Question

Project Management nstute 3FOLD Education Centre ACTIVITY No. 9.4 Conflict Management Conflict Resolution Technique Scenario A team member is not accepting a mistake, however there is a clear factual evidence of him making the mistake A team member has raised a trivial issue in the project team meeting A major incident has caused severe conflict among multiple project team members. A new project team member has made an unintentional error which was quickly rectified.

Answer 1

Following technique can be used for respective scenario. Answers can vary from person to person.

1. For the first scenario, if the mistake is not big enough and forcing the person to accept it causes issues in relationship then smoothing can be used. In case the mistake can not be neglected or there is a chance of it repeating then forcing technique has to be used for difficult people which will be a win-lose situation.

2. A team member has raised a trivial issue in the project meeting. In this case compromising technique can be used since it is not possible to collaborate for an unimportant issue. Project manager should first see if the seemingly trivial issue is not causing any unforeseen affects on important issues.

Forcing can also be used if the issue is extremely trivial. This will demotivate that team member.  

3. Collaborating or problem solving should be used to resolve this issue. In this all the team members need to work together to achieve a common goal. This requires taking multiple viewpoints into consideration and generally takes good amount of time. Coming up with innovative solutions and getting consensus from team is the key to conflict resolution.

4. Withdrawing or avoiding can be done in this case as it is stated that the team member is new and the error was unintentional. He/she will get to know things gradually. Therefore best technique is to skip it for the time being