Working in a team, small fights are bound to happen. Agree or disagree? Please provide reasons to support your answer.
Answers
Answer: Yes, I agree that there are small fights bound to happen within a team. When you manage a team of people, you can’t always ensure that they’ll get along. Given competing interests, needs, and agendas, you might even have two people who vehemently disagree.
Ideally, you’ll be able to coach your colleagues to talk to each other and resolve their conflict without involving you, making clear that their disagreement is harmful to them and the organization. But that’s not always possible. In these situations, we believe it’s important to intervene, not as a boss but as a mediator. To be sure, you won’t be a neutral, independent mediator since you have some stake in the outcome but you’re likely to be more effective in meeting everybody’s interests — yours, theirs, and the organization’s — if you use your mediation skills rather than your authority.
Why rely on mediation and not your authority? Your colleagues are more likely to own the decision and follow through with it if they’re involved in making it. If you dictate what they should do, they will have learned nothing about resolving conflict themselves. Rather, they will have become more dependent on you to figure out their disputes for them.
Of course, there will be times when you’ll have to put aside your mediator role and decide how the conflict will be resolved.