Project managers must learn to recognize the signs and symptoms of disruptive conflict. Such signs would include poor communication among team members, a lack of openness and respect, not showing appreciation, unclear requirements, change between managers and employees, broken boundaries of social norms or groups, different backgrounds (educational, economic, cultural, political, etc.). It can lower morale, decrease productivity and creativity. So much energy can be spent on dealing with conflict that there is not enough time for other important tasks. The worst cases can disintegrate into personal stress, burnout, and workplace travesties. Once conflict has reached this stage, it will require a large amount of management time in order to deal with it. This will cause an additional decrease in productivity and efficiency rates, along with the accompanying added costs, risks, and duration delays. If left unmanaged, this type of conflict can even lead to employee sabotage and sometimes workplace violence. This position paper provides insight into qualities and social role that project manager as mediator and leader must possess because sometimes team members can\'t resolve conflicts collectively.

1. Conflict management
Kresimir Popovic Zeljko Hocenski
Siemens IT Solutions and Services PSE Institute of Automation and Process Computing
Zupanijska 21, Osijek, Croatia Kneza Trpimira 2b, Osijek, Croatia
+385 31 234 810 +385 31 224 779
kresimir.popovic@siemens.com zeljko.hocenski@etfos.hr
ABSTRACT results, or conflict can be beneficially resolved and lead to quality
final products. Therefore, learning to manage conflict is integral
Project managers must learn to recognize the signs and symptoms to a high-performance team. Conflict management is the principle
of disruptive conflict. Such signs would include poor that all conflicts cannot be resolved, but learning how to manage
communication among team members, a lack of openness and conflicts can decrease the odds of nonproductive escalation.
respect, not showing appreciation, unclear requirements, change Conflict management involves acquiring skills related to conflict
between managers and employees, broken boundaries of social resolution, self-awareness about conflict modes, conflict
norms or groups, different backgrounds (educational, economic, communication skills, and establishing a structure for
cultural, political, etc.). It can lower morale, decrease productivity management of conflict in your environment [1], [2], [3], [5], [6],
and creativity. So much energy can be spent on dealing with [7], [8], [9], [10].
conflict that there is not enough time for other important tasks.
The worst cases can disintegrate into personal stress, burnout, and 2. PROJECT MANAGER AS LEADER
workplace travesties. Once conflict has reached this stage, it will
It takes a leader to be able to handle conflict in a professional
require a large amount of management time in order to deal with
manner. A leader is someone who people respect and follow
it. This will cause an additional decrease in productivity and
through their own choice. Honestly – they are very rare.
efficiency rates, along with the accompanying added costs, risks,
Accomplished leaders have the knowledge that allows them to
and duration delays. If left unmanaged, this type of conflict can
attract, retain and motivate the people that are best suited to
even lead to employee sabotage and sometimes workplace
providing results that contribute to achieving the goal at hand. An
violence. This position paper provides insight into qualities and
established leader is able to attract quality people to the team and
social role that project manager as mediator and leader must
offer them guidance that retains them and motivation that drives
possess because sometimes team members can't resolve conflicts
them to work not only for themselves but for a group of people
collectively.
with the same goals. A profitable leader cares about the team's
success and the individual success of each team member above
the success of him/herself. A proven leader has the skills,
Categories and Subject Descriptors knowledge and mindset to motivate each member of his/her team
K.6.1 [Project and People Management]: Life Cycle, D.2.9. to give the maximum to the team's goals. Control and posture
[Management]: Life cycle, Productivity, Programming teams speak strongly to the team, who look for examples to follow, not
necessarily instructions. In other words, thriving leaders lead by
example; both in what they do and the results they produce.
General Terms Winning leaders offer skills and processes that are simple and
Management, Human Factors duplicatable. This is most easily done by providing the team with
a simple system and a step-by-step action plan that will lead to
Keywords results.
Management, leader, conflict
3. QUALITIES OF SUCCESSFUL LEADER
1. INTRODUCTION Listed below are qualities that every established leader must
Conflict may be defined as a struggle or contest between people demonstrate in order to be validated as a successful leader and
with opposing needs, ideas, beliefs, values, or goals. Conflict on earn the trust of his/her team.
teams is inevitable; however, the results of conflict are not 3.1 Communication skills
predetermined. Conflict might escalate and lead to nonproductive
Leader must be able to communicate clearly to others in a
language that they can understand on all levels in an organization,
from the most unskilled worker through to the Chief Executive.
