Conflicts in a team setting can happen for a number of reasons including;

1. Personality differences. People come from different backgrounds and experiences, which play a huge role in shaping their personalities. When we fail to understand or accept the differences in each other’s personalities, problems arise in a team For example, if one person may possess a straightforward personality that results in him speaking whatever is on his mind, even if the timing is inappropriate. This may offend a team member that does not possess the same type of personality.
2. Poor communication. Poor communication is often one of the main causes of conflict between team members. This can happen because of a difference in communication styles or a failure to communicate. For example, a manager might reassign an employee’s task to the employee’s co-worker, but fail to communicate the reassignment to the employee. This could cause the employee to feel slighted, which can transform into animosity among the two employees and the manager.
3. Biases: Bias is defined as an inclination or prejudice in favor of or against a person or a group. A bias can sometime be the root cause of a conflict because it may result in favoring one party over another. An example of this would be if your boss were to be biased towards women and he displays that by giving the more important tasks to the males in the office, this might result in a conflict.
4. Unclear roles: If you examine some conflicts carefully, especially the ones in a workplace, you will find that this might be one of the most common, deep-rooted reason for why people have conflicts. When there is no clarity in your role or when the management has not spent considerable time in discussing specific expectations with its team members, chances of conflict are very high. People might not have a high level sense of what they are supposed to be doing, stay motivated or even establish a sense of ownership of the task at hand.

REFLECTION QUESTION: 

Think of an example from your own experience, where a conflict occurred in a group setting. What do you think was the cause? Share the possible reasons in the comments below, not limited to the reasons mentioned in the text above.

Keep this example in mind as you will be answering another question based on it in the coming lecture.