Conflict and Cookies

In an effort to build more productive relationships on teams designated to work on everything from the renovation of Los Angeles City Hall to construction of a football stadium in Nashville, Tenn., managers at Bovis Construction Corp. hold a planning session before each project to openly address potential conflicts.

These brainstorming sessions are conducted by company facilitators who encourage the project owner, architects, contractors and other players to map out processes they plan to follow to get the job done.

During the session, players participants draft and sign a “win-win agreement,” which includes a matrix that lays out what team members expect from one another. The first box in a matrix may detail the owner’s responsibilities on the project, while the next box may look at the owner’s expectations of the construction manager. Teams then use this matrix to review their progress on the project.

Bovis’ managers say the sessions have helped the firm, which has projects around the world valued in excess of $20 billion, save millions and come in on time on jobs. It has also decreased the adversity that is so prevalent common on construction sites, managers say.

“The biggest change I see is in attitude of people toward each other. When the architects come out of this realizing we want to make them successful, their attitude toward us changes,” said Michael Bellaman, a senior vice president at New York-based Bovis. “When the owner realizes that we have to make money on the job, that changes the attitude of our team.”

Bovis’ upfront approach to conflict in teams problems exemplifies a move by consultants around the country to coax conflict out in the open and even to capitalize on it to make groups more effective.

“Teams that engaged in healthy conflict over issues not only made better decisions, but moved more quickly as well,” found according to a study published in the July 1997 Harvard Business Review entitled “How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight.” The study said, “Without conflict, groups lose their effectiveness.”

Globalization of the economy and a move by companies away from a command-and-control structure has precipitated the use of teams in most companies. This change has forced consultants to learn how to anticipate conflicts between different cultures and age groups and between women and men.

“In the last 30 years, we’ve learned a lot more about how to design work to include people with larger differences,” said Frank Blechman, associate professor of the Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. “Now it’s not just you’re a mathematician and I’m an economist, but you’re from Malaysia and I’m from South Africa.”

Experts say managers should acknowledge conflict when it occurs in teams and use it to help team members be creative and make better choices. The key is to ensure that the conflict remains healthy and to prevent it from veering off into unproductive personal attacks.

“The attitude of the boss toward conflict is really critical,” said Kathy Eisenhardt, professor of strategy and organization at Stanford and coauthor of “Competing on the Edge: Strategies as Structured Chaos” (Harvard Business School Press). “That person sets the tone for conflict, and if they believe that it’s a good thing and understand the dynamics of it, it will be a good thing.”

Eisenhardt, who coauthored the Harvard Business Review study, recommends that teams should devise multiple alternatives and inject humor into their meetings to keep conflict focused on the issues.

Team members also should collect detailed data and use it to depersonalize the discussion and to eliminate the possibility that team members will assert opinions that are not rooted in facts, she says.

She also suggests that team members play practical jokes on each other and order good food because “a meeting with chocolate-chip cookies sounds dumb, but it gets people in a good frame of mind and they are more able to be empathetic to another person’s point of view.”

To determine whether or not conflict is positive, team members should figure out which type of group discussion they are relying on when arguments crop up, says Charles Pavitt, associate professor in communication at the University of Delaware.

Substantive discussion revolves around proposals and ideas; procedural discussion occurs when a group is talking about how it should make a decision, and maintenance discussion happens when a group is not gaining ground, Pavitt says.

Substantive conflict is good for groups, he said, while procedural conflict becomes a problem when groups cannot agree on how to make a decision. Maintenance conflict occurs when there are power imbalances on a team that dissolve into personality disputes, Pavitt says.

He suggests that groups can deal with conflict by going off on tangents to let off steam and to help improve the group’s cohesiveness. The team leader, however, must make sure these tangents don’t last too long, he added.

Team members who successfully address conflict often determine on an individual basis at the beginning of each project how firm or flexible they want to be on the issue and how personally involved in it they want to become, said Herbert S. Kindler, director of the Pacific Palisades-based Center for Management Effectiveness.

This decision allows team members to decide which of nine tools created by Kindler--including maintain, smooth, bargain, dominate, decide by rule, coexist, yield, release and collaborate--they wish to use in a disagreement, he said.

Kindler’s center makes plastic organizer-sized cards that lay out these tools and criteria for when a team member should use each one. Kindler also suggests that people practice the tools that don’t come naturally to them.

“For some [people], domination is not very high on their list because there’s something in their personality that hates to be that pushy,” Kindler said. “They can practice [domination] when they check out of a hotel and see if they can change the checkout time, or see if they can 1650553447 (BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Battle Plan

Management consultant Herbert S. Kindler suggests that team members decide before a meeting how flexible they want to be and how personally involved they want to get before choosing from Kindler’s nine strategies for managing conflict:

* Maintain--Useful when time is needed to collect information or let emotions cool.

* Smooth--Omits alternatives that fuel opposition when time is of the essence.

* Dominate--Helpful when confidentiality is necessary or the consequences of a decision are minor.

* Decide by rule--Useful when any alternative is better than inaction.

* Coexist--Handy when parties are adamant about their positions and need a break from discussion.

* Bargain--Necessary when all can gain from a compromise.

* Yield--Helpful when an issue is minor to one party but essential to another.

* Release--Turn over control of an issue, but set limits and conditions.

* Collaborate--Requires time, but useful when issues are too vital for compromise.

Source: Herbert S. Kindler, Center for Management Effectiveness