The author of Conflict Management in Teams states: “Sustaining a high-performing, highly satisfied team takes a great deal of maintenance and awareness.” The quadrants listed in Figure 1 on page 2 of this reading reflect the likely cycles in the lifespan of a team and the processes they create to manage conflict. While teams may not desire to spend much time in Quadrants 2 through 4, it is clear staying in Quadrant 1 is difficult to sustain. What are specific processes that you have devised or witnessed that promote the High Satisfaction / High Performance combination of the Quadrant 1 Ideal Team? Support your answer with observations from the article.
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Mar. 4, 2015
Conflict Management in Teams
Successful teams have three things in common: (1) they meet their performance goals, (2) their members
feel satisfied that they are learning/benefiting from being a part of the team, and (3) the process the team uses
to collaborate sets it up for future success.1 Recent research, however, suggests that in as little as five weeks of
working together, only about 25% of teams meet these criteria.2 The rest of the teams typically experience lessthan-ideal processes and a decline in performance and/or satisfaction.
So what goes wrong? Most team members report that conflict among team members gets in the way of
effective teamwork, and this conclusion is largely supported by academic research. The effect of conflict on
teams is not always straightforward, however. Under the right conditions, for example, conflict can stimulate
divergent thinking and lead to improved problem solving. On the other hand, it also tends to increase
defensiveness, distract members from effective problem solving, and generate interpersonal animosity. So what
determines whether a team can harness the benefits and limit the liabilities of conflict?
More than a decade of research provides a clear answer: how team conflict is managed. Because conflict
happens in all teams (even the most effective ones), the presence of conflict has little bearing on whether one
team is more successful than another. The factor most important to team success is how teams handle conflict
when it does arise—and there are clear and reliable patterns associated with (in)effective conflict management.
These patterns center on a critical tradeoff that teams implicitly or explicitly make when deciding how to deal
with their conflict: the tradeoff between getting work done and making individual members happy.
The most effective teams create strategies to do both, but the majority of teams sacrifice one or the other.
For example, conflict gets in the way of effective work if the team is unable or unwilling to address the root
cause of the conflict. Low-performing teams typically struggle with this (usually because people did not speak
their minds) or are unwilling to address the problem (e.g., when there were politics around taking sides or
people are just too fed up to even try). This ultimately hurts performance because the inhibiting factors of the
conflict are never managed—that is, removed from the team’s process. In terms of individual satisfaction with
the team, the distinguishing factor is how proactive versus reactive the team’s approach is to conflict
management. Teams that are proactive in identifying conflicts and addressing them before they escalate have
more satisfied members. Teams that operate in reactive mode, wherein conflicts take them by surprise or keep
the team in constant firefighting mode have less satisfied members. These tradeoffs around performance and
satisfaction are summarized in Figure 1 below.
1
J. Richard Hackman and Charles G. Morris, “Group Tasks, Group Interaction Process, and Group Performance Effectiveness: A Review and
Proposed Integration,” in Leonard Berkowitz, ed., Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 8 (New York: Academic Press, 1975).
2
This article is a summary of the research presented in: Kristin Behfar, Randall Peterson, Elizabeth Mannix, and William Trochim, “The Critical Role
of Conflict Resolution in Teams: A Close Look at the Links Between Conflict Type, Conflict Management Strategies, and Team Outcomes,” Journal of
Applied Psychology 93, no. 1 (2008).
This technical note was prepared by Kristin Behfar, Associate Professor of Business Administration, and Rebecca Goldberg (MBA ’03), management
consultant. It was written as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright
2015 by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation, Charlottesville, VA. All rights reserved. To order copies, send an e-mail to
sales@dardenbusinesspublishing.com. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by
any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of the Darden School Foundation.
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Figure 1. Patterns in teams’ outcomes according to the processes they create to manage conflict.
High/Improving
Satisfaction
Proactive conflictresolution
strategies planned
to preempt
negative effects of
conflict
Low/Declining
Satisfaction
Reactive
resolution
strategies applied
in reaction to
existing problems
High/Improving Performance
Team is able and willing to identify and correct
problems
Low/Declining Performance
Team is unable or unwilling to identify and correct
problems
Quadrant 1: The Ideal Team
These teams create processes to foresee or anticipate
conflict, allowing the team to either quickly resolve
or prevent the conflict from escalating when it does
occur.
Example description:
“We don’t always agree, and if we don’t, everyone understands
why—and what their part might be in the problem. If someone
is upset, we remind ourselves to focus on what (not who) might
be causing the problem. We get the right person in the right
role, and if someone is having trouble meeting a deadline, they
let us know as soon as possible. We feel pretty good about
helping one another out where needed.”
