Managing Conflicts in Project Environment

A

 serious disagreement or argument, typically a protracted one.” This is how Oxford

dictionary defines the ‘Conflict’.

Conflicts are natural and happen everywhere in the real life in the situations involving more than one person. Workplace and Project Teams are not exceptions to this.

We need to understand that Conflict Management and Conflict Resolution are not the same thing. In fact Conflict Resolution is the part of overall Conflict Management. There are both positive and negative outcomes of conflicts. As a leader you try to resolve conflict in case of negative outcomes by using various approaches of Conflict Resolution. However, on other hand for positive outcomes you fuel or promote the conflict which might help to encourage innovation, out of box thinking, learning, finding the core issues, challenging the status quo in the project and getting the better results.

Here are few important points to consider in order to effectively manage the conflicts in project environment:

Project Manager’s education in this subject is important:

As per a study on an average 20% of Project Managers time goes into Conflict Management and most of the time the effort spent on this is not effective due to lack of education on how to manage these situations. So, this becomes very crucial for project manager to learn the various approaches for conflict resolution and also develop the wisdom to decide on when to try to stop the conflict and when to fuel or promote the same.

Let us quickly look at the most common approaches of conflict resolution:

Avoidance

Conflict is avoided pretending that nothing has happened and this can be address later if happens again. This is in the situation where as a leader you feel that conflict is not worth your time resolving at this point of time.

Compromise

When time is short, this is the best way to deal with the situation. Here both parties bargain to achieve mutually agreed solution. Here larger points are negotiated and smaller issues are ignored with mutual agreement.

Smoothing

Here one person (or team) sacrifice his concerns in order to satisfy the concerns of other person (or team). This requires thinking creatively to resolve the problem without concessions.

Confronting

This is best approach when time is sufficient and both parties need to win.  This involves open and direct communication (mostly face to face) which leads to resolution.

Forcing

This is used when stakes are high and ‘do or die’ situation is present and quick decision must be made. Here one party wins and concerns and needs of other party is ignored.

Set up expectations with team members:

There are various phases of team building and also different phases or sub phases of project. Few situations are normal and obvious in certain phase.

For examples:

1. During Execution phase of the project, in SDLC, when a project move from Development to Testing, there is high probably of conflicts between team members of development and testing teams or later phases of project could create lot of stress to the team members especially if any last minutes changes or defects introduced.

2. During Storming phase of team building conflicts are going to happen for sure.

These are just 2 examples, however, there are many phases and situations in the project where this is normal that conflicts will surface. So setting expectations with the team members will help a lot to manage these situations.

Analyze the situation of the conflict and take action:

As a Project Manager when these situations arise, you need to analyze to understand what is normal in the current phase of the project or for the people in question and you should decide if you want to promote the conflict or stop it using approaches of conflict resolution.

Please hit the comments to provide your valuable opinion on this topic or to ask any question you might have.