5 Ways To Avoid Team Conflicts

Define Clear Role and Responsibilities

Defining clear role and responsibility is fundamental to building healthy teams. RACI Matrix is a good way to identify responsibilities, accountability, consulting and informational roles.

Define Clear Reporting Structure

Once the role and responsibilities are defined the next logical step is to define a clear reporting structure. Each team member should understand the chain of command and follow the same. Avoid creating dotted line reporting which brings ambiguity in the reporting hierarchy. Be clear and very specific.

Effective Communication

Team conflicts arise mostly due to unclear role and responsibilities and unclear reporting structure. What makes things worse is absence of crisp and clear communication channel path. This adds to confusion and creates chaos. Defining right mode, frequency, channel/ path are very crucial in managing global teams. This helps the project manager to be in control and in general be on top of things.

Set Right Expectations

Once you have defined clear role and responsibilities, reporting structure and effective communication channels then the next logical step is to set right expectations. It is key to avoiding team members from overstepping beyond their role and responsibilities. It also helps to avoid under performance.

Share Feedback

Be open in sharing feedback. Both positive and critical feedback should be shared openly with all team members. This is the only way all team members will understand their areas of improvement. If two or more team members don't get along then one on one discussions and targeted group discussions should be used as tools to share real time feedback. This will help build healthy relationships within the team members.