Quadrant 2: Feeling Good, Doing Bad
These teams create processes that are proactive
about protecting relationships to the detriment of
tackling the source of the problem. As a result,
members feel valued and interactions tend to be
pleasant, but the team is not willing to tackle
difficult conflict in discussions and usually miss
opportunities to leverage members’ unique
expertise or viewpoints.
Example description:
“Open disagreement is rare. We tend to incorporate
everyone’s viewpoint into our decisions. If we can’t reach
consensus, we just postpone the decision. This is not always
the best, but everyone likes one another.”
Quadrant 3: Recovering via Structure
These teams create processes that reflect learning
from their conflicts. Their strategies tend to rely on
rules and structured agreements to prevent a similar
problem from happening again. This makes team
members more reliable (it acts as a substitute for
trust), but decreases satisfaction by constraining
interactions.
Example description:
“Working in my team takes some effort. We have had some
big differences. Now, when we have a problem, we force
ourselves to stop and have these (sometimes time-consuming
and uncomfortable) conversations about what each person can
do so this won’t happen again. We try to focus on the fact that
we all want to do good work.”
Quadrant 4: Minimize Misery/Avoidant
These teams describe chaotic/trial-and-error
processes that have no clear identification of the
root cause of the conflict. Their overall orientation
is typically to use strategies that move past (rather
than address) the conflict.
Example description:
“When we have conflict, we get frustrated fast because big
problems just never go away—they keep happening. Our
conversations start tense and often escalate; people get upset
and take sides. Many times we just give up and vote. The
people who lose the vote just have to deal with it. We try to
get most of our work done outside of our meetings and keep
meetings short.”
Data source: Excerpted from Behfar et al.
It is probably safe to say that very few teams want to be in Quadrants 2 through 4. Teams land there because
they do not successfully manage the tension between leveraging individuals’ strengths and addressing their
complaints. Put another way, in conflict situations, there are competing interests: what is good for the team is
not always what each individual wants or is willing to do. In general, higher-performing teams create conflictresolution strategies that make it clear how individuals need to contribute to the team and how that contribution
aligns with their interests, whereas lower-performing teams focus more on appeasing individuals and addressing
idiosyncrasies.
We will next discuss unique differences in how teams in the four quadrants manage conflict. It is important
to note that people tend to use the same words (e.g., discussion, compromise, consensus) to describe conflictresolution strategies, but research has demonstrated that those words represent strikingly different processes,
as summarized in Figure 2.
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Figure 2. Summary of conflict-resolution strategies used by teams in each quadrant
and examples of how the same words can represent different resolution processes.
High/Improving Performance
Conflict-resolution strategies focus on the group
goal over specific individual complaints/quirks
High/Improving
Satisfaction
Proactive conflictresolution
strategies planned
to preempt
negative effects of
conflict
Quadrant 1: The Ideal Team
Resolution Focus: Equity
Summary of strategies:
Quadrant 2: Feeling Good, Doing Bad
Resolution Focus: Equality
Summary of strategies:
Work assignments based on skill and relevance
to team performance
Work assignments based on individual interest
and/or on who volunteers
Forecasting scheduling and workload problems
In place of analysis, include all ideas
Securing solid understanding behind
compromises
Strong focus on individuals goals, feelings, and
needs versus how they can best contribute to team
performance
The process behind the words:
Discussion or Communicating: The topic has been raised
and talked about (usually amicably) in a team meeting
Compromise: The team has spent time trying to figure
out how to make each person happy
Consensus: All ideas have been incorporated (rather
than debated to select the best one) and/or no one
has voiced disagreement
Focusing on content over delivery style
The process behind the words:
Discussion or Communicating: Evidence-driven
exchange of conflicting views; members focus on
evidence and analysis to make decisions
Compromise: Each person understands how
his/her interests align with the team goal—or
what he/she is giving up and what he/she is
getting back in return
Consensus: All members are convinced they have
compromised for good reasons
Low/Declining
Satisfaction
Reactive
resolution
strategies applied
in reaction to
existing problems
Low/Declining Performance
Conflict-resolution strategies focus on specific
individuals’ complaints over the group goal
Quadrant 3: Recovering via Structure
Resolution Focus: Enforced Equity
Summary of strategies:
Quadrant 4: Minimize Misery/Avoidant
Resolution Focus: Ad Hoc
Summary of strategies:
Work assignments by assigned team role or
convenience (due to others’ uncompleted
work)
Work assignments to divide and conquer; avoid
meetings and one another
Written or clearly articulated rules and
consequences for not upholding expectations
Majority rule under time pressure
Putting disruptive members into a specific role
The process behind the words:
Discussion or Communicating: Members explicitly
discuss conflicts and agree not to let differences
get in the way of success
Compromise: Members agree to follow team rules
to prevent further disruption or to follow the
majority opinion if under time constraints
Consensus: Members share responsibility for
correcting problems and agree to uphold team
expectations
Frustrated members avoid debate and choose the
path of least resistance or the easiest solution
Put conflicting viewpoints to a majority vote
Trial and error to correct process
The process behind the words:
Discussion or Communicating: Members openly air
complaints and their (usually angry) expression is
returned with an equally frustrated, in-kind reaction
Compromise: Members agree to try a different method,
assign a new person to a role, or one person has
volunteered to do more work to avoid working with
another member
Consensus: Members have “given in” to a dominant
member, they have agreed to disagree, and/or there
has been a majority vote
Data source: Excerpted from Behfar et al.
