Managing Conflict in Project Teams
The goals of this section are to explore the nature of conflict on teams, explain five conflict-handling styles that team members often use in group projects, and provide you with several strategies for managing conflict on teams.
For a brief overview of this section, click here for the introduction to the Group Project Survival Guide, select Key Topics (2), and then hover over the middle icon. Click the icon to get a brief introduction to Managing Conflict in Project Teams, and a portal to the three presentations on managing conflict.
Alternatively, here are descriptions and links to each of the three presentations (time duration in parentheses):
- The Nature of Conflict on Project Teams (4:21) – describes the difference between task and interpersonal conflict
- Dealing with Conflict: Five Individual Styles (4:56) – describes the Thomas-Kilman model of individual conflict-handling styles (forcing, accommodating, compromising, collaborating, and avoiding). There is also a link to a web-based survey to determine your dominant style.
- Effective Strategies for Managing Conflict (5:18) – describes six strategies to anticipate and manage emerging conflict on teams
In each presentation (created in Macromedia Breeze), you can use the “Outline” tab to navigate to a specific part of the presentation, or the “Notes” tab to see a text transcript of each slide. At the end of each presentation there is a brief quiz to test your understanding.