Assignment task:
Background: The members of your project team are in serious conflict. They have split into two camps. The last team meeting was a disaster with four members of the team sitting on one side of the table and the other four on the other side. You could feel the tension in the air. You ended the meeting after only 30 minutes as it was apparent nothing was getting resolved at that time. You scheduled another meeting for the following Wednesday as you needed time to prepare your strategy. What's Going On: You scheduled a meeting with each member of the team individually to understand what was going on from their perspective. During the individual meetings with the team members, you learned the following:
Not all team members felt that they were heard in meetings and true consensus had not been reached in the past. Rather, team members felt that they were "pushed" into coming to agreement on solutions to past problems that arose on the project.
During a few brainstorming sessions, team members felt that ideas were discarded in favor of ideas that were easy to do and no real brainstorming took place.
Team members felt that some other members of the team were getting away with not completing tasks on time or of poor quality and that was impacting the workload of everyone else.
Early on in the project the team never worked through how conflict would be managed when it did arise on the project. You had collaborated with past teams about how conflicts would be managed but, given the quick start to this project, you didn't do so this time. You had a feeling this might be a problem but had hoped for the best. There were also correct that you were probably not the best person to help get through this conflict as it involved you also.