Management Skills Preparation Questions

Management Skills

April 21, 2014

Week 12 – Preparation questions.

Question 1- Answer

In the MGI team the A-conflict appears to be more frequent. The team members are very different from each other. The differences of culture, language, age, and experience create many conflicts in this team. The team is trying to write the business plan for weeks, but it cannot because some members have affective conflict, the Type-A. This type of conflict is focused on personalized anger or resentment, usually directed at specific individuals rather than specific ideas. The cultural difference may have been the start of the conflict. At the beginning, the student, Henry, feels that the group was developing a confrontational posture of “Dana and him versus the Russians”. I believe Henry was supporting the team. However, Sasha and Dana had many personal conflicts. They never agree with each other. The team could try to focus on the project only. They could channel discussion from A-type conflict toward C-type conflict and keep a sense of where the discussion are going. In addition, they could establish a leader for the team, so the team leader should act when A-type conflict begins to arise.

Question 2 - Answer: The first scenario: I was part of a team and we had to write a 10 pages paper for one project. Our team was formed by four students. Each student was supposed to write 2 pages and to put the work together. The conflict arose when we had our meeting to organize the paper. One student wrote 6 pages to put in the project. I asked him to edit the paper because we need only 2.5 pages from each student. This student became angry with me. He said he did a good job, he researched a lot, his paper was perfect, and he could not change the size of the paper. I said we could see together one way to organize the paper, but the student was not satisfied. He wanted to discuss more and it was beginning to change the focus of the discussion to personal side. I...