Have you ever done a down and dirty calculation of the price of conflict in your team or organization? When calculated realistically, it becomes abundantly clear that conflict inflicts a tremendously high cost to your organization. And once you have calculated the financial cost, don’t stop there. Take a look at the damage employee morale (productivity, absenteeism, turnover) and customer loyalty (employees stressed with conflict are just not that nice). But there is still more impact – employees in conflict experience a significant decrease in thinking and creativity. And if that is not enough to motivate you – I think we can all agree that it’s just plain miserable to work or live in constant conflict.

So conflict is an expensive and stressful problem to have  – but have you ever tried to resolve conflict in a complex, dynamic organization? One hardly knows where to begin right?

Personally, I have come to love working with people in conflict as the growth and new insights that come out of the resolution process are often nothing short of transformational. That’s why I have chosen Team Conflict as my first topic for my blog.

You can look forward to this series walking you through the key components of conflict, why it’s so hard to resolve, and what steps you can take to help you,, your team and/or your organization get past it.

In this first blog, let’s lay out the two main culprits of organizational or team conflict:

1)   Reinforcing Loop of Conflict

2)   Environmental Forces Leading to Conflict

Following are two graphics that lay the foundation for our exploration of conflict. Take a look and see if you recognize these as core to team or organizational conflict. If these don’t ring true, or you have additional insights or a comment I would love to hear from you.

Graphic 1 – Reinforcing Loop of Conflict

© Jen Joyce 2015

Graphic 2 – Environmental Forces Leading to Conflict

© Jen Joyce 2015

Stay tuned for my blog series on the dynamics and solutions of conflict. If you would like to be added to my blog list, please send me your contact information.