Person B was the “group member” and is one of the five women within the office group of friends. She was in the highest-ranking position within the group, and worked long hours. She enjoyed the group, but did not take any initiative to plan events. She also had a family outside of the office, and enjoyed her time outside the office.
The expert Michelle interviewed has a Masters in Counseling Psychology and is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor in a private practice. She provides professional treatments to patients who have workplace stress.
After interviewing each person about group and how they deal with conflict, Michelle revealed some interesting results. When conflicts arise some members of the group are often so clueless that they created the conflict in the first place. Once they are made aware of the situation, they feel bad and do anything they can to remedy the situation. For some women, the group of women is her main social outlet, yet others have different opinions of the group. Because this informal group is comprised of women in different departments with different responsibilities, conflict often arises. Michelle explained how each woman, along with the expert deal with conflict and ways to avoid conflict in future situations. Communication, teamwork, defining roles and responsibilities, common personalities, compromise, support, and respect were all common themes from the group members and the expert.
Rachel’s Experience
The original reason that Rachel chose to take this class was also one of the reasons that she decided to take on the topic of group dynamics and conflict. After beginning to work in her first job, she quickly began to experience a situation with a co-worker that could only be defined as a personality conflict. It was such an uncomfortable experience for her and her team mates that it caused her to want to learn more about effectively managing and resolving these types of situations. Furthermore, after receiving the syllabus and looking over some of the topics that we would be studying during the semester, the word conflict and the articles under the topic seemed the most interesting to her at the time.
When the group met for the first time, it seemed that many of us had similar experiences with conflict. This led her to feel that her own discomfort with conflict was shared with the other members of my group.
For the interviews, Rachel chose members of a self-managed team that was within the same organization as her. She thought that this team would be interesting to compare with the workings of her own team, because it shared many of the same organizational structures and issues yet had a different manager. During her interviews with the members of this group, she found that they were the polar opposite of her team. Her interviewees had a much longer history of working together as a team, and were all much more established in their careers. Furthermore, they had a manager that had much a much longer history of managing teams that created successful products. During the interviews, it was apparent that this long history of working together had created a group that worked well together. When asked about conflicts in the past, the interviewees could not think of any issues to bring up. The one experience they mentioned involved a new hire who did not work well with their group because she did not possess the same qualities that the other team members possessed. It seemed that conflict did not arise because the team did not change often. There was a common group that could easily collaborate on decisions, and that often reached a consensus due to common goals developed through their long history of working together.
Reflective Observation
The Group Dynamics group is composed of members that are all highly motivated and determined to get the project done in a professional manner. Although each member had busy schedules of both work and study, they all agreed that regular meetings, throughout the semester, were of great importance. Not only was this group successful in completing all requirements of project, they also incorporated insightful findings by going beyond and above the requirements.
Individually, each group member had his or her own approach to the project. Mike appreciated the candor and quality of the group discussion. After reviewing his interview findings with the group, it was obvious that he was very open to suggestions and even took notes so that he could reflect more on the discussion later. Fellow group members mentioned that there seemed to be lack of collaboration between his interviewees in defining an overall vision and goals. At the same time there seemed to be a lack of accountability and way too much autonomy. Mike reflected on his interviews and felt that since the two members had to discuss this problem with him it suggested a lack of transparency in the group and a non-working feedback mechanism. When the two members finally did discuss the problems with their PM, Mike elaborated that the PM was not supportive of their opinions due to accountability and performance issues.
Similarly, Rachel also joined the group with an interesting interview. She was always willing to get done what needed to be done for our meetings. Rachel was willing to lead when necessary or to go along with the decisions made by others. Rachel was a team player even though there were points when she was unsure of our project’s goal. Rachel openly expressed her confusion, questioning what we were attempting to do. Rachel shared her interview findings and the group agreed commonalities are important within any group. The group Rachel interviewed all had the same personality, goal, and way of doing business. Rachel discussed with our group the importance of commonalities and how successful her interviewee group was because of the many similarities.
From the beginning of the project, Ester was an active member of the group. She attended all meetings on time. Ester also initiated discussion of the group project’s proposal. As a member with solid working experiences on group project, Ester was particularly helpful in the group meetings by sharing her own experiences with other members of the group. Ester volunteered to put members’ inputs into document and to submit the proposal form to instructor. One of the key contributions she provided was her constructive feedback in generating interview question list and determining group’s final study topic. In general, Ester was both consistent and accountable. Ester interviewed three individuals, who had previous experiences in virtual groups. Her findings from the interview were important to the project.
