * Adequate Resources * A climate of Trust * Periodic assessments

Part II: Conflict Management Plan Developing the teams you are always going to have a few challenges, there are a few different strategy plans in place like: Collaborating strategy, when team members try to understand other team member’s views in order to find solutions to the problem. Competing strategy, is a long term plan that is devised to help a company gain a competitive advantage by creating a little competition amongst team members. Avoidance strategy, by not paying attention to the conflict and not taking any action to resolve it. Compromise strategy, by attempting to resolve a conflict by identifying a solution that is partially satisfactory to both parties, but is completely satisfactory to neither. And finally the Forcing strategy, is using a formal authority or other power that you possess to satisfy the outcome without regards to the concerns of the party that are in a conflict. These are some of the conflict strategy plans the management team may use if needed.
The management group has recently informed me that there is currently some internal conflict among two of the employees that were chosen for this project. David Nguyen has spoken to his current manager a couple of times regarding his feelings that James Deal is intentionally creating problems on the production line, which is effecting David’s quality checks. James expresses that he has no idea what David is talking about and does not understand why David is trying to cause a problem. James has now turned to his own supervisor because he feels David is spreading rumors about him and now he is looking for other work. David tells his own supervisor that he is not sure why James thinks he is spreading rumors about him because he has never said anything bad about him.
In most business environments, conflict resolution and counseling must be dealt with, eventually conflicts will arise between coworkers, so it is best to have policies, procedures and guidelines established to help overcome these issues. Resolving team conflicts by taking production away from the team or causing distractions is what we would like to avoid, resolve conflicts in a manner in which the team is still able to successfully get work done is the goal. Some conflicts amongst team members is not all bad, it can actually be a good way to get all members of the team’s opinions, and also a way to learn more about the personalities and work habits of each person, handling team conflict poorly can lead to lack of motivation, and can create an unhealthy relationship amongst team members, which could lead to not accomplishing the set goals. If disagreements go unresolved, bad emotions and feelings will not go away and that will create deeper problems. So it is essential that disagreements get resolved in a timely manner to prevent future problems. The mission statement of Riordan Manufacturing is “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”
So before we pick the new teams, the management group knows we must resolve this issue so that the new production teams can operate smoothly. Both James and David are good employees with positive performance reviews, and they have been chosen for the new project because of these reasons. As one of the supervisors I hope James and David can overcome their person variables and realize that this just a simple as a perceived conflict and that it can be dealt with as simply collaborating to settle their differences and our team can get to work. We need to have a small meeting with both of the employees, using a problem solving technique, so that they may talk out their differences and to successfully set up the scene for them to start Collaborating together thus hoping that will help them to set aside their differences and become friends. Some of the weaknesses for this strategy might be: 1 Differences in personal beliefs or objectives 2 Difference of opinions could change the outcome 3 Does not work if they really do not like each other
Some of the strengths might be: 1 Creates a win/win scenario 2 Creates a stronger team 3 Opens Communication
If this strategy does not work then hopefully they both can both agree to be Compromising and learn to work together without disrupting the whole team, some of the challenges we could face is that this strategy does not work and this disrupts the whole team and maybe involve other team members and then we will get further behind. If we cannot resolve this situation we will have to consider restructuring the teams so that we can split up these two employees. When developing teams all aspects need to be taken into consideration, weaknesses, strengths, abilities, personality’s and job experience, employees will learn to use conversation and self-reflection among team members, this helps employees to think about what success means, what it takes, and how each person is contributing may cause team members to want to improve.

References
Stephen P. Robbins, Tim A. Judge, “Organizational Behavior”, Fifteenth Edition, Pearson Education (2013)
http://businessofsoftware.org/2012/07/how-will-you-measure-your-team/