I was involved in a group discussion this morning that started off with one group member immediately attacking another group member’s ideas. Conveniently our group has a designated leader who is in charge of diffusing the tension and making sure the team treats others with respect. I was looking over the chapter about leadership ethics just recently and noted “Leaders who respect others also allow them to be themselves, with creative wants and desires,” (Northouse, 2016 PG 342.) In this particular situation the leader did not work very hard to diffuse the problem, instead she took the side of the more aggressive team member though I feel as if the ideas were being attacked were partly hers. While she validated the aggressive team member (who was not a part of the initial decision making process) she encouraged the weaker team member to “just give in” in order to move the discussion along.
I am not the leader of this group but I did take it upon myself to confront the tension since the actual leader was not going to. An article in Forbes magazine discusses conflict and how difficult it can be to manage. Author Glenn Llopis says “Conflict resolution is about seeing opportunities that others don’t see,” (Forbes, 2014.) In this case I saw a bit of tension and bullying by the one team member who was not present at the initial meeting. Since the leader was not going to address the tension I asked everyone to pause and let team members discuss how they felt about the ideas presented. My altruistic behavior encouraged conversation and eventual consensus while alleviating the tension the group was experiencing (Northouse, 2016 PG 342.)
Llopis says, “Conflict should be embraced and dealt with-not just resolve a possible problem or detect an opportunity…” (Forbes, 2014.) If the team member had gotten his way without any discussion of why there would still be underlying tensions unresolved. Northouse’s toxic triangle might be extreme but two of us team members would fall under conformers as we feel our needs are unmet by the leader who gave into the more aggressive member, while the more aggressive team member might suffer from bad values because he is used to getting what he wants with little conflict. (Northouse, 2016 PG 340.)
The issues were finally resolved within our group and while the aggressive team member said he did not mean to stir everyone up, it was perceived he came in with an agenda to change the entire project already one third finished. We reached a consensus where little ideas changed and some stayed the same. Our leader could use some work on her leadership ethics with regard to aggressive behaviors and the tension associated with them. She could have paid more attention to the reason we were together in the first place and kept everyone’s interests in mind (Northouse, 2016 PG 347.)
Works Cited:
Llopis, G. (2104, November 28). 4 Ways Leaders Effectively Manage Employee Conflict. Retrieved November 20, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2014/11/28/4-ways-leaders-effectively-manage-employee-conflict/4/
Northouse, P.G. (2016), Leadership: Theory and practice. (7th ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA. Sage.