Organisation divides people. It sets up conflict:
- Who does what? – task conflicts
- How do we get this done? – process conflicts
- Who gets what? – resource conflicts
Failure to anticipate, recognise and resolve these conflicts leads to the most dangerous conflicts of all – personal conflicts.
Two people in conflict can usually both make a plausible case for their position. You can of course handle these conflicts just by issuing a decree. However the value of a high performing team, and the measure of your ability to manage it is in getting a decision that has allowed everyone to have their say, for pros and cons to be fully explored and for commitment to making the decision work to be built.
Handled like this, conflicts become powerful team building tools as people start to recognise that the group can make better decisions than any one individual and that no one person has all the information required to make the best decision.