Introduction
We have 3 members in our team: Tracy, Ashley and Beatrice, which
form our initial form the group name “TAB”. As we mentioned in the group blog, three
of us did not have any conflicts at all, and the only difficulty we have faced
was that we did not have enough time to discuss our projects. We are working in different kinds of companies,
so our expectation of deadline are
different.
Situation
I am working in the Customer
Service Department, which we need to solve all enquires and complaints from
customers in a very fast pace.
Customers are very demanding, even we promised to reply them on a specified
date, and they would still contact us before the agreed date, so I prefer to
get my entire job done few days before the deadline. 
Beatrice is working in the Human
Resources Department, which she must follow
the procedures in doing her job. Sometimes she needs to do research to
support her job, so she would set a
timeline herself and finish job on
time.
Ashley is working as an editor,
which her company provides newswire service, she has to update her job every minute till
the last second, so she prefers to do
her job when it is close to the deadline.
Due to different working styles, we had different expectation about “deadline”.
Solution
There are 4 approaches of March and Simon’s (1958) process of conflict
resolution (Uhring, N. E. & Lambert, D. R., 1982): problem-solving,
persuasion, bargaining and politicking.
Problem-Solving
Although we have different expectations at the very beginning when
we start doing our projects, we had a common
goal, which is to finish all assignments on time and ontain good grades.
Persuasion
Other than that, we have sub-goal
as well, that we had mentioned in our group blog – we want to have good work-life balance.
I prefer to finish the group projects in the early stage, so that I would
be so busy need the end of semester, and I could focus more time on my
individual assignments or the assignments of other courses. In addition, in case
there are any changes needed for the group projects, we could still have enough
time to amend it.
Beatrice would like to do the projects step by step, she would set
timeline in studying lots literatures before start her part. When she finished
the part as her schedule, she would prefer to stop it and did her own things,
like staying with family.
Ashley likes to spend more of her leisure time at the early semester
and she thought she could get the projects done before the deadline. And according
to her working experience, the requirements from her boss always change till
the last minutes. She prefers to start doing the job which is nearly deadline because
she believed that the guidelines of the projects should be finalized, she did
not need to revise the projects again and again.
No matter what we working style we have, we want to utilize our time equally on work, school
and leisure.
Bargaining
We all knew that we have a common
goal and the difference expectation of doing the projects, we then sat down and
discussed what was the best way to gather our parts in order to finish the
projects.
We first thought that we make
compromise among us, we set our deadline in between the dates suggested by Ashley
and me. Besides, each of us responsible to one part of the projects, including description,
theories application and conclusion. However, we found that it was difficult to
get the job done because we all familiar with our own preference and style,
which was hard to change our habit. Therefore, compromise was not wok in our
team.
We then tried to collaborate, we distribute the job based on our strengths. That was, I prefer to do
the job in a very short time and efficient way, so I was responsible to do the
first draft of the project. Beatrice would then elaborated the case by theories
because she good at reviewing literature, she could find suitable theories and evidences
to support her points. Ashley as an editor would be responsible to finalize the
projects, she would use beautiful wordings to modify our projects and she could
have more ideas when she knew the jobs were close to the deadline.
As we mentioned in the final group
project that we use mobile apps to communicate,
once I finished my part, I would WhatsApp or WeChat Beatrice, so that she could
start doing her part. And she would inform Ashley by WhatsApp or WeChat. Ashley
would let us know through the mobile apps once she finished the whole project. In
case we found any problems of the projects, we could let each other know so we
could revise immediately.
Politicking
Politicking would only happened
when we tried to compromise because all of us would like to convince other team
members to accept our own ideas. However, as we decided to collaborate, politicking
became less important.
Conclusion
Conflicts may arise anytime and anywhere,
whether it is good in teamwork or not depends on how we solve the conflicts. If
you avoid them, it would lead to negative impact to the team and might breakdown
the team finally. However, if you treat them as opportunities for the team to
communicate, it would benefit the team and lead to a better outcome.
Just like our team, even we have different expectation
about deadline, we did not keep our views hidden, and we brought out what we
thought and discussed the best way among us. So that we could finish our
projects in a very smooth way, we experience
“High Performance Collaboration”, which is the core of this course.
Moreover, we should learn from the findings of Hochschild (2001), that is to organize our life well, in order to avoid frustration in our life, so that we can keep our work, study and leisure balance.
Moreover, we should learn from the findings of Hochschild (2001), that is to organize our life well, in order to avoid frustration in our life, so that we can keep our work, study and leisure balance.
Reference
- Brown, Christopher (January 7, 2014). How Zappos makes sure customers get a great experience everytime. Retrieved from: http://blog.marketculture.com/2014/01/07/how-zappos-makes-sure-customers-get-a-great-experience-everytime/
- Hochschild, A. R. (2001). The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work. Henry Holt and Company.
- London Business School (2013). Retrieved from: http://www.lbs.lk/programs-2-5-13.html
- March, James G. and Simon, Herbert A. Simon (1958). Organizations. New York: Wiley.
- Pasari, Prateek (October 3, 2009). Negotiation Skills. LinkedIn Corporation. Retrieved from: http://www.slideshare.net/prateekpasari/uy32ey
- Uhring, N. E. & Lambert, D. R. (1982). Conflict Resolution in Experiential Learning. Developments in Business Simulation & Experiential Exercises, Volume 9.
- Volonteurope (2015). Retrieved from: http://www.volonteurope.eu/2015/03/18/volonteurope-holds-first-meeting-of-measuring-impact-working-group/
