Article Review
When teams or groups work together to attain shared goals and objectives, it’s quite common to get into differences, disagreements or conflicts; conflicts create tension in a group. It is not necessary that all conflicts are bad and must be avoided. Although conflicts do create emotional stress and tend to waste energy, money, and time, it is not necessary for all conflicts to be bad. Conflicts that lead to negative consequences are known as dysfunctional conflicts. These conflicts lead to unproductivity and tend to waste the resources of a team. Such conflicts create emotional stress in a team. However, one should not believe or perceive conflicts as something negative. Conflicts can also lead to positive consequences. Managers believe that developing positive attitudes towards conflicts helps in solving and resolving them much more quickly. Conflicts lead to the evaluation of ideas or the determining of ways to solve a particular problem. Functional conflicts are sometimes necessary for idea generation. Cooperation, problem-solving and high productivity. Functional conflicts require team members to think and ponder deeply on an issue, thus coming up with effective solutions to a given problem.
Conflicts either lead to positive or negative consequences. Some positive consequences of conflict include commitment, cooperation, idea sharing, understanding of others, development of better and improved goals, more hard work for the resolution of conflicts, better interpersonal relationships and more awareness about the task being assigned and goals to be attained. Some negative consequences of conflicts include stress, anxiety, wastage of resources and lack of commitment towards shared goals. Conflicts can be resolved through various techniques. Some techniques include compromising, postponing or avoiding. Conflicts in an organization may arise due to a lack of understanding of goals and objectives to be achieved, confusion, complex organizational structure, ambiguity or lack of resources available to attain a particular goal (Richardson, 1991).
There are many ways through which conflicts can be resolved. However, communication plays an integral role in resolving conflicts and making them much more productive. Aggressive behaviour towards conflicts and the use of harsh words can make conflicts worse. Effective communication is required to manage conflicts productively. Human beings communicate to convey their message and ideas, demonstrate their understanding, or express their ideas, feelings, and suggestions. Difficulties arise when people are unable to communicate effectively. Communication can either resolve conflicts or create them. Good communication creates an understanding for the party that is receiving the message. Understanding leads to the resolution or avoidance of conflicts. Ambiguities and confusion or misinterpretation of the message sent by one party to another create frustration and conflicts among members of both parties. According to Russell Ackoff, understanding comes through the possession of knowledge. Knowledge is gained through information, and information is extracted from data. Thus, a lack of knowledge creates misunderstandings, which leads to conflicts. Thus, the article points out that effective communication plays an integral role in minimizing and avoiding conflicts or in making conflicts much more productive.
The article presents various communication models to provide a deeper understanding of how communication leads to various consequences. The articles combine’ the research of well-known researchers to demonstrate the idea that effective communication plays an integral role in minimizing conflicts or making them productive. However the author of the article believes that effective communication cannot be achieved in a matter of minutes, it requires hard work and effort. The author also points out that ineffective communication can lead to ambiguities, confusion, and misunderstanding, thus causing dysfunctional conflicts. Communication difficulties arise when one party is unable to send its message to the other party, or the other party perceives it differently. Communication difficulties can be avoided through effective communication techniques (Hu, 2008).
References
Hu, J. J. (2008). The Law of Requisite Cognitive Capacity in human communication, conflict resolution, and cooperation solicitation. Emergence: Complexity and Organization.
Richardson, J. M. (1991). Management of conflict in organizations. Physician Executive, 17(1).
