How do you manage conflict in a project team?

Team conflict is challenging for project leaders but it is not necessarily bad. Conflict can lead to new ideas and approaches and facilitate the surfacing of important issues between team members if it is managed well.

According to various research studies on team conflict, the major sources of conflict among project teams are project goals not agreed upon, disagreement of the project's priorities and conflicting work schedules. This is no surprise since most organizations today run multiple projects and employees often find themselves serving on a variety of project teams. To add fuel to the fire, employees may report to a variety of project managers while reporting directly to functional managers. This sets the stage for further conflict opportunities due to communication and information flow. After all, when reporting relationships are complex it becomes more difficult to share information.

Personality and interpersonal issues may also draw conflict, particularly in high technology environments, where cross-functional, self-directed teams with technical backgrounds must rely on work of others to get their own work done.

So what's the learning from these research studies? The lesson here is clear. It's very important for cross-functional team members to receive training in communication and interpersonal skills.

Here are some recommendations for project leaders and project team members:

1. Hold more frequent meetings and status review sessions to increase communication between functions and reduce misperceptions of project goals and priorities.
2. Give team members soft skills training in human relations and facilitate more active team-building efforts.
3. Foster an environment of mutual respect. No method of managing conflict will work without mutual respect and a willingness to disagree and resolve disagreements.

If conflict erupts in your team, try taking the following four steps to calm things down: Listen, Acknowledge, Respond and Resolve Remaining Differences

Listen: Clear your mind from distractions and really try to concentrate on what the person is trying to communicate-listen to both the words and non-verbal cues from gestures and body language. Gestures are often more important than words. After all, when resolving disagreements, you often have to deal with feelings first.

Acknowledge: Acknowledgement does not mean agreement. You can acknowledge what someone is saying without necessarily agreeing with them. Everyone's opinion and feelings are valid, even if different from yours. For example, statements like, "I understand you're angry," "Let's explore your suggestion further" or "If I understand you, you're saying that you disagree?" These are all ways of acknowledging their communication and their point of view. While you may not agree with what they are saying, it shows that they are being heard.

Respond: Now that you've acknowledged to them that you have heard what they have to say, it's your turn to respond. If you don't agree with what the person is saying, be sure that your feedback is constructive and offer an alternative suggestion. A good way to pose your response is to speak from personal experience. For example, "In my experience I have found that approach is ineffective because." Be prepared to explain your position and remain open to being challenged or questioned about it.

Resolve Remaining Differences: If you've listened carefully to people around you, you've probably figured out what's causing the disagreement. Once you've defined the real problem you should be able to break it down into manageable parts. This will help you to generate alternative solutions and then select the alternative in which everyone can agree.

Remember: for individuals to work effectively in a team there has to be a certain level of trust among the group. Each team member needs to feel "safe" about sharing their ideas. While others may not be in full agreement with another person's ideas, it's important for the team leader to foster an appreciation for the different views presented and explore the best alternative in a respectful manner with honest intent.

Most importantly, when conflict does occur in a team, leaders can gain ground by not avoiding it. By managing it well, acknowledging it and tolerating it, a team leader can actually use conflict as a tool to generate revitalized team engagement and innovation.

If the conflict is too great and the project leader is unable to get the team past it, then hiring a team coach is a good idea.

Any kind of conflict between a team members of the project need to be resolved based on a diplomatic  win-win solution and the solution should be resolved based on the project needs and requirements not based on the conflict of interest.of the team needs.

Focus with the team on what is best for the successful achievement of the project. This is why that team was put together in the first place.

If you mean personal conflict, the agreed performance measures should encourage team members to idialize any effects of their personal conflicts on getting the gob done effectively. A project manager will need to micro manage the issue to ensure its resolution to achieve project goals within time and within budget. If conflict is expected, effective communication must be integrated in the project plan.

If you mean technical conflict regarding project related issues, this should have been exposed and handled during the project planning phase. If such an incedent took place during project execution, I will consult a subject matter expert to sittle the technical conflict after getting management approval.

Very detailed and useful answers were given by the people that have posted before me. I will just add that a lot of wars started with a miscommunication. Therefore, communicate effectively! You may have the surprise to discover an apparent conflict is just a misunderstanding, or the same principle, viewed differently.

Here are some recommendations for project leaders and project team members

Hold more frequent meetings and status review sessions to increase communication between functions and reduce misperceptions of project goals and priorities.

1. Give team members soft skills training in human relations and facilitate more active team-building efforts.
2. Foster an environment of mutual respect. No method of managing conflict will work without mutual respect and a willingness to disagree and resolve disagreements.

Dear Joefil Jocson.

First of all this question needs a broad answer, but I will try to prepare it in some short words.

Second of all please do not have dicussion with people about two things, because you will never ever be able to find two of them on the same idea, and these two are: (Religion and Politics).

So if your team members have conflicts in these two, than the answer is clear. But do not be hopeless, there are some technics will help you to solve this problem, like:

1 - Preaching: Discuss some spiritual issues with them, preach them to the words of their creator, I mean they have lost their catalog and because of this they do not know to how use themselves. And I recommend you to give them their catalog (Holy Book Quran) and explain it to them. Or every morning at least for half hour before starting work, preach them to the right way that, your creator says this and than about conflicts, so please avoid yourselves from it. And so on.

2 - Psychology: Discuss this issue with them, it needs more explainasion, hope to have a search about.

Other conlicts about knowledge, analysis of an issue, drawings and any technical issue, do not worry about that, they are good and effective.

Hope you the best answer.

Thank you

Asad

You first need to know how far you're in that project. People are subjective by nature and they'll thus care more the more they invest themselves in a project. A conflict that happens in the initiation phase is easier to solve than a conflict mid-way through project execution.

Overall, a project manager needs to remain the voice of reasons during these times and enforce a certain culture in projects. "Either we all make it or the project fails and we all fail too". Basically, tie the human subjectiveness to the success of the project.

Get a culture of what's good for the project will be good for all of the project team. This needs daily nuturing and follow-up to succeed. Somewhere along the way, you might even have to make tough decisions such as letting go of one team member or moving them to another project.

To resolve conflict in a project team one should know the basic causes for the conflict. You just make a sort of conflict tree analyses. Able to know the root causes and find outcomes of the conflict. The outcome can be positive which you should better understand or negative on which some awaress might be necessary for the members. This analysis ought to be done as a team. open discussion need to be facilitated and the attitude, skill and input of each members should be captured.

very important tool to avoid conflict is making sure the existences of transparency among the team. In the situation of limited tranparency and vague mission conflict is stopless. 

For more contact me on

Some good answers are written below, I echo with most of the answers and will add one thing that, whenever there is a conflict the Project Manager need to be impartial to both parties, listen and understand, and explain to parties to have win-win situation..

As the project manager is the main person to make decisions, it is his responsbility to plan, schedule and delegate tasks to the concern person, according to the job role and ability of the persons working under him. 

To achieve this and avoid conflicts, a meeting can be held between all the person involved in the project and seek answers and iron out differences.

Further, the project manager should ensure that all the people involved communicates properly and promptly, to avoid chaos down the line, since it the manager's responsibility to oversee the success of any project.  

Depending on the nature of the conflict (constructive or destructive), the Manager should decide what is right and beneficial for the project (i.e., whether to include or exclude inputs from the team).