Artifact Summary – Discussion Post: Negative Team Experiences
The artifact presented for this program outcome is a proposal written for course OL 624 – Collaboration & Teambuilding. The program outcome my presented work represents is outcome number 6 “Evaluate the ethical and legal implications of one’s actions.” (Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, 2018). One of the course objectives this presentation addressed was “Analyze and apply appropriate conflict management approaches.” (Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, 2018). The artifact presented, Coming Together, is a discussion post. The topic, Negative Team Experiences, was a continued discussion regarding conflict management.
Managing conflict within an organization can be challenging. Typically, your colleagues are a large part of your day so keeping the peace with them can be very important. Besides managing conflict within the organization, often people are having to deal with conflict outside their organization especially when collaborating with another entity. The artifact describes a situation I came across when having an issue with another organization during a collaborative project. The conflict management skills learned in the program helped to bring a new perspective. Ultimately, the project was successful, and both parties were satisfied with the result.
The artifact is presented after the summary references.
References
Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota. (2018, July). 2018-2019 SGPP catalog & student handbook, Organizational Leadership, M.A. Retrieved from http://catalog.smumn.edu/index.php
Coming Together
Our non-profit came together with a post-secondary institution to work on a project. This was a new endeavor for both of us which we had been planning on implementing separately. Together we discovered we had enough money from grants to fund sixty educators in an eleven county region to experience an industry boot camp. The educators are scheduled to visit two to four companies over a four day period. We decided to join forces to prevent overlap of effort in the region among the industry partners.
Working out the kinks of who would do what part of the organizing was a challenge. In the end, it was decided I would lead the industry engagement and my counterpart at the institution would handle the participant application process. There were challenges throughout the planning process because the team from the institution felt as though they were being left out of the conversations with industry. In fact, I was leaving them out of all of the conversations until I had a confirmed appointment with an industry partner to which they were invited. They would often push the industry partners too much, not understanding that sometimes you may need to wait for a response. There was a great deal of frustration related to me from industry contacts because they were being contacted by too many people regarding the boot camp program. The partners were threatening to pull out.
Ultimately, I worked with my contact at the institution to re-establish our mutual purpose. There were too many conversations around what each of us was thinking instead of why we had decided to come together (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switzler, 2012). There have been other hiccups throughout the planning of this important endeavor but they resolve much more quickly now. Once we began to look at each step in this new process as a problem to solve together, we were able to consider each other allies, not adversaries (Thomas, 2002).
Patterson, K., Grenny, J. McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2012). Crucial conversations tools for talking when stakes are high (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.
Thomas, K. W. (2002). Introduction to conflict management: Improving performance using the TKI. Mountain View, CA: CPP.
Laura's Leadership Portfolio 