It was obvious that Michelle wanted to learn more about group dynamics. She had many specific examples as to why she needs to learn more in this area. By working within her family’s business, she has to deal with formal and informal groups all day long. She was excited to report her findings and what she had learned from the experience. Michelle not only explained what her interviewees had said, but also explained why she felt they way she did while she was interviewing. Michelle reflected on her interviewees. She gave several examples with her theories and suggestions for not only the group, but also ways for Michelle to deal with the groups. After Michelle explained her findings, she listened to the other group member’s reports. She asked questions and took notes. Michelle felt engaged in the group project and was actively participating within the group. At several points, the group became confused on the overall focus of the project. Michelle was confused as well, but tried to remain focused and figure out a solution.
Overall the group did as best they could with the vague project guidelines they were initially presented with. A neutral observer would have noticed four willing students who wanted to learn about group dynamics. Each had their own personal issues with group dynamics and wanted to find better ways to deal with group conflict. Each group member took a different type of group and interviewed a group member, a group leader and an expert. The neutral observer would have seen how each group member relayed his or her own findings to the group. Each interview provided different topics relating to conflict within group dynamics. Ideas and opinions were shared and each group member provided thoughts on their topics, as well as others. They would have also noticed how the other group members actively provided insight to the interviews and shared the common themes they noticed for each interview. Lastly, the neutral observer would have seen the confusion the group experienced regarding the expectations of the project. After receiving several emails regarding the project expectations, the group was thoroughly confused. The neutral observer would have watched the group work through the confusion in hopes of putting together a well thought out project where each group member learned several new things in regards to solving conflict in group dynamics.
Abstract Conceptualization
For the problem presented by Ester’s interview, the article we found to be helpful was “Conflict Resolution in Virtual Teams” (Shin 2005). In this article, Shin identified several sources of conflict in virtual teams. In Ester’s interview, she found both spatial dispersion and culture dispersion between the two members of the group. The author also developed conflict resolution system and suggested ways of training conflict resolution skills for virtual teams. In order to prevent conflict from happening, a trustworthy culture needed to be created. VNS (Virtual Negotiation System) was recommended to solve conflicts. In the case of the translation time conflict that mentioned above, the manager should have engaged “reframing and prioritizing issues” stage with the frustrated group member. Instead, due to culture dispersion, the manager did not pay enough attention to the time concern of the group member. Had they re-prioritized their other tasks and added extra hands, the translation time could have been enough and a mistake could have been avoided.
For our group project, we found effective communication tactics discussed by Fussel et al. (1998) to be useful. To ensure a positive group dynamics, team members need to coordinate through communication without becoming overload. Our group project accomplished our desired learning outcomes by making sure we had effective communication. Our group met early to get to know each other right after we were assigned to the same group. This not only helped on building up trust among group members, but also created awareness of what other team members to build up trust. Throughout the project, we managed to have three face-to-face meetings, some phone calls, and numerous email exchanges. These communication techniques helped maintain awareness of what other members were doing and every member’s individual tasks. On the other hand, we also realized the trade-offs between awareness and overload. Given the fact that all four of us were working full time and had busy schedules, most of our communication was asynchronous (emails). Since we could fit email information into our task schedules, a lot of email exchanges did not cause serious overload while maintained our awareness throughout the process.
In order to discuss our perspectives and interviews it was determined that we should define how to participate in the group and what mechanism should be used to provide feedback to each other. Since the processes defined in “active listening” (Rogers et al.) seemed to be the obvious way to communicate we began to use it as a way to facilitate our discussion. Each member would present their findings with group discussions commencing afterward. During the discussion each person would respond to the presenter’s material by highlighting what he or she felt and interpreted. This tested for understanding amongst the group. Once we agreed to the meaning of the message we would then place our findings on the white board. This allowed us to define the organizations that we had just learned about and what their differences and similarities were. Once this task was completed we could begin developing models to further and define possible solutions to introduce to our various groups.
