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Essay / Conflict Resolution - 1336
Several advantages of a team over an individual in the workplace include greater total resources, a greater pool of knowledge, and a greater source of ideas. However, these benefits can also cause conflict within teams and across the workplace. Varney (1989) reports that conflict remains the number one problem within a large corporation. This was after several attempts to train management on conflict resolution and procedures. However, the conflict persisted. The conflict may persist because leaders and leaders have not paid attention to the seriousness of the problem. In order to maintain an effective team, leaders and team members must know and be proactive in conflict resolution techniques and procedures. Types of Conflict Differences within the team are the main reason for conflicts. This arises from differences in opinions, attitudes, beliefs, as well as cultural contexts and social factors. Conflict can be positive, functional, and supports or benefits the organization or a person's primary goals (Reaching Out, 1997). Conflict is considered positive when it results in increased group involvement, increased cohesion, and positive innovation and creativity. Conflict also tends to be positive when it leads to better decisions and solutions to long-term problems. Conflict can be negative at the same time, except that it is dysfunctional and hinders teams or individual performance or ability to achieve goals or objectives (Reach Out, 1997). Negative conflicts tend to arise from the most common aspects called relationship conflicts or task conflicts. Task conflict occurs when team members disagree about what tasks should be accomplished and how they should be completed. The other common conflict is relationships. This occurs when team members experience intrapersonal incompatibility issues. This is usually detrimental to teams as it tends to become personal as they differ in their social and communication differences and never come to a positive resolution to let go of these conflicts. This is different from task conflict in that task conflict can potentially be beneficial because the problem does not become personal, thus leading to new ideas. Negative conflict is destructive when it leads to stress, inability to act, and loss of esteem or purpose (Reaching out, 1997). Conflict is considered negative when it results in unresolved anger within the team, personality conflicts, low self-confidence, and effectiveness issues within the team leading to low productivity. With these differences in mind, leaders must understand its impact on individuals and the team. a whole.