Diversity and Conflict: Managing Personality Traits in Organizational Settings

This reflective essay discusses how diversity can lead to conflict within teams and how proper knowledge of personality traits can mitigate such issues in organizational settings. The essay analyzes psychological traits using efficient tools such as Myers-Briggs personality test, DISC model, Johari window and TA models. The impact of personality on behaviors, understanding and responses to situations is also discussed. Personal examples are shared to find solutions through these models. Subject: Psychology, Course Code: PSY101, College/University: Not mentioned.

Running head: DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT
DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author's Note:

1DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT
The aim of this reflective essay is to discuss diversity to be the reason of conflict within
the teams and how proper knowledge of the personality traits of the others can mitigate such
issues in the organizational setting (Ten et al. 2015). This essay will discuss the importance of
different psychological traits of the people working in a team with different diversity. These
psychological traits will be analyzed though some efficient tools such as Myers-Briggs
personality test, DISC model, Johari window and TA models. Based on these tools, the impact of
personality on the behaviors, understanding and responses to the situations will also be
discussed. This essay will be sharing personal examples centering round one particular situation
and finding solutions through these models.
This particular conflict is associated with the new project where there were only ten
members in a group for operating in a group project of the company within two months. In this
project, I was the project managers who was responsible to incorporate the ideas of these group
members and achieve the target of this projects within the assignee time. However, the conflict a
situation arrived when the group members compliant about the inability about some of the group
members due to their ethnic and cultural background. As the attitude, behavior, understand and
communication all depend upon the cultural and national background of the people, the
cooperation level of these members did not match with the rest. However, it was acritical
situation as I was responsible to complete the project within two months and the complete
assistance of these members were needed, I used Myers-Briggs personality test, DISC model,
Johari window and TA models to solve this problem. These models have helped me and my
group members to identify our personal traits and improve the collaboration quality as efficiently
as possible.

2DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT
The Transactional Analysis or TA model is one of the major tools that I applied to myself
as well as my group members. This model reveals that there are three ego states present in the
human psychology and each of the individuals comes under one particular ego state that decides
how they will behave and act with the others. These three ego states include, parent state or the
taught state, an adult state or the thought state and the child state or the felt state. The people
with similar ego state can communicate or collaborate efficiently with one another but the real
problem take place when the different ego states communicate one another. Despite the fact that
there are some factors common but these common factors do not help the individuals to ease the
criticality. The people having parent ego state have this state as they are formed by he values and
beliefs that are already imposed upon them (Wu and Lee 2017). These people are dominating
and forceful on the others and direct others to follow their path. They have patronizing gestures
and impatient body language which affect the other ego states intensely. The child ego state is
based on the internal reactions and sentiments to the external events. The emotional quality of
these people is high and gets dominated by the other two ego states as they remain uncertain
much of the time. In most of the cases the body language of these people needs more
improvement so that they can effectively fit the business requirements. Finally, the adult state is
the more dependable ego state as these people are able to form opinions and make decisions
based on information (Leutner et al. 2014). The people with adult ego state is open, clam and
composed which help them to control the other two ego states efficiently. Hence, I first let the
group members identify their ego state and find out the root of the problems. This tool helped me
to motivate them to start communicating with one another effectively with adult ego state so that
critical issues do not affect the project.

3DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT
Johari Window is another efficient tool that helps the individuals to identify their open
and hidden traits and qualities. This tool has four window pane or cells namely, Façade or
hidden, open or area, bind spot and unknown. There are some adjectives or qualities also that fits
in these four cells. The qualities in the open cell are known to both the individual as well as the
people who communicate with them or understand them. The hidden cell allows the qualities of
the individuals to identify the qualities about which only the individual has the knowledge but
the people around him or her do not know (Baron, Franklin and Hmieleski 2016). The blind spot
qualities are those about which the individual does not know anything but the people know or
understand him know greatly and finally the unknown cell allows those qualities about which
neither the individual not the people around him have any knowledge. Johari Window helped
myself to know my hidden or bind spot qualities based on which I usually respond in a critical
situation. This also helped my fellow group members to identify theirs so that they can change
their weaknesses into strength and match their personality in the organizational context.
DISC model or dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness model mainly
deal with the behavior and task or people orientation of the individuals. The influence, steadiness
factors are more associated with those people who are more people oriented and capture the
personal qualities like enthusiasm, optimism, patience, accommodating and humbleness (Abbas
et al. 2014). These people are more accustomed with diversity in the group and do not feel
problem with the diverse ideology at the time of work. On the contrary, the people with high
dominance and conscientiousness qualities are more focusses on the tasks. They are forceful,
direct, result oriented, analytical, and reserved yet systematic ad strong willed (Siu, Cheung and
Lu 2015). This is the reason why the conflict started to affect the group as these people do not
match themselves with the ideas of the others and more direct to share their comments. Based on

4DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT
this personality traits, I decided to distribute the works among the group member in such a way
they do not depend upon the ideas of the other and if they need so, they would have to ask me as
a project manager for all the details. This effectively reduced the effect of conflict among the
team members.
Myers-Briggs personality model is another effective tool to identify the personality traits
of the people. This model also has four scales such as extroversion and introversion, sensing and
intuition, thinking and feeling and finally judging and perception scales. The EI or extroversion
and introversion scale decide whether the person prefer to communicate other the external
environment or not and whether he depends on the self-discovery of things and then make
decisions (Bouckenooghe, Zafar and Raja 2015). This scale assisted me to identify the
communication gap in the members of the group which I needed to mitigate within a limited
period of time. The judging and perception scale deals with the people’s focus on proper
identification of method and willingness to work out the task. This scale has helped me to
identify which of the group members are interested to judge all the aspects of their
responsibilities and who depend on the perception only to do the task. Thus, I identified the
group members who believe in purposefulness and preference of organizations of plans. Based
on this revelation I distributed responsibilities of tasks among the members without
discriminating based on their cultural an ethnic background.
The thinking and feeling scale determine the decision-making process of the people. The
people with thinking qualities, do not rely on the values and beliefs but use logical criteria to
make decisions and act upon them (Newman et al. 2014). On the contrary, the people with
feeling nature make decisions depending upon their beliefs and values hence their decisions do
not get logical base and firmness. This scale thus helped me to identify the logical people whose

5DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT
decisions were to be depended upon. The sensing and intuition scale revolve round the idea that
the people gather information form the external sources though their senses or their intuitions.
The people who depended upon their intuitions not always helped them to understand all the
matters related to the project but on the other hand, the sensing people listen to others and see
things so that they can gain knowledge and make decision according to rh need of the situation.
In order to come out of the conflict I used these personality scales effectively so that I can mange
every situation in the project.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the four tools are effective to identify the personality
traits of the people and identify the psychological causes of the conflicts. Thus, proper
undertaking of these personality factors is important to know so that self-awareness of the people
increases and help them to manage their ideology and preferences. These tools also supportive of
understanding the skills and expectation of the project managers as these helps to find quick
answer to all complicated issues associated with response to diversity.

6DIVERSITY AND CONFLICT
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