Resolving conflicts within your team

No matter the project size, when the going gets rough, conflicts seem to rear their ugly heads. As a Project Manager, its your responsibility to ensure that the projects get through on time and on budget, and sometimes the only barriers to this success is your team. Blame egos, blame bad reporting structures, blame whatever you'd like - conflicts are unavoidable. Thankfully, we have a reminder today on how to resolve these conflicts with Gina Abudi of ProjectSmart.co.uk. Abudi writes, that a great starting point is to sit down with the team members and listen to their complaints.

Check out Abudi's outline for the discussion:

Schedule a first meeting with the individuals who are having the conflict to discuss:

• What is (are) the issue(s)? Get it all out on the table - let them vent.
• What are their perspectives?
• Work with the parties to develop criteria for solutions to their conflict.
• Ask them to think about what they can do to get past the issue, or put it aside, based on the criteria for resolution they agreed to, in order to move forward with working together. What alternatives exist? This should happen overnight - let them sleep on it.

Abudi offers that subsequent meetings may be needed in order to resolve this conflict within your team. Be sure to check out the article for details.

Resolving Project Team Conflicts

How do you handle conflicts within your team? Let us know on Twitter @Project_World