Team Leading Level 2

Manage Conflict within a Team

As a team leader you may encounter conflict with your team members or others from
both inside and outside of your organisation. This will give you the opportunity to
explore some of the main causes of conflict and the steps you can take to minimise
them.

You need to understand the importance of supporting your team members and how
effective communication can be key to helping you manage and resolve conflict
situations. You will learn about strategies for dealing with conflict and some of the
techniques that you can use to encourage team members to resolve their own
conflict.

Policies and procedures are likely to exist within your organisation to assist you
when managing conflict and this unit examines the importance of these along with
the necessity of maintaining complete, accurate and confidential records of conflicts.

What you will learn

 Be able to support team members’ understanding of their role and position
within a team
 Be able to take measures to minimise conflict within a team
 Be able to understand how to encourage team members to resolve their own
conflicts
 Be able to understand legal and organisational requirements concerning
conflict

Be able to support team members’ understanding of their role and position

within a team
Your team members will feel more confident in their working environment if they are
clear about what is expected of them. Their work roles and responsibilities must be
communicated to them in an appropriate format, such as job descriptions, rotas and
work schedules.

It is important that your team members can approach you with any concerns they
have and that you show you will support and guide them through any difficulties.

Effective two-way communication is necessary if morale and motivation is to be

maintained, so you need to examine how you communicate which techniques so you
need to examine how you communicate and which techniques you should use in
particular circumstances.

Communicate standards of work required

Productive working relations with your team members largely depend upon your
ability to communicate effectively with them. The standards you expect your team to
work towards must be made clear – if you don’t explain to your team members
exactly what you expect from them, you can’t expect them to achieve what you want
them to.

The purpose of setting standards with your team is to:

 Make sure everybody is working towards the same quality standard
 Ensure the customer or end user receives the same quality level

In order for this to happen the standards required must be effectively communicated.

During team meetings, supervision meetings or one-to-one discussions, you may

find opportunity to communicate your expectations regarding standards or
performance and behaviour. As a follow up to face-to-face meetings, you could
reinforce the importance of working to these standards by:
 Sending group emails, informing the team where they might find policies,
procedures and standards expected electronically (for example, on the
organisation’s intranet)
 Pinning copies of policies and procedures on notice boards to be read
 Signposting the team to hard copies of policies, procedures and standards –
perhaps kept in lever-arch folders on shelves in an office where they can be
easily inspected

In addition, these documents may form part of the organisation’s staff handbook
and might also be contained in the induction file that each employee receives when
they start their job in your organisation.
Key terms
Standards – rules used as a basis for comparison or judgement
Staff handbook – information pack for employees containing the organisation’s
policies and procedures

It may be necessary to allocate time – perhaps during an induction day or a team

meeting – for each team member to read through the index of policies and
procedures that the organisation has, and then to read the contents of those you
consider most applicable to the work of your team (for example, the health and
safety policy, dress code, fire procedures). It is a good idea to produce a form for
each employee to sign and date that they have read and understood the contents of
the policies and procedures you consider important and appropriate.

Policies and procedures need to be revised from time to time to meet changing
demands of industry customers and the economy. It is important that you keep your
team members updated of ant reviewed policies, procedures and standards. A useful
time for you to do this is when you conduct staff appraisals (see Unit A1 on PDR’s)
with your team members.

It is important that you communicate to your team members a list of the policies and
procedures that exist in your organisation, what their purpose is and where they can
be found.

In some industries, organisations adopt an approach to standards which identifies

them as:
 Standard costs – this is the desired cost of producing an item or providing a
service
 Standard time – this is the desired time an employee tasks to compete a
given task when producing an item or providing a service

Checklist
Don’t forget to communicate to your team the following:
 Changes to policies and procedures
 The purpose of the policies and procedures
 Where they can be found e.g. intranet, notice board

The standard time can be multiplied by how much per hour an employee working on
a task is paid, which results in a total labour cost for that task.

The standard – or desired – costs and time can later be compared to the actual costs
and time takes, to establish how well the organisation or team, is performing. These
results should then be communicated to the employees and any difference between
what was expected and what actually happened can be discussed in detail.

The process of quality assurance serves to ensure that quality standards will be met.
These standards should be discussed and agreed with your team members with a
focus on customer or end-user satisfaction. For this purpose you may use a team
meeting as a vehicle to brainstorm ideas from the team. This is an opportunity for
you to let the team know that views and ideas are welcomed and that all opinions are
equally valued. In turn, team members may feel more motivated, which could
automatically increase workflow and output for which they should receive
recognition, praise and perhaps reward. Then as morale increases further so will
output, and a positive cycle of workflow can be sustained.
Clear
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Remember
When discussing expected standards and targets with your team, build in
milestones, so that progress towards completed tasks can be measured and
communicated at intervals through the process.

Encouraging good communication and standards of behaviour

By making your team members full aware of the standards of work and behaviour
that is expected of them, you can go some way to helping to reduce the possibility of
conflict situations occurring.

