Leaders Knowing the Conflicts
Leaders are leaders of a team to resolve, manage, and process the task evenly and effectively. The foremost duty of a leader is to resolve the team’s conflicts he/she is leading. Conflict is a process in which a person or group feels that his interests and choices are opposed and negatively rejected by another person or group (Hitt et al., 2018). Conflicts in a team or a group are natural and somewhat necessary as well. Conflicts arise at a place where diverse backgrounds people are working together to achieve a common goal. Conflicts can be resolved with a strategical and ethical approach by a leader.
Conflicts can be articulated in various forms, such as bullying colleagues, misbehaving, not obeying an organization’s rules, and causing disorder within the organization’s management. In conflict situations within the workplace, leaders like managers and HR have to play their significant part in knowing the kinds of conflicts. Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Killman have introduced a conflict model consisting of five modes to a workplace conflict. These five modes include competing, accommodating, avoiding, compromising, and collaborating (Killman & Thomas, 1975).
The competing mode of conflict includes assertive behavior and thinks little or no about the relationship with a person he/she conflicts. In this mode, a person most probably knows that he is on the right, and he needs to win the conflict to achieve success. This conflict usually arises under a very pressurized situation and needs to be resolved with great calmness. Leaders must gather the proofs and pieces of evidence against both the parties involved in the conflict. Competing conflicts are usually those in which one party wins and all other losses leaving no room for mutual or diverse perspectives.
The second mode of conflict includes an accommodating personality in a conflict. This personality is opposite to the assertive personality, as discussed above. An accommodating person highly cooperative and agree with the opponent’s decisions when he realizes that he/she is right. Also, an accommodating behavior is useful in a conflict when the relation is more useful than to win an argument. Contrary accommodating conflicts are one way of being a gracious and sensible personality. Accommodating personalities think more of a workplace environment to remain even without disruption.
The third mode of conflict includes avoiding personality. Avoiding mode includes a person who usually avoids getting into the conflict and ignores the conflict entirely. This mode shows that the person avoids the conflict has contributed less or no interest in the matter. This model is acceptable and useful in trivial matters but in serious matters where a conflict matters a lot, applying avoiding strategy is not very helpful (Byrd, 2007). Because avoiding will not resolve the issue entirely and will leave the problem remain unresolved. Leaders should keep in mind that avoiding conflicts is easy to resolve, but the result will be significantly affected.
The fourth mode of conflict is compromising. In this mode, both the parties involved in the conflict agree on half of their’s and opponents’ benefit. However, the compromising conflict mode does not resolve the issue as the teams compromise on what is decided for them instead of focusing on the results they wanted to achieve. Leaders need to focus on both the party’s arguments to make the argument resolved instead of being compromised (Cloke & Goldsmith, 2007). An effective leader knows that the issue must result in which phase will benefit both the parties involved in the conflict and the organization.
The fifth mode of conflict suggested by the Thomas-Killman conflict mode is the collaborating mode when the parties involved in the conflict build up a relationship to collaborate and find the best solution to a problem. This mode is also considered as winning a conflict mode. The decisions made and agreed upon for better results are gained by collaboration. When the leaders convince the employees or their team to collaborate through healthy discussions, the result will be excellent. Collaboration conflict involves the participants who are both assertive and cooperative. It helps in resolving the conflict with higher chances of organizational as well as personal benefits.
Hence, it is concluded that leaders of any group, team, or organization must know about the kinds of conflicts and their outcomes on the organization and employee’s performance. Conflicts are functional when they are resolved and give better results as collaborating and accommodating. The conflicts are dysfunctional when they are not resolved, leaving the workplace and the leaders disrupting as avoiding, competing, and compromising mode of conflicts (Amason, 1996). When leaders decide what kind of conflict mode is and how it will help resolve the conflicts, it will benefit both the management and the employees.
References
Amason, A. C. (1996). Distinguishing the effects of functional and dysfunctional conflict on strategic decision making: Resolving a paradox for top management teams. Academy of Management Journal, 39(1), 123-148. doi.org/10.5465/256633
Byrd, M. (2007). Educating and developing leaders of racially diverse organizations. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 18(2), 275-279. doi.org/10.1002/hrdq.1203
Cloke, K., & Goldsmith, J. (2011). Resolving conflicts at work: Ten strategies for everyone on the job. John Wiley & Sons.
Hitt, M. A., Miller, C.C., & Colella, A. (2018). Organizational Behavior. John Wiley & Sons.
Kilmann, R. H., & Thomas, K. W. (1975). Interpersonal conflict-handling behavior as reflections of Jungian personality dimensions. Psychological Reports, 37(3), 971–980. doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1975.37.3.971