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Quadrant 1: The Ideal Team
The teams in this quadrant orient themselves to resolve conflict using the principle of equity—each member
is asked to contribute his or her fair share only in ways that serve the team. This means that not everyone
equally gets what he or she wants, but members usually understand why team decisions are fair and equitable.
The strategies unique to these teams include:
Having explicit discussions about what members want to do versus what the team needs each person to do. Quadrant 1
teams are the only teams that actually divide work based on expertise rather than personal interests,
convenience, or deadline emergencies. If one team member, for example, wants more client contact
but other team members have better qualifications, these teams talk about how to balance individual
needs for advancement with the team’s need to best serve the client. These proactive discussions also
allow them to avoid the critical mistake of debating the legitimacy of personal excuses (e.g., telling a
member he or she is wrong to have personal priorities). By foreseeing where individual and team
interests might conflict and allocating work accordingly, the likelihood of team members failing to meet
expectations, exhibiting passive-aggressive behavior, and offering up excuses that irritate others
diminishes.
Proactively forecasting preventable problems. Most teams have busy people on them, which means (even with
the best forecasting) they occasionally will miss a deadline or need help. Ideal teams are disciplined
about foreseeing periods of work overload for each member and identifying workflow bottlenecks in
advance. Being proactive about these issues prevents significant disruptions (e.g., from missed
deadlines or delays), makes it easier for members to manage their time, and allows the team to agree
on how to communicate about pending problems and change staffing arrangements or secure more
resources if needed.
Taking time to discuss individuals’ compromises. The two practices above are often difficult because they
require direct confrontation: telling a member he or she is not the best person for the job or selecting
one person’s idea over another’s. The time spent to proactively discuss individual disappointments and
to secure solid understanding behind compromises, pays off in the longer term because it is makes
clear what each person is getting versus giving the team, that each person is valued (even if others
consider him/her to be wrong), and why decisions benefit everyone in some way. This often includes
the practice of debriefing previous decisions after getting feedback to confirm or disconfirm team
wisdom.
During conflict, focusing on content over delivery. When these teams have unanticipated conflicts, they “fight”
by focusing on the content of the complaint—not the delivery. They do not react to demands and
sarcastic or condescending tones, and instead focus on uncovering the underlying causes of the
conflict.3 One way they do this is to diffuse offensive behavior by naming it (e.g., “You are being way
too aggressive right now, but I like what you are saying.”) They also avoid the mistake of trying to
change things about other members (e.g., a domineering member’s personality) and instead find a way
to get a disruptive member into a role that benefits the team. They might, for example, put an
unbearably critical member in charge of reviewing all outgoing work in order to find errors.
These teams are examples of textbook “ideal” collaboration, but that does not mean they do not experience
difficult conflict. In fact, great teams typically have all of the same types and severity of conflict that other teams
have. Where they are better able to contain any negative effects is by using equity as an underlying principle
when managing conflict. Equitable resolution helps to maintain or restore a sense of fairness, ensure optimal
3 This is a similar practice that is described in negotiation as focusing on interests over positions (e.g., as described in Roger Fisher, William Ury, and
Bruce Patton, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (New York: Penguin Group, 1981).
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resource allocation, and promote productivity and positive relationships between team members. The benefits
of this orientation build over time. As each conflict is encountered and navigated successfully, team members
bring these positive memories, behaviors, and expectations with them to the next conflict. Team members can
be more willing to contribute and more willing to engage in the next conflict-resolution opportunity.
Not using these techniques, in contrast, can result in behavior that detracts from team performance and/or
satisfaction, as seen in the other quadrants.
