Conflict Resolution Strategy

The conflict resolution strategy should showcase the importance and benefits

Conflict Resolution Strategy: Importance and Benefits ...(Dr Claude H. A. Simpson).

Conflicts are an integral part of the functioning and development of any team. The existence of people with various views, cultural backgrounds, and mentalities creates the basis for the clash of interests and views on a particular issue. Thus, conflict might result in the significant deterioration of the team’s effectiveness and its inability to attain existing goals. At the same time, effective conflict management and resolution might lead to improving the cooperation between individuals and ensuring they acquire an enhanced understanding of their basic needs and how to cooperate to avoid similar issues in the future. For this reason, in the healthcare sector, successful conflict management is the key to building high-performance teams and ensuring the high quality of care and services offered.

Importance of Conflicts:
Numerous investigators have shown the critical importance of conflicts and the need to resolve them. Generally, they can be considered the main forces impacting units, their performance, and opportunities to succeed (Young, 2013). The attempts to avoid conflicts might have a pernicious impact on the collective and hinder managers in achieving their goals (Williams, 1997). For this reason, avoidance or disregard are wrong tactics that might lead to the critical deterioration of relations within the collective and make further cooperation impossible. At the same time, successful conflict management requires an enhanced understanding of the differences between positions and the basic needs existing at the moment (Williams, 1997). It means that health workers should be trained to cooperate and resolve issues as a team to deliver care efficiently.

Need for Conflict Resolution:
Furthermore, the need for conflict resolution strategies is linked to the fact that most teams face this problem. According to the statistics, only 25% of teams meet the criteria for high-performance collectives, while others suffer from various issues that should be addressed (Behfar & Goldberg, 2017). It means that the ability to discover a conflict at its early stages and introduce appropriate measures for its management is essential for improved problem-solving and building a better and more engaged collective (Behfar & Goldberg, 2017). Otherwise, if little attention is devoted to the problem, it becomes more sophisticated and causes adverse impacts on outcomes, which might be critical when speaking about patients’ lives. Establishing effective conflict management and dispute resolution strategies becomes a central aspect of robust team management within the healthcare sector.

Communication:
Communication can be considered the most potent tool of conflict resolution. Thus, it implies the interchange of messages between people, which helps to cultivate a better vision of their needs and current problems (Thomas & Inkson, 2009). For healthcare, this interaction is central to attaining desired outcomes. At the same time, simple and unstructured communication might not be enough to create the basis for negotiations. It is essential to find standard language codes that simplify the exchange of thoughts and understanding (Thomas & Inkson, 2009). It is especially important for multinational teams consisting of people who might have different visions of particular codes. In this regard, negotiations aimed at conflict resolution should use specific language patterns to avoid deterioration of the situation (Thomas & Inkson, 2009). For this reason, the strategies should consider this factor and imply that sharing ideas using similar language codes is essential.

Conflict Resolution Plan:
Thus, designing a conflict-management and dispute-resolution plan for a health facility requires much effort and attention from management. First, a range of skills is needed to become an effective negotiator and create the basis for finding an agreement between parties (Hasson, 2006). Second, top management should specify roles, policies, procedures, and responsibilities, which implies direct cooperation with teams and an enhanced understanding of their peculiarities (Hasson, 2006). Best practices in conflict management are determined regarding the peculiarities of the company’s internal environment and the needs individuals have at the moment (Hasson, 2006). The given approach might be complex and require time and planning. However, it would lead to beneficial results compared to the attempts to avoid conflicts or not pay attention to them.

Benefits:
In such a way, the benefits of introducing effective conflict resolution strategies within healthcare organizations are evident. First, the avoidance strategy might lead to the deterioration of the situation and the emergence of even more complex issues. Second, successful conflict resolution creates the basis for better interactions between team members and leads to building a high-performance team that can provide care to patients more effectively. Although it might require additional resources and time, the company should focus on creating dispute resolution policies and distributing roles necessary for negotiating and making compromises. Otherwise, there is a high risk of being unable to treat patients, consider their needs, and attain high satisfaction levels.

Conclusion:
Altogether, conflicts are an integral part of any collective’s work and development. Speaking about the healthcare organization, it is critical to ensure that the avoidance strategy is not employed as it would promote adverse effects on the quality of care. Instead, by using language, similar codes, negotiation, and establishing a specific strategy for dispute resolution, top management can cultivate better collaboration within teams and improve their ability to provide necessary care. The existing research proves the idea that complicated situations should be considered as opportunities for future growth and building a better climate within teams. They help to release tension and eliminate aspects that might be irritating or problematic for other individuals. In such a way, creating a strategy for dispute resolution within the healthcare sector is a beneficial step for every company as it will guarantee that all employees will be satisfied and ready to work on complex issues together instead of avoiding them.

References
Behfar, K. & Goldberg, R. (2017). Conflict management in teams. SSRN. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2974840

Hasson, R. (2006). How to resolve board disputes more effectively. MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-resolve-board-disputes-more-effective...

Thomas, D., & Inkson, K. (2009). Cultural intelligence: Living and working globally (2nd ed.). Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc.

Williams, M. (1997). Don’t avoid conflicts – manage them. Harvard Business Review. https://store.hbr.org/product/don-t-avoid-conflicts-manage-them/U9707A

Young, D. (2013). Note on conflict management. Harvard Business Review. https://store.hbr.org/product/note-on-conflict-management/TCG316