Diversity and Avoiding Conflicts

It is commonplace for organizations today to work in teams. Whether they be leader-driven teams or self-directed teams; the hope is that productivity, creativity, and results will be greater in a team environment. While this is a proven approach, any time you bring together people from differing backgrounds and experiences, it is inevitable that conflict will occur. Many people and organizations view conflict as a negative, or something to be avoided. Yet conflict, differences, or disagreements are a natural result of people working together. Also, without conflict, teams can become complacent and not perform at optimum levels. The challenge then becomes, how should the team be prepared for this stage of their existence, and how should the project leader facilitate through it? As mentioned above, teams are a powerful force in organizations. They are assembled to tackle complex and strategic issues within a company. Often the membership is a select group of people from different departments, each with special skills or talents to solve a particular problem. However; what is often lacking is training in the core competencies of working on a team. "In order for a team to be successful, it is essential that a project manager can identify and address the basics of conflict resolution, delegation, and consensus building" (Convey, 1994, p. 13). Without these skills, each member must rely on whatever they 've learned on their own, or the project manager’s skills in moving the team through these struggles. This is not an ideal way to manage teams, and reduces the synergistic benefits of team-based activities. Every organization or group should develop a strategy for training and preparing team members for group process. One example that a project manager could use to be a good model was an initiative at Monmouth University (Gahr, 1995). It involved the Student Life organization -the Program Director, the staff, the

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