Conflickt in the Workplace

Conflict in the Workplace 1

Conflict in the Workplace

Mary J. Scruggs

Dennis Stull, Instructor

MGT 302 Management and Leadership

March 16, 2005

Conflict in the Workplace 2

Conflict in the Workplace

Over the past year’s Mr. Diamond we have had problems with disagreements and conflicts between our employees. I believe it is imperative that we work at helpful solutions and attempt to stop the conflicts, and limit them as much as possible. I will now present to you my proposal on what the conflicts are, and a solution to them.

First and foremost we must look at the reasons for the conflict. The goals between the individual and groups of individuals are at times not attainable. We have some people trying their best to make the goals set by the company in order to make X many dollars per month. Things are so bad on the floor that the employees are fighting among themselves trying to attain these at times unrealistic and at times impossible goals.

The second source of conflict is the different personal values we bring to work. We have a variety people working here, there are those that at the end of the day will go out for happy our, and there are those that once the leave here, they go home to their families, they are the one’s that don’t believe in gossiping, or conflict of any kind. We have some employees who feel like it’s their job to come in on Monday morning and give a play by play of the activities over the weekend. I don’t feel as well as others that your personal life should be an open book to me as well as others.

The third source of conflict is the fact the team leaders don’t have any respect for the sub-ordinates and feel they call talk to and yeah at them. We are all supposed to be adults here, and should be respected and talked to in the same manner. I feel if something is not done to correct this situation, there will be things said that will not be able to be taken back, and someone may lose their job in the process.

As you know there is substantive conflict that can occur in just about any issue, but its moving force is that the two parties simply disagree about an issue. This can be a good thing or

Conflict in the Workplace 3

A bad thing. Handled correctly parties in this type of conflict can create for themselves and those around them, the ability to resolve an issue with something creative, something better than either party’s original position.

While substantive conflict, if handled correctly, can be very productive, personalized conflict is almost never a good thing. There are several reasons. First personalized conflict is fuelled primarily by emotion (usually anger, frustration), and perceptions about someone else’s personality, character or motives. When conflict is personalized and extreme each party acts as if the other is suspect as a person. Second, because personalized conflict is about emotions and not issues, problem solving almost never works, because neither party is really interested in solving a problem. In fact, there are times when things may be come worse. Third personalized conflicts almost always get worse over time, if they cannot be converted to substantive conflict. That is because each person expects problems, looks for them, finds them, and gets angrier.

In order to attempt to diffuse some of the above situations I propose we have