I was surprised how common sense it seems to have a proactive conversation with your team to preempt conflict and how rarely in my life and career have I ever been a part of this. Even considering my graduate coursework thus far and group experiences, I have had only one class where we had this kind of conversation before starting the assignment. It was a graded required discussion. As discussed in the "How to Preempt Team Conflict" article, I have seen firsthand how misjudging behavior and not having those conversations can lead to conflict. For example, a dispute arose at my work where employees felt they were answering the phones more often than their coworkers. This employee was growing resentful of what they felt was more effort by them than their coworkers. Upon discussing it further, this employee was unaware that other employees were told by their manager to prioritize order entry before phone calls whenever possible. Also, this employee thought picking up the phone on the first ring was necessary, while other employees thought it was okay to let a circle a few times before answering it. After reading this article, I see how asking questions regarding individual and team expectations before this issue helped mitigate the conflict between coworkers. (Toegel & Barsoux, 2016)

1 . Complement the above!

2 . Give citations.