NORMAN, Okla., Feb. 15, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- One of the most fundamental challenges managers and employees face is dealing with conflict in their teams. Whether it's a team of engineers, advertising executives, or a diverse group of representatives from various organizations – teams experience conflict. On the one hand, rigorous debate and task-focused conflict should lay the foundation for great team performance. Yet, on the other hand, conflict too often distracts the team, derails task performance, and thoroughly annoys everybody. So, when does conflict help, not hurt, a team's performance?
To answer this question Bret Bradley, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Oklahoma's Price College of Business, and his coauthors, Postlethwaite, Klotz, Hamdani and Brown studied how teams that benefited from conflict were different from teams that were damaged by conflict. They discovered that what matters most is psychological safety, which occurs in teams when members trust each other and feel comfortable enough to share ideas without fear of embarrassment or punishment. Teams that were high in psychological safety were able to withstand and even thrive during conflict. In contrast, teams low in psychological safety suffered.
"It turns out that one of the most critical factors for teams to benefit from conflict is to have a shared sense of trust among teammates," says Bradley. "Without this shared understanding, conflict will damage teamwork and ultimately hinder performance." Hence, team leaders who foster this type of environment in their teams can expect performance gains from increases in task conflict.
Ranked in the top 5 percent of all U.S. undergraduate business schools based on recent ranking data, the Price College of Business is one of the nation's premier business colleges. This year, U.S. News & World Report ranks the college's undergraduate program 46th in the nation and the International Business program 16th in the nation. Additionally, the Entrepreneurship program was ranked 10th in the nation by Entrepreneur magazine and The Princeton Review.