Hi Brad,
Thank you for sharing your challenge with us. You have a very interesting
situation and have received a lot of great suggestions. Consequently, I,
and I imagine others, have learned some great strategies for setting up the
type of session your are planning.
Nevertheless, I wanted to draw your attention to and expand on a common
theme from three of the previous responses. Jane Seiling, Ivan Blanco, and
Jim Clawson each briefly raised the possibility that the team may NOT be
necessary. Indeed, managers have been known to assemble teams because it
seemed like a good idea, only to generate unnecessary conflict and destroy
productivity in the process (e.g., the Levi Stauss Case).
Therefore, it seems that you may be able to better address the conflict by
ruling out potential root causes and gaining an adequate understanding of
dynamics behind the members' interactions before doing anything else. Even
if learning the following does not help you determine the main problem, it
may help you understand each member's perspective and develop your session:
1. The purpose of the team:
a. What are their objectives?
b. How is success defined?
c. Is this an on-going or temporary activity?
2. The interdependencies of the team:
a. Who needs whom for what?
b. Is the team structure appropriate for the type of interdependence?
c. Is each member equally interested in the same outcomes?
Understanding the interdependencies and interests is critical. If there are
no interdependencies (i.e., lack of common interests), then the conflict is
structurally based. As Ivan previously stated, send them home - the
person(s) who need to change are the ones who mandated the team.
If there are common interests, however, then your objective is to bring them
into focus. The bulk of the previous recommendations seem to focus on this
latter scenario, so I will stop there.
Good luck and thanks again for sharing.
Jason
Jason R. Pierce
Doctoral Candidate
Organizational Behavior
Kelley School of Business
http://mypage.iu.edu/~jrpierce/
jrpierce@indiana.edu