Research Paper By Divya Munjal
(Spiritual Coach, INDIA)
Introduction:
Being a coach in team conflict management and team building, I got the opportunity to coach this team looking to be coached. This case study explores the underlying factors which make or break a teams efficiency and productivity. It shows evidence of how seemingly small factors are the real reasons behind a teams lack of communication.
In this case study, I am including the cases of the team manager and a couple of other members of the team who were the key players in the teams conflict. The rest of the team have not been included as they did not have any significant necessity to be coached nor did they contribute to the team’s issues. Individually all these team members were skilled and had all the experience to do the job at hand. Upon speaking to each one of them separately, the following main points came up.
The individual cases of each team member:
1) Manager (Team Lead)
- Struggling to work with certain members of the team.
- Is not comfortable allotting sub-assignments to team members.
- Has trust issues with the quality of work each would produce.
- lack of communication skills and patience.
- was micro controlling everything.
- type A personality — competitive, aggressive, stressed out.
2) Team member 1 -(named ‘A’ )
- suffered a tragic loss of a parent and could not work due to depression.
- lack of understanding on the part of the team lead and other members pushed this member to further despondence and the performance fell.
3) Team member 2 -(named ‘B’)
- loved to work but was unhappy with the leads attitude of not allowing autonomy and own individual creativity.
- lost interest in working because of the lack of appreciation from the managers side.
4) Team member 3 -(named ‘C’)
- did not receive proper training and repeated requests to be given a mentor was notentertained.
- needed support and direction.
5) Team member 4 -(named ‘D’)
- was criticised by every team member and had developed a personal grudge against the team. This led to confrontations and tension among the members.
- Upon further discovery, it came to light that this criticism was not for work performance but of personal nature.
6) Team member 5 -(named E)
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- was a type B personality (relaxed and calm) which did not work well with the manager’s type A personality (aggressive and stressed).
After these individual separate sessions, all the team members were called for a couple of group sessions and gently made aware of the conflicts between them.
- Team member A was allowed to take an extended leave to recover and a replacement was found.
- Team member B had a discussion with the team lead and the lead agreed to give more-autonomy to B.
- Team member C was given a mentor and trained accordingly, after which C performed well.
- As for team member D, the rest of the team members were made sensitive to D’s troubles and they agreed to look past the grudges and work together. The air was cleared.
- Team member E and the team lead are attempting to understand each others personalities and there is improvement in the working relationship.
- The team lead decided to take up a communication skills course and stopped micro-controlling. He is also working through his trust issues.
Conclusion:
The team needed honest communication between them and after several group coaching sessions,they were positive that they will now be able to work together. They learnt about each others personality profile and way of working which reduced conflicts significantly and the productivity and positivity among them was at an all time high.