Effective Group Problem Solving: Conflict Resolution Strategies

This discussion post analyzes a group conflict encountered during a simulated business game. The author, part of a four-member team, experienced conflict due to differing opinions and lack of a unified direction in marketing and finance decisions. The most challenging steps in the 6-step problem-solving sequence were evaluating and selecting solutions due to the absence of a designated leader. To overcome this, the author proposed quantifying decisions through voting, which initially reduced conflict but led to new issues when decisions proved incorrect. The team then adopted a strategy of mutual support, fostering effective strategies and improving their performance in the game. The author reflects on the lessons learned about resolving group conflicts and maintaining team spirit, despite not winning the game.

Chapter 9: Discussion

OVERVIEW OF GROUP CONFLICT
We have been allotted with group project where we need to play simulated business
games. We were a team of four members and each member is having own expertise area and are
from different background as well. In this game, we need to make different marketing and
finance related decision as part of earning more review and profit from that our rival team.
However, I witnessed lots of conflict due to no unity of direction. Each members wants to
implement own decision which is not accepted by others. Also, personal rivalry arises that
affected the coordination of our whole group. It gradually becomes serious group conflict that
hampered our performance.
MOST DIFFICULT OUT OF 6-STEPS
From the 6-steps, most difficult steps to implement in this solutions are step 4 “evaluate
solutions” and step 5 “select best solution”. These two steps are difficult to implement because
there is no leader or assigned authority who can actually evaluate and select the solutions (Beebe,
2015). Since, all team members are at same level therefore no one is ready to accept the solution
given by other member and hence the conflict continues. It is evident that all team members are
giving their own solution to reduce this conflict, which signifies that we are able to reach at step
3 of the process i.e. “identify possible solutions”. Moreover, there are no fix criteria to evaluate
the solutions that received from my peer members and therefore we were not able to choose the
best solution out of it (Spaho, 2013). Considering this, it is required that there must be some
senior or authority who can actually evaluate and choose best solution in order to effectively
implement those 6-steps (Saeed et.al., 2014).
MY STRATEGY TO OVERCOME THE CHALLENGES
In order to avoid conflict, I have given the idea to quantify the decisions so that it can be
implemented. For this, I asked everyone to vote on the decisions that been given by peer
members. From this, decisions which will be given highest vote will be chosen. This strategy has
helped me and my team to reduce the conflict situation to a certain extent. Now, we are in a
situation where we were making decision mutually without any conflict. However, another issues
arises from this solution is that if the chosen decision proved wrong in game, then the member
who was not agreed for that decision earlier gets annoy on others. In order to overcome this
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challenge, we decided that we should support each team member in every decision. This has
helped us in framing effective strategies and hence we were able to progress in simulated game
in effective manner. However, we have not won that game but we surely learnt about resolving
group conflicts and to maintain the team spirit irrespective of situation (Hamilton, 2007).
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REFERENCES
Beebe, A. S. (2015). Communicating in Small Groups: Principles and Practices. Pearson.
Hamilton, C. (2007). Communicating for Results: A Guide for Business and the Professions. 8th
Ed. Cengage Learning.
Saeed, T., Almas, S., Anis-ul-Haq, M., & Niazi, G. S. K. (2014). Leadership styles: relationship
with conflict management styles. International Journal of Conflict Management, 25(3),
214-225.
Spaho, K. (2013). Organizational communication and conflict management. Management-
Journal of Contemporary Management Issues, 18(1), 103-118.
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