Reference no: EM132226804

Give opinion: A recent conflict situation I have experienced at work was an instance in which a deadline for a high priority project was moved up sooner than had been originally planned for. While my contribution to the project was limited and easy to deliver by the adjusted deadline, the pieces that needed completion by the marketing department and the policy and implementation group were much more complicated and it was evident that the liaisons for both of these groups were under pressure and in conflict as to the feasibility of the new deadline. This was an example of intergroup conflict, as described by Baack (2012), “Intergroup conflicts emerge when disagreements about goals, differences of opinion about which group should be assigned a project or task…become the focus of attention” (p. 243). The communication process had a negative impact in this particular situation and escalated the conflict, in my opinion. The individual points of contact for the marketing and policy groups communicated mainly via email, which made reading the sender’s tone much harder to decipher. Furthermore, they were unable to utilize any nonverbal cues or have a more conversational style to the discussion that a phone or face-to-face interaction would have allowed. From the email communication, the tone of the interaction was curt, tense, and confrontational. In order to improve the communication in this type of instance, I would recommend that the two points of contact attempt to discuss the conflict either over the phone or face-to-face, so that they may speak directly with each other rather than via a group email. In addition, I believe management of the two involved departments should have been looped in to the conversation, as the pressure felt by the two involved points of contact in conflict was likely being applied from higher levels of management.