Have you ever been on a team—in school or another setting—whose members either avoided conflict to the group’s detriment or engaged in destructive conflict? Explain.
I have experienced this at the college level during an academic project. It was in a Marketing class where we were put into a year-long assignment tasked with creating a product and writing a 20+ paged marketing plan. Since we were given the entire semester to do so, my group members were very hesitant on completing work until the last few weeks. This issue caused some conflict to arise between me and one group-mate on one side, and the others opposing. I had been reaching out to my group a few times in the first months of the semester to start working. My emails were professional, but you could tell after a point I was growing frustrated. It felt like a one-sided argument. Although we were a group of 6, only one group-mate responded to do work. This, to me, came off as the rest of the group avoiding conflict by simply not answering. In the long run it was pretty detrimental to our outcome. We had to rush to finish the project, including staying up nearly all night the day before presentation. There was never any apologies, or real address of the conflict, which left a sour taste to me. I believe that clear communication between a groups is important, if not most, for the projects success.
Have you ever been on a team in which you noted a problem with a teammate’s work but didn’t point it out? What stopped you from providing feedback?
Yes, in this same project as mentioned above. When writing our marketing plan I noticed multiple issues in one particular group-mates section. I remember that working with them was particularly difficult due to their lack of response, and lack of class attendance. It felt like a losing battle at a certain point which caused to fix the work rather than communicate. It likely wasn’t my best move, but it had to be made for the project to be done. What stopped me from providing feedback was a long trail of no communication and resistance to do work. It felt like even if I gave feedback, nothing would have changed. If our relationship has been different earlier on in the project, I would’ve likely talked with them. Another reason I believe I didn’t was to avoid seeming “bossy” or controlling over the projects outcome. I’ve grown to learn that caring about the outcome of your work is not “bossy”, but it requires clear communication to make it been seen as that.
