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team members agreed that this type of team conflict ensured that work didn’t progress too far without checks and balances and ultimately resulted in a better product.3

Conflict can have positive consequences, such as enhancing creativity or fostering integrative solutions that reflect many points of view. Alternatively, conflict can thwart a team’s effectiveness and performance.

In this chapter, we distinguish different types of conflict in teams. We describe dif- ferent styles and methods of conflict resolution. We discuss minority versus majority conflict in teams. We focus on specific interventions that teams and their leaders can take to proactively manage conflict.

RELATIONSHIP, TASK & PROCESS CONFLICT

There are three distinct types of conflict: relationship, task, and process conflict (see Exhibit 8-1).4

RELATIONSHIP CONFLICT

Relationship conflict is personal, defensive, and resentful. Also known as A-type con- flict, emotional conflict, or affective conflict,5 it is rooted in anger, personal friction, personality clashes, ego, and tension. This is the type of conflict that most team leaders and team members try to avoid. Relationship conflict is more depleting and exhausting than other types of conflict.6 Consider when two top executives at Common Form Inc., held different views about when a product should launch. After weeks of tension, the conversation got heated and more confrontational, and the product launch was even further delayed.

Relationship conflict is not always expressed via open shouting matches. In fact, some people go to great lengths to avoid the overt expression of conflict. For example, Argyris describes a case in which lower-level managers identified a number of serious production and marketing problems in their company.7 They told the middle manag- ers, and after the middle managers were convinced that the situation described by the lower managers actually was true, they began to release some of the bad news, but they did so carefully, in measured doses. They managed their communications carefully to make certain they were “covered” if upper management became upset. The result was

3England, L. (2015). What Apple employees really think about the company’s internal corporate culture. Business Insider. businessinsider.com 4Jehn, K. A. (1995). A multimethod examination of the benefits and detriments of intragroup conflict. Administrative Science Quarterly, 40, 256–282; Jehn, K. A., & Mannix, E. A. (2001). The dynamic nature of conflict: A longitudinal study of intragroup conflict and group performance. Academy of Management Journal, 44(2), 238–251; Behfar, K. J., Peterson, R. S., Mannix, E. A., & Trochim, W. M. K. (2008). The critical role of conflict resolution in teams: A close look at the links between conflict type, conflict management strategies, and team outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(1), 170–188; Peterson, R. S. (1997). A directive leadership style in group decision making can be both virtue and vice: Evidence from elite and experimental groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(5), 1107–1121. 5Guetzkow, H., & Gyr, J. (1954). An analysis of conflict in decision-making groups. Human Relations, 7, 367–381. 6Halevy, N., Chou, E. Y., & Galinsky, A. D. (2012). Exhausting or exhilarating? Conflict as threat to interests, relationships and identities. Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, 48(2), 530–537. 7Argyris, C. (1977b). Organizational learning and management information systems. Harvard Business Review, 55(5), 115–125.

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