In case of teamwork in a company, there are many reasons why conflicts could evolve within a team or between different teams. Examples might be personnel changes, a failure that causes teams to blame each other to be responsible or even a misunderstanding. If tensions are not reduced this can influence the atmosphere at work and might even cause severe damage for the company.
Conflicts within a team:
Conflicts within a team might occur for many reasons. The cause can be the promotion of a team member that changes team dynamics. It may be the felt or real workload pressure of a team member while other team members seem to have far less to deal with. Lack of appreciation up to cases of mobbing of team members may be serious reasons for conflict. A team member might get into trouble because other members of the team did not deliver their share of the work according to deadline leading to the result that this team member is unable to deliver his share of the work on time because he is dependent on his lazy colleagues. The failure of meeting deadlines easily leads to unhappy customers. Or there is a lack of or a wrong way of communication. To keep a team functional in the long run, serious conflicts should be dealt with as soon as possible.
Conflicts of a team with other departments:
A certain amount of competition between the departments of a company is encouraged in companies quite often. As long as the competition stays fair there is no problem. But if a department starts to sabotage the work of another department or several departments declare open war the company has a problem. Because these kinds of conflicts quickly damage the company and the intern and extern appearance of your business becomes really bad. The result is a loss of reputation and unhappy customers.
Structural weaknesses:
An old Northern German proverb says: ‘The fish starts to smell at the head!’ Two of the main reasons for team conflicts are a lack of company structure and a weak management. If there is a lack of structure, responsibilities are not clearly defined. This might lead to the opinion of several team members that they are the person that is responsible for a certain task. On the other hand, everybody feels free to claim that he is not responsible for unwanted tasks and those are performed inadequate or not at all. If the management does not perform its leading and control duty in a sufficient way, the teams become independent. As long as a team is performing well on its own, there is no problem. But if conflicts within a team occur, the gates are wide open for limitless escalation. Lack of structure and poor leadership are a perfect breeding ground for unhappy employees. These might react with a passive termination (‘If it is not explicitly written in my job description, I do not do anything!’) the starting of intrigues to cause the clash of colleagues or find other ways to sabotage the company. In these cases a clear structuring of the business processes and responsibilities and maybe a leadership coaching are necessary.
Company transfers:
Every time a colleague leaves a team or department or a new member joins a team, team dynamics and responsibilities change and the way of interaction is newly negotiated. The management would be wise to attend to the change or the integration process to recognize as soon as possible if something goes wrong and to work early on a conflict solution.
I assist you via mediation to reduce tensions and clarify misunderstandings to bring your company atmosphere back to harmonious and productive.
Make an appointment for a first free preliminary, now to get to know each other and figure out, if a mediation is a useful option in your case under the phone number 0049 – 160 – 76 25 61 8