To be able to tailor the same message depending on the people in
the audience, he must be confident, strong and use his visual
presentation skills and speak in a confident, authoritative voice.
He also must know when to stay quiet and listen to the feedback.
For example, senior executives don’t want to know all the ins and
outs - they want an executive summary. The best method of

2. conveying information to and within a team is face-to-face 3.11 Organizational
communication [4]. The project manager is the center of all project communications.
It’s his or her duty to manage project status updates through e-
3.2 Self improvement mails, telephone conferences and face-to-face meetings and put
Successful leaders pursue lifelong learning. This education
them together like pieces of a puzzle. Then the project manager
includes skills, knowledge and mindset. Leaders understand that
must input the mix of change requests coming from stakeholders
results are achieved by knowledgeable team individuals and are
and outside business environments, then manually update the
willing to share all they know with their team mates. There are no
plans email the updates to team members, report the progress to
secrets in success.
the upper management and remind employees about due dates
3.3 Take risks and overdue tasks. This painful process is then repeated on a daily
A confident leader is willing to fail in order to gain success and basis, slowing down project manager and his/her team. To
understands that perfection is never achieved. Every task has overcome this situation project manager must organize himself for
room for improvement and growth, but results can only be seen the benefit of whole team using some specialized tools which will
upon implementation and then tweaked to perfection as new skills enable workspace sharing and global notification (one of really
are developed and mastered. good tools can be found on this web page:
http://www.mindjet.com).
3.4 Integrity
A proven leader has established trust and credibility in his/her 3.12 Expects of team members only what they
organization and community. Leaders believe in themselves and can give
success. To expect more than team members can give is foolish and
3.5 Decision maker project is put at risk trying to get it. The problem comes when the
An accomplished leader is able to make clear and decisive required performance goes beyond what a team member is likely
decision. These decisions are educated, rational and made with to give, regardless of how you ask for it. Albert Einstein once
clear and spoken confidence. Confident leaders never end their said:
statements of decisions with questions (i.e.; right, okay, don't you
agree?).
3.6 Motivator “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over
Victorious leaders encourage their team to continue to work and again and expecting different results”.
put forth efforts in achieving the goals. Keeping the big picture
(goal) in front of the team and breaking the tasks down to smaller
goals will motivate individuals to remain committed and focused. To expect a different result simply by asking for the same thing
over and over again shifts the problem from the underperformer
3.7 Focus and vision project manager.
A leader must possess a very specific focus and vision, which are
able to cut through the extraneous information to distil the Questions which project manager must ask himself:
essence of a problem or a goal with a clear plan or road map of a. Offload a small amount of work to bring the player’s
how to achieve it. A vision is the big picture and should be a performance back up?
constant reminder of why any effort is being put forth.
b. Shift some team members to some other role in the
3.8 Resourceful project to better align with their skill set?
Unforeseen circumstances are typical part of project and team
members are the vital ingredient in projects, particularly when c. Do some team members need more supervision and
trying to solve problems. Non-productive team members need to adjusting their focus more frequently?
be encouraged to solve the problem by their selves while project
d. Do some team members need to be removed from the
manager is helping them.
project and returned to their business unit?
3.9 Third party opinion seeker e. What about potential consequences?
If leader is not able to bring the team members to the needed level
of performance, the brief use of a third party (advisor) must be f. What about potential consequences if I do not engage in
considered. Human resources groups and external consultancies the conflict?
can be quite effective in helping people quickly see a path to
performance. The best way would be to consider advices from g. Am I in conflict?
person(s) who are authorities in their field of profession.
h. How might I Intervene to resolve/manage the conflict?
3.10 Calm under pressure 4. DEALING WITH CONFLICT
To focus in on the problem leader must be calm in all The key issue in dealing with team conflict is for the team to
circumstances. Pressures, problems, and conflicts are a fact of life realize that the focus is not on conflict itself, but how it is
and leader who can face problems head-on and deal with them managed. The idea behind managing conflict is to handle it in a
calmly is way ahead of the game. constructive manner. Teams must learn to be confrontational

3. without destroying the team process. Research indicates that high 4.1.2 Mediation process #2
performing teams are capable of mediating their own conflicts Conflicted team members must envision one another’s views of a
while improving productivity and strengthening relationships win-win solution for the team. Recognizing the perspective of the
[12]. Teams which are not so high performing need extra push by team as whole is a critical element when arriving at a fully
leader / mediator so that business practices, operational policies, accepted solution. This becomes a meeting point between the two
or other areas that lead to the conflict can be evaluated. arguing parties.
