According to Robbins Judge (2007), conflict is a process that begins when one party perceives that another party has negatively affected, or is about to negatively affect, something that the first party cares about. Peoples would get frustration when their concerns are neglected and the negative consequences can be devastating. It could possibly lead to high turnover rates, employee dissatisfaction, inefficiencies between work units, sabotage, grievances and strike.
Type of Conflict
Our team Fred’s Angel comprised of four members working in both private and public sector including banking, financial planning and government servant. Under such combination, conflict would inevitably occur when members from different backgrounds have different assumptions on an issue based on their personal knowledge, experience and perspective from their respective industry.
Being a police inspector in the Hong Kong Police Force, I mainly used my position power such as legitimate, coercive and reward power to manage my subordinates. I am legitimately empowered by the Police Force Ordinance, Cap. 232, Laws of Hong Kong to discharge my supervisory duties. According to Northhouse, P.G. (2013), Coercive power is one of the specific kinds of power available to leaders. It involves the use of force to effect change including negative reward or punishment to influence others to do something against their will.
I have all along been adopting authority-compliance management style with a view to ensuring my subordinates are doing their job properly. According to this style of leadership, it places heavy emphasis on task and job requirements and less emphasis on people (Northhouse 2013). I considered coercive power is one of my strengths to resolve conflict in my organization as I could use such power to monitor and improve the performance of my subordinates. I could also take strict disciplinary action to punish them for any acts which against good conduct and discipline.
Shortly after my team was formed, I soon realized that some of the team members always took the leading role to dominance the result of all discussion on team assignments. Conflict occurred when my opinion or suggestion was either not supported or neglected by my team members. However, I could not use my position power to direct them to follow my instruction or influence them to do something against their will. Therefore, it is very difficult for me to convince my team members to make change and to reach a consensus on an issue becomes a difficult task for us as they just wished to remain their own stands.
Vecchio (1999) pointed out that the distribution of power within an organization could also be a source of conflict. If a group feels that it possesses far less power than it should, of if it believes that another group holds an excessive amount of power, it is likely to challenge the existing order. Given some team members have different personal values and perception, the highly authoritarian and ambitious individuals are prone to initiate conflict with others with an aim to overriding or challenging their ideas and suggestions.
Consequence
Robbins Judge (2007) pointed out that conflict was seen as a dysfunctional outcome resulting from poor communication, lack of openness and trust between people and the failure of managers to be responsive to the needs and aspirations of their employees. Fortunately, we did not encounter any major conflict so far. In order to prevent any possible conflict phenomenon from happening, my greatest challenge was to establish a good partnership with my team and to maintain constructive dialogues to facilitate effective communication.
Solutions
In order to solve the conflict, I would endeavor to foster esprit de crops and to enhance mutual trust and communication so as to achieve our team goals. I would adopt proactive approach in communicating with the team members and in the meantime show my caring attitude and strong sense of responsibility. I believe that firm and positive attitude would undoubtedly assist in enriching team spirit, job satisfaction and mutual trust among members of the team so that a win-win situation could be achieved.
According to (Robbins Judge (2007), five conflict-handling intentions can be identified, namely competing, collaborating, avoiding, accommodating and compromising.
Amongst the five intentions, I would prefer “Compromising” as I believe that when I am willing to give up something, my team members would also follow suit in order to reach a compromise. There would be no winner or loser as team members tends to adopt a collaborative style and try to fulfill the needs of others. It is particular useful when we need to bring together a variety of viewpoints to get the best solution during discussion. Under this circumstance, everyone would be pleased and more importantly, harmonious team relationship and coherent could be maintained.
Reference
Robert P. Vecchio (1999) Organization Behaviour Core Concepts (4th ed). Dryden
Robbins Judge (2007) Organization Behaviour (12th ed). Pearson
Northhouse, P.G. (2013) Leadership: Theory and Practice (6th ed.). London: Sage
