Team Building: Conflict Resolution

Conflict resolution is the process of fixing a problem between two or more people or two or more sides in an issue. In the business world conflicts often arise for a wide array of reasons. In one case, conflict can arise when there is a difference in race, sex, age, religion, or national origin between co-workers. Another case can appear when a new group of employees is put together to work as a team on a project and seem to have trouble learning to work together. Still another can occur with personal relationships taking place within the workplace. Regardless the reasoning for the conflict, the fact remains that having a manager that is great at conflict resolution and team building will prove to be an invaluable asset to your business.

Team building is the Improving team performance by developing team working skills by using any appropriate method. Team building is used for various purposes in the business world. One of the more popular uses of this method is to orientate new groups of individuals that will be working together. They will have the chance to learn about themselves and each other on a personal level. They will also get to know about each other's strengths and weaknesses related to the workforce based on the task being attempted in the exercise. Finally, when the exercise is done, the teams as a whole will already have a win under their belts as a team, making the team morale start off at a high note.

The problem presented is a new crew brought together for the purpose of expanding the writer's events planning business. The new crew consists of ten people from all across the United States with different nationalities and different educational backgrounds. The conflict is that these people all have many years of individual experience in marketing and fundraising projects. Each individual of the group is coming to the team believing that their methods are the best possible ways to do absolutely everything in this business; and because it has worked for them over the years, they each see no other alternatives are worth considering in group projects. On a personal level, two of these members have made minor comments regarding the abilities of people of other origins prior to ever knowing who else was going to be on this team (including people of those origins they mentioned).

The desired outcome from this team building exercise will be to give the members a chance to meet each other in a non-related group task. This will provide them the chance to get to know each other on a personal level in a non-work related environment. Also, members will learn to work together as a team regardless of their differences in personal or professional backgrounds. For the benefit of the work-related team development, the group will start to learn the strengths and weaknesses of each member so that forming roles for tasks within the group will be made easier being based on performance as opposed to personal beliefs.

The Magis Events Group (the client used for this study) is primarily working with not -for-profit organizations in their business. As a result it was only seen fit that the exercise also have a charity benefit where time is donated and the end result will benefit a charity in its entirety. For this team building exercise, the Magis Events Group would be partnering with the local American Cancer Society office and area contractors to build a brand new home that would be raffled off for financial benefit to the ACS.

The team members have never been to our base city and therefore have no prior knowledge of what's available out here for them to work with to get this house built. The only thing supplied ahead for the team in the one acre plot of land that was donated by an area condo developer for the project. Therefore, the team will have to work together as a team to market the project to area contractors to get someone to agree to do the build for them for free, find suppliers to donate the materials needed to build the house, market and conduct the sales of raffle tickets for the house, manage the overall construction and furnishing of the house, and finally the selecting of the winner and deeding of the house to the winner. After which they will donate the proceeds from the event to the charity themselves.

The timeline for the build of the house would be set to only 90 days and the raffle would have a drawing date set for the upcoming Relay for Life event which would be about five months away. This creates a sense of urgency for the team to learn to put their assets on the table and work together as a team to make this huge event happen.

At the conclusion of this event, the team will have a huge sense of accomplishment both individually and more importantly as a team. They will have raised around $2 Million for a great charity in less than six months as a team! The morale for this team will be at an incredible high and the team will know how to delegate roles and trust each other for future business projects.

Team building is the Improving team performance by developing team working skills by using any appropriate method. Team building is used for various purposes in the business world. One of the more popular uses of this method is to orientate new groups of individuals that will be working together. They will have the chance to learn about themselves and each other on a personal level. They will also get to know about each other's strengths and weaknesses related to the workforce based on the task being attempted in the exercise. Finally, when the exercise is done, the teams as a whole will already have a win under their belts as a team, making the team morale start off at a high note. This team building project will be proven a very successful task.