The behaviour you expect from your team members must be made clear. How they
behave in the workplace can have an impact on meeting targets and expected
standards of quality.

In your role as team leader, you must communicate effectively and stress to your
team members that it is important for them to communicate effectively with each
other too! Doing this can encourage a holistic approach to meeting targets and
standards, and can promote a positive team spirit and complementary behaviours.

Key term
Holistic – looking at all parts of the team’s efforts so that individuals work closely
together to achieve the same overall goals of the team.

Failure to communicate in the right way and at the right time, may lead to negativity
in the team and in particular:
 Confusion
 Mistrust
 Distress

These factors can adversely affect team dynamics and behaviours.

In your organisation, standards may apply to work performance and behaviour. You
may be able to identify policies and procedures in your workplace that relate to
behaviour. A policy informs employees what senior management consider
acceptable, or not acceptable, behaviour or actions (for example, an equal
opportunities and diversity policy). Procedures however, can be described as sets of
step-by-step instructions to follow when undertaking specific tasks. This ensures that
everyone carries out these tasks in exactly the same way resulting in a consistent
approach towards achieving recognised and expected standards. There may also be
a code of conduct and even a dress code in force to guide employees.

Remember
Effective communication means getting the right message to the right people at the
right time, and obtaining feedback.

Activity
Research the purpose of the policies and procedures listed below and identify your
own definition of each:
 Equal opportunity and diversity
 Bullying and harassment
 Unacceptable behaviour
 Health and safety
 Grievance
 Disciplinary
 Code of conduct (if appropriate)

Culture and communication

Culture is often referred to as ‘the way we do things here’ and this is often influenced
by the attitudes and behaviours of employees at all levels and the policies and
procedures that are in place.

If you reflect upon the culture you work in, you may establish that it is, for example, a
pleasant working culture in which everyone gets on well with each other.
Alternatively, it is possible that you may work in a negative workplace culture (for
example, a blame culture).

The team that you lead may, in turn, develop its own culture and the attitudes and
behaviours of each team member will play a part in the development of this. As part
of its own distinct culture, teams may adopt their own way to operating (their ‘norm’)
in an effort to achieve standards and targets. They may also develop their own use
of language and jargon within the team and perhaps create nicknames for each
other. An advantage of this is to create a strong team identity and a culture that is
supportive of team members, but a disadvantage might be a tendency to become
inward looking and exclusive and a reluctance to accept new members into the
team.

Activity –
1. Reflect on your team members and identify whether there are any
behaviours you think could be changed (or reflect on own behaviours – what
would you like to change?)
2. How often do you think you should make time in meetings or get your team
together to discuss behaviours at work and how things can be changed for
the better? Give reasons for your responses.
Discuss your responses with your assessor.
How team members can work together and support each other
Encouraging effective team working and bonding has many benefits. These include
increased levels of morale and motivation and mutual respect between team
members. Team members should be given the opportunity to share ideas and best
practice during team meetings as this will encourage a holistic approach. The more
that people feel part of the team and have a sense of belonging, the more likely they
are to support each other on a day-to-day basis, but particularly during difficult times
in the workplace.

For various reasons, team members will display behaviours that may be of a positive
or negative nature. Negative behaviour might be associated with their work role or
their working environment (for example, disagreements with other team members)
while positive behaviour might be associated with job satisfaction and clearly defined
job roles.

Team members’ behaviour

Your observation of your team members’ behaviours may enable you to categorise
each of them as one of the following:
 Passive – a person who feels their opinions are not as important as those of
other people in the team.
 Assertive – a person who accepts that everyone in the team is entitled to an
opinion that is no more or less important than any other team member.
 Aggressive – a person who thinks that their opinions are more important that
anyone else’s in the team.
Within your team you may find personality clashes because of different attitudes,
mind-sets or ways of thinking. If such clashes are not managed effectively they can
sometimes escalate to potentially damaging conflict situations. It may help to be
aware that in any workplace there is likely to be a mix of:
 ‘can’t do’ people – these people want to perform well, but are currently not
capable of doing so, until they receive further support, training or guidance
 ‘Won’t do’ people – these people simply don’t want to be at work and their
motivation is solely to receive their pay at the end of the month. Regardless of
capability or support, they have no interest in performing well.

As a team leader you can support, guide and encourage your ‘can’t do’ people but
your ‘won’t do’ people will be harder to manage. By being aware of ‘won’t do’ people
in your team you can take steps to intervene when, for example, other willing team
members are having to compensate by trying to do their own work and take on some
of the work that the ‘won’t do’ person should be doing. As you might imagine, if you
don’t intervene to prevent escalation of bad feeling, then conflict between team
members may arise. Further, your team members may not feel they are getting the
support they should from you, potentially creating conflict between you and them.
 Remember
When dealing with difficult situations, be aware of your own limits of authority. It is
not a weakness to advise your line manager of difficult situations and seek support
when you feel you need to.

Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y

In the 1960s Douglas McGregor, a management theorist, carried out some research
into types of workers. He identified two different categories, which he called Theory
X and Theory Y.