Quadrant 2: Feeling Good, Doing Bad
Teams in Quadrant 2 orient themselves to resolve conflict using the principle of equality—or giving equal
weight to every individual and his/her interest. This focus on equality among individuals creates a team norm
that values consensus and harmony at the cost of decision quality. For example, these teams consider
themselves proactive because their discussions identify what it will take to keep each person positive and
engaged in the team. This is indeed a good practice, but only when aligned with what the team is trying to
achieve. When making decisions, these teams tend to find ways to equally include everyone’s ideas rather than
having evidence-driven, analytical discussions. These teams are not as common in organizations as (or are
shorter-lived than) teams in the other quadrants because they do not perform. When they do occur, they often
consist of members who have large status differences (and the lower-status members are afraid or unwilling to
challenge higher-status members), or when there are other political reasons that silence members or make them
unwilling to question the wisdom of team decisions.
Quadrant 3: Recovering via Structure
Teams in Quadrant 3 orient themselves to resolve conflict with enforced equity. Unlike the teams in Quadrant
1, which also use the principle of equity, Quadrant 3 teams are more reactive in dealing with conflicts that have
escalated and disrupted team progress. These teams quickly learn from and address their conflicts, which is why
they are able to prevent problems from reoccurring. Having to retroactively fix team problems tends to decrease
satisfaction because it places team members in the position of having to do more for the team than expected—
or having to play a role they would not otherwise have to if other members had upheld their responsibilities.
These teams’ strategies typically revolve around how to restore and enforce equity. For example, they often
create rules, explicit agreements, and clear expectations about how to force members into playing an appropriate
part. They consider these strategies ways to make members more reliable, and use them as substitutes for
trusting one another to live up to their obligations. Examples of these agreements are picking up unfinished
work, agreeing to vote when the team is out of time, or creating new roles that are better suited to each member
and/or to isolate disruptive members. These strategies are similar to the ones employed in Quadrant 1, but they
are put into place after there is a problem. This decreases satisfaction because the balance of individual versus
team interests tips toward team interests. For example, members on the losing side of the vote tend to feel
marginalized and do not fully understand why their ideas are compromised in favor of the winning course of
action. These teams tend to work around conflicts and prioritize group output first, which has the effect of
improving performance at the expense of individual needs.
Quadrant 4: Minimize Misery/Avoidant
Teams in this quadrant tend to have an unorganized or ad hoc approach to managing their conflict. They
not only fail to balance individual versus team interests, they actually fail to address either one. Their strategies
focus more on immediate complaints rather than underlying interests. For example, team members make the
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mistake of arguing about one another’s intentions rather than figuring out how to leverage strengths, they
openly tell disruptive members to change a trait or habit rather than figuring out how to minimize a disruptive
member’s effect on the team, and often get caught in a distracting negative spiral of interpersonal conflict rather
than discussing how to accomplish the team goal. A history of unfocused and unsuccessful conflict attempts
and an imbalance of individual and team interests generally limits the willingness and ability of members to
engage in good-faith conflict resolution. In fact, when asked the question: What is going wrong in your team?,
members often cannot pinpoint exactly what is wrong. Over time, a buildup of strong emotions and
unsuccessful attempts at resolving conflict can cloud members’ ability to recognize the cause of the problem,
and therefore what they are reacting to may actually have nothing to do with what got the team off track initially.
When members do try to engage with one another, they often opt for Band-Aid strategies that do not
address how the team is structured. For example, if they think their discussion lacks consideration of alternative
viewpoints, they might try a formal brainstorming process. This solution can generate new alternatives, but
does not contribute to decision quality because the team has a weak foundation for discussing and choosing a
solution. As old conflict patterns escalate discussion, instead of employing evidence-driven analysis, these teams
tend to organize in ways that minimize interaction (e.g., creating subgroups or becoming a de facto virtual
team), they choose the easiest solution (e.g., giving in to the dominant voice), or to just rely on voting and
majority rule. There is a tit-for-tat mentality rather than a process for sharing responsibilities, knowledge, and
work; this leaves members guessing and reacting rather than collaborating and problem solving. These teams
usually experience high turnover and require significant outside intervention to recover.
Sustaining a high-performing, highly satisfied team takes a great deal of maintenance and awareness. Over
the lifespan of a team, it is highly likely that it will cycle through several or all the quadrants. Understanding the
effect that different orientations toward conflict-management strategies have on a team’s viability is important
because it helps a team recognize where there are imbalances that create negative processes and interactions—
and where to focus resources to prevent or reverse the negative effects.
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