4.1.3 Mediation process #3
If the situation escalates, a mediator is brought into the dispute to
assist both sides in reaching an agreement. This mediation step is
needed when an issue between individual members becomes
disruptive to the team and collaboration attempts are ineffective.
Each conflicted party is required to sign a documented copy of
the meeting’s discussion (MoM – Minutes Of Meeting). The
success of this step relies on the quality of mediator and the
degree to which the team trusts this individual.
4.1.4 Mediation process #4
The fourth requirement ensures that once these first three
Figure 1: Conflict path requirements are met, team members are expected to recognize
and resolve conflicts collectively without leader supervision.
On Figure 1 it is shown conflict path between two (or more) team 4.2 Destructive attitudes to avoid during
members: mediation process
a. Enter the conflict zone – team members A and B start to Here we define list of attitudes which needs to avoid between
argue team members during mediation process.
b. One of team members becomes stubborn
4.2.1 Avoiding face-to-face communication
c. The blame game – team member A blames team
Sometimes team member A doesn’t want to say anything to team
member B
member B until he explodes, and then blurt it out in an angry,
d. Actions speak louder than words - threats spoken by hurtful way.
team member A towards team member B
e. Attack & Counter Attack - threats spoken by team 4.2.2 Being defensive
member B towards team member A Defensive team members deny any wrongdoing and work hard to
avoid looking at the possibility that they could be contributing to
f. The Explosion – explosion of anger; team members do
a problem. Denying responsibility may seem to alleviate stress in
not speak to each other
the short run, but creates long-term problems when partners don’t
g. Picking up the Pieces – project manager didn’t feel listened to and unresolved conflicts and continue to grow.
intervene / mediate on time!
To prevent this unacceptable behavior project manager / leader 4.2.3 Being always right
must intervene before “The Blame Game” and impose mediation Sometimes a person can demand that his partner see things the
process as mediator. same way as he does. This attitude can be taken as personal
attack.
4.1 Mediation process
This mediation process provides the work team with skills and 4.2.4 Interruptive communication
structure for mediating their own disputes. Some people interrupt, roll their eyes, and rehearse what they’re
going to say next instead of truly listening and attempting to
4.1.1 Mediation process #1 understand their partner.
Each team member must be able to learn the appropriate
communication skills and overall mediation process. If few team 4.2.5 The Blame Game
members do not make the effort to learn the skills necessary for Some people handle conflict by criticizing and blaming the other
accepted communication, then the process is incapable of working person for the situation. There should be mutual understanding
effectively and further steps must be take, e.g. worst team and coming to an agreement or resolution that respects everyone’s
member needs to be removed from project and returned to his needs.
business unit. These communication skills include learning to
confront others, listening to other’s concerns acknowledging 4.2.6 Personal attacks
opposing perspectives, responding appropriately, and committing When one team member wants to discuss troubling issues,
to a plan of agreed action. sometimes people defensively stonewall, or refuse to talk or listen
to their partner.

4. 4.3 Doing things wrong In the very end the original project leader learned a lot about the
Here is a real life story. Once, there were two teams. One was conflict management, the ways of resolving conflict and
tasked with working with the customer to come up with a great set managing the teams in an efficient way, and I am happy to say, he
of requirements for the upcoming project. Let’s call this team: R. is now a happier person, not a constantly worried guy that he used
The other team was the team responsible for the development of to be.
features to satisfy those requirements. Let’s call this team: D.
Team R did a poor job at the beginning; because they were letting
5. CONCLUSION
The role of conflict in teams is determined by the manner in
the customer call all the shots, make all the technical decisions –
which it is managed. Conflict pervades the core of team
and the customer did not really have the proper skills. This led to
processes, and, if unaddressed it will cause project failure. The
the constant changes of requirements during the project.
leader must use advantages of the conflict mediation process to
Team D tried working with such requirements, but were improve business and operational practices of the team whenever
constantly interrupted with the team R’s change requests. Team D possible. Conflict is a fact of life and is a part of any business. It
blamed team R for the lousy job they did and so eventually after can erode your business or help improve it. Your job as a manager
attempts to have team R realize that they were not doing a great is to turn it into a learning experience for the individuals in
job with the customer and team R not getting the signals, team D conflict, the management team, and the company as a whole.
decided (unconsciously) to start playing with the project. Handle conflict expediently and fairly without allowing it to
How? Well they stopped correcting the requirements and never derail your company's objectives and mission.
considered the larger picture. They implemented the requirements
to the letter, but of course this led to the finished product to be of 6. REFERENCES
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