Conflicting Personalities Doesn’t Ruin A Team

Every manager wants his team working like a well-oiled machine. The goal is complete harmony and efficiency, but sometimes there a few people that just don’t click. It could be a slight dislike to full on incompatibility, but the good news is team members don’t have to like each other to work together.

If it’s one thing we learned about team building in Maryland, it’s that people come in all different personalities and sometimes they don’t mesh with others. That doesn’t meant they don’t have skills and traits beneficial to the team.

Don’t Segregate Them

One thing many managers do to remove conflict from a team is move one of the offending members away from the group. This eliminates the conflict, but also hurts the team. You’re taking away a valuable team member that has skills and insights they need and you’re dropping morale.

The goal is not to move the team member to a solo project, but to integrate him into the groups using Maryland team building exercises.

Getting To Know You

Odds are the people in conflict don’t know too much about each other. When two conflicting personalities connect, they don’t bond well. Conversations tend to be short and matter of fact. They don’t get to know many personal details. Team Building Maryland tests their ability to trust and enables them to learn about each other outside of the work environment.

They have to work as a team to get through rope courses and other activities. They may discover similarities in each other that help break the tension and let them work together.

Competence Not Camaraderie

A team needs trust, communication and competence to succeed, not camaraderie. If the tension arises from something said by one to the other, then sit them down and hash out the problem. One needs to be the bigger person and or convince them that the team is more important than they’re petty squabble.

They may not like each other, but they can tolerate each other enough to get the job done. They need to focus on the goal of the project and not whatever problem there is between them.

Upward Enterprises is a leader in Maryland team building with many options for corporate retreats and other activities. Contact us today to set something up and let us turn your team into a well-oiled machine.