In the article “How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight” (Eisenhardt, Kalwajy, and Bourgeois, p. 402), the authors wrote about how a healthy conflict can quickly turn unproductive if left unchecked. The same scenario happened in the group that Mike interviewed. Two of the team members wanted to introduce new ideas on making changes to the application code base. The product manager agreed with them but chose not to implement the suggested changes. This conflict was healthy by its nature if the manger could have done better job on explaining the lack of required resources. Instead, the members left the meeting disenfranchised. The key to having healthy debates is to create common goals and visions. This ensures that people understand what they are trying to accomplish and promotes "buy in". The second key is to create multiple alternatives to solve the conflict. This allows the team to alleviate conflict by reducing the amount of energy used on single perspective.
It is also important to focus on commonalities when dealing with conflict. According to Hauss’s 2003 article (“The Conflict Resolution Information Source”): “When conflict happens, it is possible to reframe the dispute and begin to find areas of common concern where joint action is possible.” Within the group Michelle interviewed, many commonalities were present. All of the women worked for the same company. They were approximately the same age, and lived in the same area. They shared stories over lunches and shared entertaining emails, all of which they enjoyed thoroughly. Hauss explained how groups had common bonds over many items such as interests, hobbies, personalities, similar lifestyles, children, spouses, and even pets. Because the commonality bond existed, the group was drawn to one another and made a stronger effort to resolve conflict. The groups’ commonalities led to trust and camaraderie, allowing the group to thrive.
Within our project group, we also had many similarities. All four group members were approximately the same age and were from the same area. We were all part-time MBAs at Weatherhead with full time jobs. We all had busy schedules and took the time to make this project a priority. We all shared the desire to excel in the class and trusted each other on being well prepared for all meetings. We were productive during our meetings and learned a lot about each other’s personalities and learning styles.
During the comparison of our interview information, there were many times that team work issues were mentioned, especially around collaboration, consensus, and cooperation. We found that our experiences as a self-managed team were related to “Virtuality and Collaboration in Teams” (Gibson p. 325). After we had our group formed for the project, we “established similarities across members” (p. 331) by making sure we had a common goal. To improve team member skills in collaboration, Gibson suggested to build “laterality” by becoming familiar with using “round-robin sense-making” where each member takes a turn telling what they know about a particular issue. Our group project greatly benefited by sharing each member’s working experience throughout the project. The group Rachael interviewed worked together on various research projects for many years. This was a team with mutual trust. As pointed out by Gibson (p. 334), “The development of collective trust is critical yet difficult to establish.” This research team was very lucky to have this valuable condition for them to work together. One of the key factors turned out to be that members of this group thought of themselves to be very similar to each other. Many of them had similar work experiences in the research field and had similar educational histories. This led them to possess similar skills. This also confirmed Gibson’s theory that “people tend to trust those whom they perceive as similar to themselves.” (p. 334).
Active Experimentation
This project taught Ester many things about how to work and to manage a virtual group. Leading a virtual group is a challenging task. A group leader needs to be very careful on walking the fine line between over-management and hands-off. It is critical to find group dynamics by building trust and self-motivation. Ester found that a mutual agreement has to be established at the very beginning. Based on this agreement, the whole group will have a direction for future progress. As a group leader, his/her prime job is not to make decisions for its member. Instead, he/she should do a good job on motivating its member and on empowering them in the process.
- Good planning is the key to every success. It is very easy for a project involving members from different backgrounds or from different locations to lose track of everyone’s responsibility. With good planning, members as well as the external leader always keep their eyes on the big picture as a whole. Therefore, the whole project can make steady progress towards the finish line.
- Motivating team member makes management a much easier task. This is particularly true when managing a virtual group. Each member of the group needs special attention on his/her efforts contributed to the project. This needs to be recognized frequently with positive feedback. Letting members of the team feel important and appreciated is the daily job of a good leader.
- Keep the whole project transparent with effective communication. If the project’s progress or member’s problems are not constantly updated on a platform shared by every member, a small mistake can quickly evolve into a major disaster. Failure of communication is often the first sign of failure of the project. Doing a good job here helps eliminate many problems in the future.
Commonality is also very important to any group, no matter what type. Whether it is having common personalities or having a common goal, it is important to share something significant with fellow group members. Along with communication, team work, and organization, having a common interest and goal creates great group dynamics. The key to finding commonalities in a group is sharing your interests and each group member revealing their real personality. If each group member is open and honest, trust builds and camaraderie develops.
