Communication and Conflict Resolution

In the current global competitive market, companies utilize high-performance teams as the driver to a competitive position. An effective team is aligned to the organization’s mission and vision, solid ground rules expectations, a rigid conflict resolution strategy, and a robust leadership system. That is, the company has a high-performance team charter. Besides, teammates have mastered effective communication, conflict resolution, and collaboration strategies through interpersonal skills and technologies used in the company. The development of a team proceeds through formation, storming, norming, and performing stages.

Team Charter Recommendations

Given that a team is already structured and members identified, a team charter may be developed. In the team development cycle, ground rules and expectations are documented during the forming stage (Stuart, 2014). For a team of not more than fifteen members, they may brainstorm and come up with the rules that are agreeable to all of them. For more than fifteen members, a world café exercise may apply to develop and harmonize the ground rule applicable for the team. It is critical that all members agree to all the rules or at least believe in their significance regarding the team’s goals for maximizing efficiency. As the name suggests, ground rules are the blueprint for the team’s behavioral conduct, and practice guidelines to ensure the team is functional. The ground rules harmonize personalities, personal expectations, and experiences among team members. The three aspects might lead to over-reliance or neglect of some members due to their expectations or personalities, where ground rules are not utilized. Besides, ground rules eliminate chances of dysfunction to a team, which may arise from distrust, conflicts, disregard of the significance of results, and lack of commitment and accountability.

In organizations, teams are prone to conflicts in the course of their life cycle. Hospital teams suffer from interprofessional conflicts since members come from different professions within the hospital. During a conflict, the resolution process may entail identifying the issue, defining the real problem, allowing equal involvement into the problem among the team members, accepting responsibility, and apologizing. At the core of conflict resolution, members should take note of their emotional quotient, to avoid subjective decision making, and accept correction or understanding (Beunza, 2012). Besides, team members must be willing to work together and accommodate each other without compromise to avoid or resolve conflicts.

It is inarguable that a team requires a robust leadership structure to develop and function in its lifecycle. Team leaders are critical as they lead the members towards the achievement of the team’s vision and mission and maintains the course of the team within its ground rules. While the selection of team leaders may be challenging, an ideal leader is accepted by most or all team members, is strategic, and has a high social character (van de Riet, Berghout, Buljac-Samardžić, van Exel & Hilders, 2019). That is, priorities the team’s interests during the execution of tasks and decision making have strong collaboration and communication skills, and all members are confident in their leadership styles. Otherwise, the leader may be considered ineffective and might cause the team to lose focus of its goals, suffer conflicts, or be dysfunctional.

Communication Strategies and Collaboration

In hospital teams, interpersonal collaboration and communication are critical in solving medical issues. It involves communication and collaborative decision making, which motivates a sharing of ideas towards solving a healthcare problem (Bridges, Davidson, Soule Odegard, Maki & Tomkowiak, 2011). Some effective collaboration strategies are effective communication, strategic conflict management, team leadership, goal-oriented practice, and a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities. Effective communication has no barriers, has desired privacy, and is timely. With strategic conflict management, member maintains their efficacy despite the emergence of the crisis. Besides, focusing on the team goals in awareness of roles and responsibilities eliminates personal interests and maintains collaboration. De Vreede, Antunes, Vassileva, Gerosa & Wu (2016) explain that a company may invest in information technologies to maximize communication and collaboration within a team. For instance, a social network or a cloud source team member to focus on their roles and evaluate their performance against team expectations.

Communication in a team may be through e-mail, text, voice mail, and face-to-face, among others. Each communication strategy has its benefits and limitations within a team. For instance, when using an e-mail, text, or voice mail, the message is shared and may be available to the receiver for a long period. That increases privacy and allow reference in the future. In contrast, face to face communication has limited privacy since someone might be listed in the conversation. It is also prone to forget messages delivered by face-to-face since storage is subject to human memory. However, face-to-face communication is faster and allows clarification of messages, unlike the former strategies. The choice of a communication strategy depends on the urgency, and deed for privacy or detailed explanation within a team.

To sum up, a hospital team requires a robust charter to have maximum efficiency. It requires the identification of ground rules to guide members in achieving the team’s goals. Team leaders are preferably strategic, social, and acceptable by members. They help in solving conflicts through various conflict resolution strategies. Besides, a team must have efficient communication and collaboration strategies to meet the performance required.

References

Beunza, J. (2012). Conflict resolution techniques applied to interprofessional collaborative practice. Journal Of Interprofessional Care, 27(2), 110-112. doi: 10.3109/13561820.2012.725280

Bridges, D., Davidson, R., Soule Odegard, P., Maki, I., & Tomkowiak, J. (2011). Interprofessional collaboration: three best practice models of interprofessional education. Medical Education Online, 16(1), 6035. doi: 10.3402/meo.v16i0.6035

de Vreede, G., Antunes, P., Vassileva, J., Gerosa, M., & Wu, K. (2016). Collaboration technology in teams and organizations: Introduction to the special issue. Information Systems Frontiers, 18(1), 1-6. doi: 10.1007/s10796-016-9632-3

Stuart, A. (2014). Ground rules for a high performing team. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2014—North America, Phoenix, AZ. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

van de Riet, M., Berghout, M., Buljac-Samardžić, M., van Exel, J., & Hilders, C. (2019). What makes an ideal hospital-based medical leader? Three views of healthcare professionals and managers: A case study. PLOS ONE, 14(6), e0218095. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218095