Workplace Conflict Resolution Essentials For Dummies, Australian and New Zealand Edition

Chapter 3

Determining How Groups Contribute to Conflict

In This Chapter

Identifying how your employees fit within your organisation

Highlighting common areas of conflict within teams

Avoiding negative group behaviours

Put two or more people in a work setting and you’re bound to have conflict. And, whether you wear a white tie, a blue shirt or a uniform, your workplace has naturally and artificially formed groups that add characteristics to the work environment and, ultimately, to conflict. But, when working as part of a team, you know that groups are essential!

Created based on similar job assignments (like the accounting department) or pulled together based on skill sets (like a selected task force), groups are required to get the work done. Teams can work like well-oiled machines that win awards, exceed sales projections, solve what seem like insurmountable problems and build elaborate buildings in record time. So if groups have the capacity to do such great things, what is it about them that causes conflict?

In this chapter, I share how the company, its culture and the phenomenon of group dynamics all have the potential to turn an otherwise functioning group into a fragmented ...