Through working on this project, our group realized several commonalities. However, each time, our group met in a formal setting and only discussed the project. To develop our commonalities and friendships further, the group should have met outside of the school setting to experience each other’s personalities in a non-school setting. If we had done this, we would have found out more about our group members’ personalities and most likely found even more commonalities. It is important for groups to experience different settings and experiences, as new commonalities will always appear.
Organizations that are experiencing change need to take into consideration the necessity of promoting healthy dialogue in team settings in order to be effective in meeting the goals of the organization. This includes discouraging homogeneity with in groups, meeting regularly in order to build mutual confidence and familiarity, and to actively manage conflict. This creates frameworks that allows members to know how to interact with each other, prevents member micromanagement, the accountability and trust of one another, and “buy in” of their responsibilities.
The following tasks are advised to deal with such issues:
- Meet together and often
- Encourage team members to assume all roles needed to make a decision.
- Apply many minds to the problem and solution
- Do not let conflict slip by.
In the end, as a group we were able to produce the necessary outcome. Much of this was due to our positive group dynamics. However if some of the external factors could have been eliminated, we believe we might have produced a better project. And while our group did work well together due to our similarities, we would try to be aware of the danger that too many similarities can produce. One recommendation would be to try making a more diverse team. Bringing individuals together based on their different levels of experience and skills could accomplish this. Creating a group based on interest is a simple way to create a group project, but it would have been more interesting to bring together groups that contained more differences among their members. Then there could have been a larger diversity of ideas and more innovation around projects. However we do not believe that this could have been effectively accomplished in our group project situation. Considering that we experienced a short amount of time within which to produce this project, our commonalities and ability to collaborate effectively were extremely beneficial.
Appendix A:
Team Evaluation
Our team did an excellent job on developing and implementing ideas for group dynamics. We chose conflict management since it was the common problem that each of us wanted to investigate. To achieve shared goal, our group started with a one-hour meeting in person. In the meeting we set our goals and scheduled our individual tasks. We were very clear at the beginning on what and when we should accomplish at different stages.
Integrating our interviews results and preparing the final paper is a challenging task. We were able to overcome this by using the code of conduct we had agreed on to avoid delay and miscommunication. We used emails, phone calls, ecollege to keep every one updated about our own tasks progress. We met in the middle of the process so we know where we fit in the big picture.
Another challenging task was to adapt our materials to the project guidelines. There were times we were not sure if our on-going project meet all requirements. We accomplished this challenge through formal group meetings and consulting the instructor for feedbacks.
In general we were satisfied with our group performance. We delivered expected outcome while enjoyed working together. We learned from each other’s experience and made advancement in teamwork skills. All members made important contributions to the project. We completed our assigned work and provided essential feedback to the group. This created a positive group dynamics that motivated us to be creative and productive.
During our final group meeting, we assessed our group performance to the original group plan. We shared our opinions on what we had done well, what we could have done better. We felt that we could have collected more information from our interviews to research thoroughly on our project topic given more time and clearer instructions.
Appendix B:
Conflict Interview Questions
Question to ask a manager:
- Tell me about a time when you had some team members whom you dislike or with whom you have trouble working.
- What did you do to make the relationship work so you could succeed for your organization?
- Do ever encourage debate within your team?
Question to ask a team member:
- Tell me about a time when you disagreed with the actions or decisions of your manager. How did you approach the situation? Was the situation resolved to your satisfaction or did nothing change?
- Do you think conflict is useful within team members?
Question to ask an expert:
- What is the best practice of negotiation and resolving conflicts for both managers and team members?
- What is the best approach to help a team generate constructive disagreement?
Appendix C:
References
Fussell, Susan R., Robert E. Kraut, F. Javier Lerch, William L. Scherlis, Matthew M. McNally, and Jonathan J. Cadiz (1998), “Coordination, Overload and Team Performance: Effects of Team Communication Strategies”, CSCW 98 Seattle, p. 275-84, Washington, USA
Shin, Yuhyung (2005), “Conflict Resolution in Virtual Teams”, Organizational Dynamics, 34(4), 331-45.
Charles Hauss (2003), “Focusing on Commonalities”, Retrieved December 1, 2006 from http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/commonalities/