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Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate what we have learnt about team working
through the residential experience, as we will see conflict is an important part of the team
work thus I will try to illustrate the effects conflicts has on the effectiveness and efficiency
of individuals and team working, to do so I will refer to theory and I will support or
disconfirm the different ideas by analysing and discussing specific examples within which
I took an active part in our experience at Scalford hall.
Most of traditional views tend to associate conflict with a disruptive element in the
effectiveness of a team whereas it is also seen as being a source of creativity and
challenging of traditional view, therefore I will try to balance the different views.
Every time you bring together people from different backgrounds and culture, it is certain
that conflict will occur. That is what happened at Scalford Hall, as we were working in
team composed of students coming from many different countries, we all had different
languages, cultures and backgrounds which could increase the conflict potential.
In this context of diversity, Belbin (1970) suggest an understanding of the nature of the
group at an individual level, which is to understand which role each members hold within
a team. We all had completed the Belbin team role self perception inventory, thus we knew
our individual role preference the role which was over-represented in my team was the
implementors. I will not use belbin theory to support the different situation i have meet at
scalford hall, for the good reason that I am not convinced by it. This theory is based on a
self-perception of ourself and I am not sure that it is a relevant tool, people self perception
is often distort by how individual see them, which is very seldom what reality is.
"Common definitions of conflict tend to be associated with negative features and situations
which give rise to inefficiency, ineffectiveness or dysfunctional consequences"“ (Mullins,
1999, p 816), "There is something negative about conflict which suggests that it is
unproductive at least and possibly even destructive"“ (Cole, 2004, p 222). As we can see
the traditional view tend to see conflict as something bad for the organization and need to
be avoid. "From findings provided by studies, it was argued that conflict was a
dysfunctional outcome resulting from poor communication, a lack of openness and trust
between people,*ƒ²*ƒ"€š*ƒ‚¦"“ (Robbins, 1997, p 169-70), my experience at Scalford Hall
