January Downtown Luncheon Meeting
By Dean Cheatham, PMP, CPHIMS
PMI Atlanta’s first Downtown Luncheon in 2010 kicked off with Peggy Joyner, PMI Atlanta President, greeting the attendees and bringing attention to the chapter's first Breakfast with the Board meeting, which will be on March 19th. The first fifty registrants for the event will get a free breakfast with the board, and registration will be available online in the near future.
Dan Tuten, PMP, MCSE
Managing Conflict in Virtual Environments
First off, what do we mean by virtual settings? Twenty years ago, virtual meetings were virtually unheard of. Today, though, almost every organization has virtual teams / components in one form or another: e-mail, conference calls, web conferences, etc. So, while conflict itself is nothing new, avoiding and resolving conflict in a virtual environment is new.
At its most basic, there are three stages of conflict:
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Focus on self, problem, and other (the threatening person)
In this stage, there is still a chance for a win / win because the offended / conflicted party is still able to think about the “other.”
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Focus on self and problem
In this stage, a win / win is no longer possible because the conflicted person is now only capable of focusing on themselves and the problem at hand. You might resolve the problem, but you’ll have to roll back the conflict a level in order to secure a win / win scenario . . . and that’s very difficult to do.
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Focus on self
According to Dan, “wars happen at this stage!” That’s because the conflicted individual can only focus on their position. The problem and the offending person no long fit into the equation.
So, what is the take away from these three stages? Avoid conflict! And, if you can’t avoid conflict, address it as quickly as possible.
Those are easy sentiments, so how does one avoid and resolve conflict in virtual environments where an aggrieved person may simply go quiet and not participate as much on a conference call? What can help you correctly identify that scenario for what it is?
Have a communication plan! You remember that from the PMBOK, right? It only takes up about 1,000,000 words (give or take) in the book! Talk to your team members and find out how they want to be communicated with: bullet points, summaries, all the details – verbally, e-mail, etc. Once you learn how they like to communicate, learn what they like to communicate – do they want to build consensus before moving forward or do they want to “just do” and leave consensus building at the door?
By understanding what and how your team members prefer to communicate, the project manager will stand a much better chance of avoiding and resolving the conflicts that are part of any [project] team.
Join your fellow members at PMI Atlanta’s Lunch and Dinner meetings. You'll get to network, learn from your fellow project managers, and learn from the talented presenters we have lined up each month. The topics for the lunch and dinner meetings are always available on the chapter Web site’s Events page.
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